Road Security

Spontaneous civil disturbances and/or demonstrations can occur on occasion. This is usually the case in the major cities of Malawi. Transport wise, insecure areas go hand in hand with bad road conditions. The following areas are frequently associated with road trucking insecurity because of bad roads (B), steep roads (S) and/ or generally insecure and risky areas (R): 

Weighbridges and Axle Load Limits

The Malawi Road Traffic Directorate (RTD) is currently operating 5 fixed weighbridges at Balaka, Songwe, Mchinji, Mulanje and Mwanza.  The RTD also operates 2 mobile weighbridges. With respect to the Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM), the maximum permissible weight is 55,000 kg. The vehicle axle configuration has to be taken into account when determining the GVM which may vary from vehicle to vehicle, thus for tractor unit plus trailer of 6-axle combination will have a maximum GVM of 50 mtn. In other words the load carried by the vehicle should not weigh more than 30 mt. 

1: In Mozambique the maximum allowable load limit is 30 mt irrespective of how many axles

2: In Zambia the maximum allowable load limit is 35 mt irrespective of how many axles

 Road Class and Surface Conditions

Road reclassification studies done in 2006 identified about 9,478km of undesignated road network that serve the rural communities. The main, secondary and tertiary roads effectively make up the country’s core network with remaining roads acting as feeder system. Road handles more than 70% on internal freight and 99% of passenger traffic. It handles more than 90% of international freight and passenger traffic. It is due to this volume of internal freight and passenger traffic that Malawi Government has given priority to maintenance and construction of roads in Malawi. It is actually estimated that 55% of the costs of production are taken up by transportation costs in Malawi compared to 17% of other developing countries. The present road conditions is 21% good, 7% fair and 42% poor. The targeted road network condition by the year 2011 was 71% good, 18% fair and 1% poor. 

The road quality in Malawi is good when analysing both paved and unpaved roads.   Physical challenges for the road sector are mainly preservation related.  According to Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) another 24 percent of the road maintenance budget is needed to sustain the national infrastructure.  AICD’s summary on the road assessment states that 

“The combination of relatively high road sector spending, apparent over paving and underfunding of maintenance suggest that there may be a case for shifting resources away from investment toward asset maintenance” 
(Policy Research Working Paper 5133 Explaining high transport costs within Malawi, The World Bank Nov 2009) 

Another road challenge is the assessment of unclassified feeder roads.  The quality of feeder roads separating the rural areas from market towns are an important factor when it comes to influencing transport costs (AICD, March 2010, World Bank).  For this matter international and national transport markets are segmented; the cost of the later rises significantly as empty backhauls and journeys covering small distances are being overcharged by the few transport companies operating in rural areas (PRWP, Nov 2009, World Bank).  A proposed policy for lower transport costs in that market is to encourage a ‘domestic and small vehicle transport sector’.  Hence, promoting intermediate means of transport (IMTs) would show to be a valuable outcome.