Problem

In the world’s remote farmlands, walking is the primary mode of transportation. The World Bank estimates that nearly a billion people lack access to a road that is passable year-round, due to rainy seasons that are both critical to agriculture and dangerous for the very people that rely on those seasonal rains. When rivers swell, reaching school, the doctor, work, or the market can become life-threatening without a bridge to cross. Studies from rural communities throughout the world have demonstrated that safe access to reliable pedestrian transportation infrastructure can have dramatic effects on the ability of residents to meet their own needs, care for their families, earn stable incomes, and build resiliency against unpredictable weather (Rural Access Index: A Key Development Indicator, World Bank, 2006). Recently, the United Nations Office of Project Services (UNOPS) published a report on how infrastructure supports the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), highlighting its role in connecting populations, interventions, and resources for economic growth - “Networked infrastructure is shown to influence 72% of the 169 SDG targets…This broad array of influences emerges due to the vital role networked infrastructure plays in delivering essential services to communities, working as the life-support to many of societies functions” (Infrastructure: Underpinning Sustainable Development, UNOPS, 2008). In creating significant, long-term disparities in access to education, healthcare, emergency services, and economic opportunity, failing to address the need for physical connection disenables other investments intended to more directly (but singularly) address key development indicators, such as improved teacher training, low-cost fertilizer production, or innovation vaccination delivery methods. Entire communities are unable to reach these resources for months of each year, significantly decreasing the return on these investments and increasing the perception of insecurity for the residents of those communities, a factor that has been shown to directly correlate with a perpetuation of the generational cycle of poverty (UNOPS, 2008). As COVID-19 continues to spread, its arrival in low-income countries will be hard-felt. Deficient healthcare systems are ill-equipped to handle the burden of a quickly-moving disease, and the fragility of those healthcare systems make prevention efforts all the more important. However, implementing and enforcing social distancing in low-income countries is complex and challenging. The populations in many of these countries are already experiencing extreme poverty, and limited government resources are insufficient to meet the basic needs of constituencies. Stimulus checks and food programs are insufficient, and social distancing policies have profound economic consequences for people who are unable to make a living or feed their families if they stay home (IDInsight, 2020). And in low-income countries where communication channels are limited or not trusted, literacy rates are low, and physical, cultural, and contextual obstacles impede communication, ensuring that accurate information is widely disseminated is challenging, as well. This interferes with efforts to slow virus spread and focuses the impact of COVID-19 on the most vulnerable populations - those already living in poverty (Oxfam, 2020).