Importance of Infrastructure on Human Development: A Case Study of Kubwa Setilite Town, Bwari Area Council Abuja
Chapter One
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The objectives of the study are;
- To ascertain the important of infrastructure on human development
- To ascertain the availability of infrastructure in Kubwa setilite town
- To ascertain those factors that affect human development in Kubwa setilite town
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
INFRASTRUCTURE
“Infrastructure” are many and diverse: roads, tunnels, bridges, railways, airports, harbors, canals, subways and tramways, dams, irrigation networks, water pipes, water purification plants, sewers, water treatment plants, dumps and incinerators, power plants, power lines and distribution networks, oil and gas pipelines, telephone exchanges and networks, district heating equipment, etc. Infrastructure and infrastructure-related services have always been with us, but the word itself is relatively recent, particularly in English. Although The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language writes that “the term infrastructure has been used since 1927 to refer collectively to roads, bridges rail lines, and similar public works”, it does not appear in the 1952 Concise Oxford Dictionary, nor in the 1950 Real Academia Espanola Diccionario. The word does not appear in the works of the “pioneers in development” (Meier & Seers 1984) writing in the post-war period. It is, for instance, absent from the standard treatises of Lewis (1955), Higgins (1959) or Bauer (1957). It was just not used then. This contrasts with the formidable success of the word in the 1980ies and 1990ies, when it invaded UN institutions, World Bank organization charts, academic journals, and daily newspapers. The process has clearly been inflationary. The meaning of the word has been extended so much that it no longer means much. As the American Heritage Dictionary puts it: “Today, we may hear that conservatism has an infrastructure of think tanks or that terrorists organizations have an infrastructure of people sympathetic to their cause”. In this presentation, we will use the word to describe objects like the ones listed above, that have in common all or most of the following attributes.
On the type of infrastructure
Any modern textbook on industrial economics or industrial organization will point out that for industries that enjoy network externalities, the social rate of return has to be higher than the private rate of return in these projects assuming that the regulation does not allow the network externality to be turned into a private rent. In other words, their impact on GDP and its growth should be high. This explains for instance why the growth impact of the telecoms sector so often come out to be high. But for specific countries or regions, this could also be true for transport or electricity. In general, however, all infrastructure subsectors can be good examples of sectors in which such network externalities can matter. Their social return will however evolve with time, with stock size and with market size. This section reviews the main lessons available on each subsector on the growth impact of each infrastructure subsector.
Energy
The importance of access to electricity to human development has been documented in a large number of case studies and cross-country econometric studies across regions. It is a recurring item in all studies on the impediments to the business environment. (see Dethier et al. (2008 et al.) for instance). Among these studies, those focusing on developing countries all find a positive impact of energy infrastructure on output/growth. In fact, in his survey, Garsous (2012) finds that, ceteris paribus, studies focusing on the energy sector are more likely to find a robust positive impact than any other infrastructure sector. In other words, investing in the energy sector may be the safest bet to achieve a high social rate of return. This should not be a surprise, energy is indeed an input into any of the other infrastructure subsectors—for instance, water is often pumped thanks to electric pumps
Water and Sanitation
The water and sanitation sector may be the infrastructure subsector for which the econometric evidence of an impact is the less well documented. This reflects the fact that the link with growth is a lot more indirect that for the other subsectors. Although water drives health which in turn drives labor productivity and labor productivity, itself, drives growth, the link between water and growth does not seem to spring to mind to most researchers or at least not as strongly as for the other sectors. It is noteworthy that Calderon and Serven, the World Bank based researchers who may have spent the most time on assessing the impact of infrastructure on growth have left out the water sector of their analysis. Among the few studies to have analyzed this contribution in developing countries, the evidence is mixed. Binswanger et al. (1992) for instance find that the contribution of canal irrigation infrastructure to crop output is null from a panel districts in India. Estache et al. (2005) find the contribution of water and sanitary infrastructure to be positive from a panel of sub-Saharan countries.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research design
The researcher used descriptive research survey design in building up this project work the choice of this research design was considered appropriate because of its advantages of identifying attributes of a large population from a group of individuals. The design was suitable for the study as the study sought importance of infrastructure on human development
Sources of data collection
Data were collected from two main sources namely:
(i)Primary source and
(ii)Secondary source
Primary source:
These are materials of statistical investigation which were collected by the research for a particular purpose. They can be obtained through a survey, observation questionnaire or as experiment; the researcher has adopted the questionnaire method for this study.
Secondary source:
These are data from textbook Journal handset etc. they arise as byproducts of the same other purposes. Example administration, various other unpublished works and write ups were also used.
Population of the study
Population of a study is a group of persons or aggregate items, things the researcher is interested in getting information on importance of infrastructure on human development. 200 residents in Kubwa Setilite town, Bwari Area Council Abuja was selected randomly by the researcher as the population of the study.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION ANALYSIS INTERPRETATION OF DATA
Introduction
Efforts will be made at this stage to present, analyze and interpret the data collected during the field survey. This presentation will be based on the responses from the completed questionnaires. The result of this exercise will be summarized in tabular forms for easy references and analysis.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Introduction
It is important to ascertain that the objective of this study was to ascertain importance of infrastructure on human development. In the preceding chapter, the relevant data collected for this study were presented, critically analyzed and appropriate interpretation given. In this chapter, certain recommendations made which in the opinion of the researcher will be of benefits in addressing the challenges of importance of infrastructure on human development
Summary
This study was on importance of infrastructure on human development. Three objectives were raised which included: To ascertain the important of infrastructure on human development, to ascertain the availability of infrastructure in Kubwa setilite town, to ascertain those factors that affect human development in Kubwa setilite town. In line with these objectives, two research hypotheses were formulated and two null hypotheses were posited. The total population for the study is 200 residents in Kubwa Setilite town, Bwari Area Council Abuja. The researcher used questionnaires as the instrument for the data collection. Descriptive Survey research design was adopted for this study. A total of 133 respondents made civil servants, businessmen, businesswomen and students were used for the study. The data collected were presented in tables and analyzed using simple percentages and frequencies
Conclusion
Human poverty is mainly driven by lack of access to infrastructure. However, there is limited empirical literature on the impacts of infrastructure on human development, even though extensive policy discussion is ongoing. This study aimed to reduce this gap empirically assessing the impacts of infrastructure variables on human development index (HDI) and its components. The results show that, as expected, all the three infrastructure variables have significant positive impacts on HDI. In the case to HDI component indexes as dependent variables, access to electricity and access to water have positive and significant effect on education and health indexes only. On the other hand, road density is highly significant to increase the income index. These results clearly indicate the key importance of water and energy access to health and education, and transport infrastructure on income aspect of human development.
Recommendation
It should creation demands genuinely for a comprehensive framework to eliminate infrastructure poverty, which can essentially ensure meeting other goals of reducing human poverty and inequality and accelerating inclusive development effectively.
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