November 2, 2007 – It is 8 a.m. on October 23, 2007. The gray sky, covered by a thick hazy cloud, sprinkles soft morning dew on the neighborhoods of Libreville.

Only the day before, the Gabonese capital had been pelted by torrential rains, a typical sign of the rainy season in this equatorial region where the thermometer registers a temperature of 38 o Celsius and the climate is warm and humid.

In Nkembo Sotéga, one of the many underprivileged neighborhoods in the capital, a three-vehicle cortege stops abruptly in front of a home. In the yard, a tri-colored green, yellow, and blue flag flutters like a weathervane atop a roughly six or seven meter metal pole.

The home is owned by Mr. Ondo Aboghe, the neighborhood chief. Leading the cortege is Olivier Frémond, the World Bank’s country manager in Gabon. In a jovial manner, he heads toward the yard where the neighborhood chief awaits him. After exchanging pleasantries, Frémond informs the sixty-year-old chief of the reason for his visit.

In a matter of minutes, word spreads like wildfire through the neighborhood. A crowd gathers around the elder chief who is conversing with his unexpected guest. This unannounced morning visit has aroused their curiosity. The question they seem to be asking themselves is “what could possibly bring a World Bank representative to this poor community?”

A Local Infrastructure Development Project

After this brief conversation, the neighborhood chief explains.

“This is the World Bank representative. He is visiting us this morning because our neighborhood, like Avéa, Nkembo, and Cocotiers, has been selected to receive paved roads, bridges, and other community amenities in order to improve our living conditions.”

His words are enough to generate a spontaneous burst of applause. Fueling this reaction is the realization of a distant and long-held desire of the inhabitants of the neighborhood.

Improving Local Infrastructure

Frémond’s visit has allowed him to see the difficult living conditions of the communities – the lack of roads and sanitation infrastructure, chaotic construction, stagnant water filled with mosquito larvae, and homes built on river beds with flimsy materials.

Plagued by flooding during the rainy season, these communities are anxiously awaiting this jointly financed Gabonese Government/World Bank project. Work on the local infrastructure development project will begin in December 2007.

Six Beneficiary Cities

The project will cover six cities: Libreville, Port-Gentil, Franceville, Oyem, Mouila, and Lambaréné.

The objective is to improve the living conditions of the people in the target areas. The project has five components:

(i) Building community infrastructure in the underprivileged neighborhoods (providing access to drinking water and electricity, building paved roads, developing small-scale local infrastructure );

(ii) Capacity building through the provision of training and technical assistance to the appropriate municipal and ministerial officials and to the beneficiary communities;

(iii) Developing SMEs through improved procurement procedures and financial conditions;

(iv) Providing assistance with public procurement management reforms with the aim of enhancing transparency and efficiency in public works financing; and

(v) Supporting efforts to control HIV/AIDS in the cities targeted for the project. 

At the end of this visit and after a series of conversations with the riverside residents, Frémond has assessed the extent of the challenge. He takes the opportunity to urge residents to become involved with the maintenance of current and future works. In his view, it is “essential to improve joint management” in order to achieve sustainable development.