Rural Connectivity for Universal Transportation Equity
MLC VANGUARD | Created by Bridges to Prosperity
Bridges to Prosperity partners with local governments, stakeholders, and communities to catalyze rural connectivity, and is the global expert in delivering low-cost infrastructure on-time and on-budget. Globally, we have connected more than 1.3 million people to critical services through the construction of more than 360 bridges in 21 countries.
1,300,000 Lives Impacted
Every rainy season, rivers and canyons flood and cut off the world’s rural communities from critical resources – food markets, employment, education, and healthcare – for weeks at a time. A lack of infrastructure, such as bridges and all-weather roads, leaves them isolated, shackled by uncertainty and anxiety. A study by economists from the University of Notre Dame and Yale University evaluated the impact of safe access provided by a B2P trailbridge. The study found that access has immediate influence on key economic indicators, such as farm profits, but also long-term impact on decision-making and risk-taking behavior.
When communities are able to rely on a safe river crossing, they are more willing to take advantage of alternative labor-earning opportunities, which builds savings, makes it possible to sell crops that would previously have been stored for personal consumption, and reinvest in fertilizer or seed. As a result, communities receiving trailbridges (compared with a control group) saw not only a 30% increase in labor market income, but a 45% increase in investment in farm inputs, a 75% increase in farm profits, and a 59% increase in women entering the labor market.
The Innovation
In the world’s remote farmlands, nearly a billion people lack access to a road that is passable year-round, due to rainy seasons that are both critical to agriculture and dangerous for the very people that rely on those seasonal rains. When rivers swell, reaching school, the doctor, work, or the market can become life-threatening without a bridge to cross. Studies from rural communities have demonstrated that access to reliable pedestrian transportation infrastructure can have dramatic effects on the ability of residents to meet their own needs, care for their families, earn stable incomes, and build resiliency against unpredictable weather. With a single innovation, Bridges to Prosperity (B2P) is able to impact rural households across multiple dimensions. Trailbridges are a cost-effective, scalable intervention that connects rural communities that face extreme isolation to road networks and urban centers. This connection creates consistent access to critical economic, health, and education opportunities, expands the market of beneficiaries and the efficacy of services for surrounding development interventions, and serves as a demonstrable solution for alleviating poverty.
About Bridges to Prosperity
Ultimately, we aim to solve the problem of rural isolation within our lifetime. We understand that we cannot alone ensure that all those in need of safe access receive it, so we are facilitating the development of a broad-reaching coalition of partners to fund, procure and deliver connectivity. In this new dynamic B2P, while still an implementor, will also act as advocate, technical advisor, and innovator. To position the organization for this pivot, we are focused on proving scalability, impact, and return on investment in East Africa first (more than half of the 82 million isolated people in Africa reside in East Africa). Over the next five years, we will provide access for 1.4 million people in the region, and build the case that will mobilize a global coalition of partners.
Implemented in
Bridges are currently in service in 21 countries, with national building programs in Rwanda and Uganda.
