What exactly is the mission of ARMFA?

Africa is a very huge continent and for many years, the development of infrastructure has been neglected. So, ARMFA is an association of 35 African countries established in 2003 to serve as an experience-sharing platform for member countries to know best practices, to learn from each other. For example, we are coming now to Douala. We have the representatives of the countries and each will report the problems they encounter, how they solve that. The other thing, we are also trying to catch up with our different partners so that they can support African countries in road financing and how to utilize the scarcity of what we have. To work efficiently, ARMFA has four Focal Groups: the Central Africa, the Eastern Africa, the Western Africa Focal and the Southern Africa Development Community.

What do you do concretely to help African Road Funds to solve their financial problems?

First thing we do is to ensure in these countries a well-established, second-generation road fund that will generate more resources from different angles and then use these resources efficiently and effectively. We do this through different networks that we have, the International Road Federation, the World Bank, the Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy Program… We are trying to create opportunities and that platform for them to access these different opportunities. For example, I’m coming from Ethiopia. So I can share how my country is dealing with the road construction and maintenance challenges, where Ethiopia gets money from, so any country can learn from that and say, we can do the same kind of things and improve our doing and approach to different donors. — Source :