Future roads: Assessing the political and socioeconomic drivers of road investments as well as the socioecological impacts due to road development in Kenya and Namibia

In this project, we assess the role of politics in road network development in Kenya. Specifically, we are interested in understanding if and how electoral motives by incumbents drive road infrastructure distribution.

Secondly, we evaluate the road-induced tradeoffs between socioeconomic development and environmental conservation in the rural areas of Kenya and Namibia.

Methodology

We take an inter- and transdisciplinary approach to achieve the project’s objectives.

First, basing on well-established theory on distributive politics from political science, we evaluate the relationship between politics and road development using geospatial datasets and econometric modeling techniques. 

Secondly, we engage various stakeholders especially the rural dwellers in Namibia to develop current and future scenarios of road impacts based on the NFF framework.

Finally, we jointly evaluate the socio economic and environmental impacts due to roads using existing impact evaluation techniques and borrowing from other disciplines including remote sensing and geographic analysis and conservation biology.