Resist pressure to upgrade planned gravel road investments to paved road investments. In Ghana, the pre-feasibility studies recommended a lot of gravel roads that were later upgraded to paved roads, negatively affecting the cost-effectiveness of the investment. The addition to the cost is substantial - putting just an asphalt top on a gravel road can increase costs as much as 45% - while the increase in benefits is small when traffic is low. There is often a bias towards paved roads for social/political reasons, even when paved roads are not economically justified. It is always easier to find a cost-effective investment in high traffic urban areas than in low traffic rural areas and going for a higher grade of road makes this even harder. MCC has already applied this lesson (example: Niger RN35). This evaluation supports the MCC position to firmly resist these sorts of requests.
Lesson Learned