Mission
To construct and maintain technically complete rural feeder roads with a view of improving rural communication linkages and so provide access to various service centres based on people’s priorities as decided through their local institutionalised government structures.
Goals
To provide and maintain roads in communal and resettlement areas
Vision
To provide access to everyone in communal and resettlement areas within 10km of every homestead to nearest road in flat terrain and 3km in hilly terrain.
DDF RURAL ROAD PROGRAMME
After Independence in 1980 the road network in Zimbabwe was in a very bad state. The rural areas were served by a total of 3 000 kms of technically incomplete track roads to strategic military administrative centres. These had been established to assist the then District Commissioners to monitor and reach areas of interest to them for purposes of responding to the demands of the war as well as to monitor the rural population.
The period between 1982 to 1985 saw a reconstruction phase where government directed that roads be opened through DDF in the communal areas and along all settlements that were isolated. This was conducted to establish equitable distribution of roads access following a criteria that provided uniform service within the country by applying guiding principles and parameters for service delivery. Thus one of the guiding principles was that within the flat and rolling terrain, no one should walk for more than ten kilometers before reaching a DDF primary or state road. Accordingly, in hilly terrain like that of Manicaland Province no one should walk for more than three kilometers before reaching a DDF primary or state road.
This criteria was used to map the entire arteries of road network that exist in the communal and resettlement areas of Zimbabwe today. A total of 25 000 km was identified and constructed by the DDF in the communal and resettlement areas. This network excludes the additional 7 000 kms later on identified after the Land Reform Programme to bring the total network done by DDF to 32 000 kms distributed as follows:
ACHIEVEMENTS
BRIDGES
1987 – 1991 (PHASE I) = 25 Bridges
1992 – 2000 (PHASE II) = 76 Bridges
2001 – 2005 (PHASE III) = 5 Bridges
Under Construction 2006 = 19 Bridges
To be constructed = 31 Bridges