Infrastructure inventories

Abstract

Kenya's rural infrastructure inventories are comprehensive sectoral listings of all public infrastructure facilities in the rural areas of the country. They cover details on condition, utilization and distribution of facilities, and form an integral part of Kenya's development planning data base. The Government has realized the unexploited potential of the infrastructure inventories, God recent Government pronouncements have stressed the need for their use in improving planning, monitoring, evaluation, and implementation of rural development projects. If properly compiled and utilized, the infrastructure inventories could play an important role in improving district planning. Reliable, manageable, and up-to-date information, structured according to a sound methodology , is essential to rational and systematic planning. To enable field officers to compile, update, and upgrade the information in the infrastructure inventories quickly and efficiently, simple but comprehensive guidelines and formats are needed. In addition to information on the condition of the infrastructure facilities, socio-economic data such as the population served, the area served, walking distances to existing facilities, and levels of economic development of the area need to be included in the inventories. This study assesses the weaknesses that hamper utilization of the present infrastructure inventories and provides guidelines for improving their utillty for planning, evaluation, and monitoring purposes. A wide range of literature was surveyed and the proposed guidelines were tested for the water sectors in Murang'a and Laikipia Districts. The two districts were selected because they represent differences in population density and agricultural potential. The water sector-was selected because of the importance placed on it by the Kenya Government and the local people. This study concluded that information in the proposed guidelines for infrastructure inventories was available at the district level at minimum cost. Infrastructure inventories compiled according to these guidelines could then be very useful for planning at macro and sectoral levels. They can also be useful in determining the undeserved areas and those projects that need rehabilitation and/or provision of recurrent funding in order to increase their utilization rates. For this reason it is recommended t.hat, they be compiled prior to the drafting of the national plan and be updated annually before preparing the annual annexes to the district development plans. To ensure proper coordination, a task force consisting of Permanent Secretaries or their nominated representatives should be formed under the chairmanship of the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Planning and National Development with the Rural Planning Department serving as the secretariat to prepare and approve uniform guidelines for the preparation of the infrastructure inventories and their upgrading on a regular basis.