Abstract
In developing countries, most of the roads are unpaved and not well maintained. They often loose the trafficability during rainy seasons so that the communities, the people at the Base of the Economic Pyramid (BOP), cannot access to the markets, schools and hospitals.
The BOP have been equipped with some skills for road improvement including Do-nou technology, which was Japanese term for soil bags, aiming to enable themselves to take measures to improve the road conditions to keep the access to the social services and markets. The skills were characterized as locally available material use, labour intensive and effective method. However, it has been challenging that the BOP could continue to work on road improvement sustainably after the trainings.
In Kenya, Do-nou technology was officially certified as the recommended method to improve the rural road networks in Kenya after the extension activities. The government promoted to design the road maintenance works conducted with labour intensive methods so as to provide the BOP, especially youth groups, with the chances to participate in the works on business basis.
At the same time, the youth groups who were trained on the road maintenance skills were qualified to found the companies. With the entrepreneurships, the youth groups enlarge their business activities leading to the continuous and active road improvement works by utilizing the learned skills. Thus, the unpaved road improvement as BOP business can be considered as highly potential approach to expedite the improvement of road networks in developing countries.
The approach toward and background where the BOP can conduct the business on road improvement works were examined and discussed in this paper.
