21 July, 2009 – A smooth, asphalt-paved road leads to the village of Molla Avazli in Saatli rayon in the south-west of Azerbaijan. It takes only about 15 minutes to reach the highway that crosses this important agricultural region and connects it to major urban centers including the capital city Baku. But it was not always like this. Villagers still remember times when no car would dare to come to Molla Avazli on a rainy day. If somebody fell ill, tractors were the only means to reach the hospital, just a few kilometers away. The situation was even more desperate for kids to get to their school located at the other end of the village — so impassable were the streets.

The new road is one of the 340 rural infrastructure projects prepared and implemented by communities under the Azerbaijan Rural Investment Project (AzRIP) since 2004. AzRIP is funded by the World Bank through a 15 million dollar credit and the by the Government of Azerbaijan who provides its counterpart financing. This project has also benefitted from the Japanese Government's US$ 3.30 million grant.

The project is implemented in three broad economic zones of Azerbaijan — Mugan Salyan, Lower Shirvan and Nakhchivan. Villages and communities with residents between 1000 and 10,000 are eligible to benefit from the project. AzRIP helps communities to get mobilized, identify their priority problems, build consensus around them, and then design, win and implement projects to address these problems. The cost of a winner project is shared by the community whose members contribute their own money. Public goods, such as roads, power generators, schools, primary healthcare units and others, produced as a result of these small projects are then maintained by the communities and local governments.

"AzRIP is a unique project pulling together communities, central government, local governments and businesses. Small rural infrastructure projects were implemented not solely by communities, not only taxes were spent. They involved everybody – communities, government and businesses. This was a key element of the project’s success", says Satoshi Ishihara, head of the World Bank team which supervises implementation of the project." Indeed, additional resources provided by local governments in the form of equipment and materials amounted to over USD 700,000.

The rehabilitated infrastructure significantly improved people lives. A survey shows that rural roads rehabilitated by AzRip have increased farmgate prices by about 20% compared to the regional average. The average yield increased by about 46% for potato, 40% for maize, 38% for cotton and 33% for tomato after the rehabilitation of the local irrigation systems. This also means that a substantial number of village people have had jobs during a community project life and beyond it and can support their families.

AzRIP is the first project in Azerbaijan financed by the World Bank, that uses the community-based approach to developing the rural infrastructure and improving rural livelihoods. Gulbaniz Gambarova, the AzRIP 's community mobilization manager, is sure that this project is not about just improving infrastructure, it is more about changing people’s attitude and behavior. "AzRIP supports specific investments, but the goal is not only having something built or fixed", she says, "we want to build capacity of communities to identify, implement and supervise projects that would produce goods of public value. One day AzRIP money will finish and and projects will be over. But those skills that AzRIP has given to people will become their inexhaustible asset."

Recognizing the success of AzRIP, the Government of Azerbaijan requested the World Bank to provide additional financing so that community projects are also carried out in other places of the country. The recently approved and signed Additional Financing for AzRIP will enable many more villages throughout the country to benefit from community investments that will make difference in their lives.