SEACAP Briefing Paper
Abstract
Sustainable and affordable rural access is a necessary precondition for expanding social and economic opportunities for rural women and men, thereby enhancing pro-poor growth and poverty alleviation efforts.
SEACAP is a poverty-targeted transport initiative within the Global Transport Knowledge Partnership (gTKP) framework. It is aimed at improving sustainable access of people in rural communities to health, education, employment and trade opportunities, with projects currently in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos PDR, and Sri Lanka.
The programme identifies and supports the uptake of low cost, proven solutions for rural access. Focused on the needs of poor women and men, it aims to maximise the use of LOCAL resources, including labour, materials, enterprise and most importantly ingenuity.
SEACAP provides funding for rural access applied research, disseminating information to stakeholders and supporting the mainstream application of better techniques and approaches.
This programme has now expanded to twenty-four projects. The individual projects demonstrate good practice responses to local demands and in combination create a comprehensive multi-level approach with high expectation of the results being MAINSTREAMED into national practice.
SEACAP is primarily funded by DFID having close links with country governments, WB, ADB, and the EU. It actively seeks to work with other development partners, by providing practical solutions to access problems. DFID's support to the rural access sector is especially important when considering the vast amounts that are invested in the sector, but very few, other organizations are investing in the scientific and engineering research necessary to ensure that these capital investments are yielding optimum returns. Indeed experience on the ground indicates that they are not.
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