Digitizing road repairs to physically connect rural areas

Creating jobs and economic opportunities in rural communities by physically repairing roads using mobile phones

Crumbling road infrastructure significantly inhibits job and economic opportunities in rural areas where half of world’s population lives. Economic opportunities have proven linked to cause economic migration into urban cities and foreign countries while cause conflict and extremism over resources. Rural infrastructure in communities is the ground-zero to unlocking work of the future.

Unemployment in rural areas can reach as high as 50% and an estimated 80% of employment comes from agriculture. The productivity per acre of crops in Africa is 30% of other developing countries despite the land being estimated at being 5x more fertile. An estimated 80% of farmers are smallholders and produce about 60% of the food supply.

The cost of products like seed and fertilizer are 50% more expensive in rural areas than urban areas. During annual rains, 3 out of every 4 rural villages become isolated and all economic and social activity grinds to a halt. [research metrics on the impact of roads onto jobs]

Mobilized Construction digitizes road infrastructure repairs using mobile phones and our sensors to facilitate local road repairs. This creates jobs in local communities, reduces cost of transportation and products, and reduces post harvest loss as fruits and vegetables are transported to markets to be sold.

Our process works as follows: Road quality and bumpiness is assessed using our sensors equipped onto vehicles like supply trucks or public buses already traveling on routes to collect data at 0 additional operation cost. Second, we work with local transportation engineers to prioritize and plan repairs and send micro-contracts to local individuals via mobile phones to manually repair roads using shovels. Third, as trucks or buses operate daily on roads, they collect data to verify when road repairs meet quality standards. Lastly, wages and materials are transferred to individuals using mobile payments like M-Pesa to track spending.

Using our system, newly rebuilt or maintained roads are accessible 350 out of 365 days (95% accessibility) of the year while creating critical supplemental jobs in local communities. As roads remain accessible throughout the year, new forms of transportation like motorbike taxis or public buses begin operations, improving transportation reliability and reducing the cost of transportation. In our work in Uganda and Kenya, we observed 50% decreases in transportation cost and time. Over time, crop shifts to higher profitability per acre products like perishable mangos or avocados replace hardy maize and beans, driving higher disposable incomes to afford better diets, school, and healthcare.

The true power of our system is scalability and deployment. Since we use manual labor, mobile phones, and cellular connectivity, we could repair all tertiary roads immediately in the world. There is not enough heavy machinery around the world, skilled technicians, or available transportation to move the equipment to ultra-remote locations. If we get this right, we will transform life for 3.5 billion people and create 100 million low-skill jobs in rural areas globally. 

Our system utilizes manual labor to repair roads which creates supplemental local jobs and reduces the cost of repairs by up to 90%. While this sounds counterintuitive, heavy machinery like graders and bulldozers are expensive to hire and difficult to transport to remote mountainous and rural locations. Skilled technicians and potential for broken parts further increase costs. Manual labor has been widely tested by the World Bank and the International Labor Organization and have proven to produce similar quality roads as heavy machinery. 

We utilize technology at every step. We utilize sensors to collect road quality diagnostic data which transfers to the cloud for processing and visualization online. We distribute micro-contracts via mobile phone to monitor road repair progress. Individuals are paid through M-Pesa to track payments and document  all expenses. 

We will implement a ward wide road repair project near Kangema, population 70,000 individuals, and train 200 individuals for manual labor road repairs. Our operational goal is 95% passable throughout the year, on average 1 day a month a road is not passable. We will collect baseline data on the cost of transportation and farm productivity to determine the impact roads have to disposable income and household income for future impact investors.

Our system can be deployed globally in the most remote regions. We will expand in East Africa to Uganda, and Rwanda through donor agency projects. Our dream scenario is to work with returning UNHCR in South Sudanese refugee resettlement to repair roads in home communities to restart means of production to generate income. If we get this right, we can transform rural livelihoods for 3.5 billion people and create 100 million rural jobs.

We speak with government officials and locals directly through our Kenya manager Joseph Kigo who is from Murang'a County. We update donor agencies with our progress for future project funding.

We serve 12,000 people in Kenya and 3,000 in Uganda. The cost of transportation and travel times have decreased by 50% in Uganda and 30% in Kenya. Monitoring road quality continually detects new potholes from rains and we deploy new repairs to stabilize roads and ensure passable conditions. 

We expect to be serving 70,000 individuals through a ward wide project over the next year. In 3 years, we expect to serve 500,000 individuals in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda through 10 new projects. 

Mobilized Construction’s team brings an outsider’s approach to creating jobs and sustainable infrastructure. We have strong technical backgrounds have bridged the gap to implement theory into tangible benefits for individuals and the community. Our unique solution has drawn team members to our work and complexity in the problem has helped us develop resilience and tenacity to push forward.

We license our software to local governments and they provide us with 3% of road repair value. With NGOs and donor agencies, we earn revenue from project management and implementation which ranges from $1,000 for 10km projects to $15,000 for 150km projects. Long term we strive to structure social impact bonds to fund micro-public-private-partnerships for arterial road repairs.

Cash flow works as follows: 1. A social impact investor or donor provides $3 million upfront to finance road improvements over 3 years. 2. Governments are contracted to repay $3.6 million for road services, paid for by fuel levies and taxes. A reduction in repayment could be tied to impact metrics like household disposable income, education participation, etc. 3. Mobilized Construction forwards $0.4 million to investors, earning $0.2 million for project implementation, technology, and governance. The Murang’a Government is eager for upfront financing because road projects can be completed faster and at scale to realize cost savings.

We need funding to implement a community wide road repair project and believe Solve's focus on economic inclusion and work ties strongly to our mission. We hope Solve provides the audience of impact industry leaders who will hear our unique approach and provide guidance on how to proceed given the system level changes and impact we generate.

Road infrastructure impacts all areas of daily life but that diffusion leads to limited attention and risk tolerance. We hope Solve will provide a platform to link the impact of road infrastructure to jobs and help us find partners to fund our next phase for community wide projects.