The Role Of The Road Motor Services In The Rural Road Transport Sector In Zimbabwe

Abstract

Zimbabwe and its fellow members of SADCC have still to resolve many problems within the transport sector of their economies, and plans to meet these deficiencies have been prepared at national, regional and local levels. Within the rural areas of Zimbabwe the need for the improvement of roads and road transport is just one component of a wider planning programme which also embraces agriculture, housing, education and social welfare, and the specific difficulties associated with local transport services and levels of accessibility are inter-related with these broader development issues. In particular the Zimbabwean government has the related objectives of (a) securing a more equitable distribution of land, with the allocation of land now within the large-scale commercial farming sector to African cultivators and (b) encouraging and facilitating a much greater level of participation by these small-scale communal farmers in the commercial agricultural sector (Zinyama,1986). The eventual achievement of these aims will involve some changes in the existing distribution of the rural population and an increasing demand for improved transport facilities for the marketing of produce from these communal areas.