Assessment of rural roads maintenance challenges in Tanzania: a case of rural Roads in the Northern Zone

The relation between rural roads and improved welfare has been examined in a number of studies. Rural roads are the first priority to link farmers with towns in order to facilitate market entry of smallholders. Experience from other countries also suggests that rural roads may have an impact on transportation, non-farm employment, consumption, and social development. The main objective of this research was to assess challenges facing the maintenance of rural roads and propose ways to overcome them. During the research, 16 Districts with 128 respondents were visited and given questionnaires. This is equal to 100 percent of the total number of the questionnaires that were distributed. The result suggests that the target of undertaking research in to three regions in the northern zone was attained. The study presents the results on the rural roads maintenance challenges in the Local Government Authorities in the Northern zone of Tanzania. The critical challenges to rural roads maintenance have been strongly addressed in this research as well as the regression model was formulated in the research to evidence this. This study provides evidence that rural roads maintenance need additional attention, especially on the critical maintenance. It is only through working on the adapted strategies most of the challenges in rural roads maintenance will be avoided. Hence healthy return on rural road maintenance investment.