Highways in Africa

In the most recent episode of The West Wing(the penultimate episode "Institutional Memory"), White House Chief of Staff C.J. Cregg is being recruited to help run a foundation loosely based on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and her idea of what the best use of $10 billion would be to criss-cross Africa with highways, which would enable the delivery of medicine, expand trade, and do all sorts of good things.

The text: "I'm starting a foundation 'cause if I hold onto all this money, I start to look impolite. I want to find a single problem I can attack. Something which might actually have some kind of substantial effect. Maybe I should be fighting AIDS in Africa. Or maybe it's malaria. Could be clean air or election reform. I don't know. But my sense is that you would have a unique perspective on what that could be and how to make it happen." "A single problem." "It's a complicated question." "Highways — Is what you're looking for." ""Really?" "It's not sexy. No one will ever raise money for it. But nine out of ten African aid projects fail because the medicine or the personnel can't get to the people in need.... Blanket the continent with highways and then maybe get started on plumbing." "Also not sexy. Well, if you think that's what needs fixing, I'll give you $10 billion to fix it." (Source) West Wing usually repackages policy prescriptions from some policy wonk in a Think Tank. This one appears in this World Bank Report: Rural Access Index: A Key Development Indicator. (referenced at footnoteTV). "The Rural Access Index (RAI) measures the number of rural people who live within two kilometers (typically equivalent to a walk of 20-25 minutes) of an all-season road as a proportion of the total rural population." I imagine this proposal would not sit well with the environmentalist community. Clearly gas taxes were also on the mind of the writers, since this was also proposed. -- dml