URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE REHABILITATION PROJECT

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The development objectives of the Urban Infrastructure Rehabilitation Project are (1) to reduce poverty in urban areas by creating employment; (2) to provide municipalities with skills to develop and manage their infrastructure; and (3) to promote local engineering firms and contractors, labor-based methods, and local materials. The project's three components are: (1) a civil works component, including executing a program of small urban works, identifying sub-projects, including economic/financial analyses, environmental impact assessments and consultation with beneficiaries, and engineering studies and works supervision; (2) institutional building comprising (a) supporting municipalities with a study to simplify tools to plan urban infrastructure development, deriving a methodology for a development strategy to provide urban services and to mobilize resources, basic cartography of two cities, preparing feasibility studies and a pilot operation to involve a private property developer, giving technical assistance and consulting services, conducting ex-post environmental assessments of employment projects, helping to define the new legal framework for communes, and revising the commune budget structure, and (b) private sector promotion by by using local materials in the construction industry, and training local consulting firms and local contractors; and (3) project execution, involving improving management of the Niger agency for public works and employment (NIGETIP), auditing this agency and the works programs it executes, reviewing operating costs of the project's coordination unit, and providing technical assistance and equipment.