Online Reporter
THE rural-urban divide sometimes manifests itself in ways that few outside even the smaller towns can imagine and frequently innovative solutions are needed, rather than just expecting what has not worked in the past to suddenly start working.
The latest effort to bridge the divide arises over service stations selling fuel. Residents of Harare complain bitterly that new service stations are being built and opened almost every half kilometre in residential areas, as well as spreading out from the zoned suburban shopping centres.
But many farmers, small-scale miners, teachers, health workers, agriculture extension staff and rural businesspeople using a truck have the opposite problem. Unless they live near a sizable district centre, they have to travel long distances and often buy large drums of fuel. Some of those shipping in these drums are selling adulterated and unsafe fuel and in any case add their own transport charges.
Traditional economists would say that we need to wait for private investors and consortiums, who are so willing to build shiny new services stations, these days usually with a takeaway from one of the major chains, on every major street corner they can find in Harare, to move into the more remote rural areas.
One day this might happen, but it is not going to be soon and to a certain extent we need the service stations and fuel-selling points up and running to create the economic activity that would justify building and opening a fancy new service station.
The Government and regulator Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority, which licences service stations and has deregulated much of the retail fuel sector, while holding firm on safety standards, saw the problem very clearly.
The in-trays have the urban applications, but nothing very much about similar investments in rural areas.
So we see the innovation. Government experts and Zera noted that something was needed that would require a far lower start-up investment, but which would still be safe and viable in a rural area with very modest densities of vehicles, generators and other equipment needing petrol and diesel.
After some careful studies, a solution was found — a mini-service station with holding tanks and pumps fitting inside a standard shipping container. This allows such a service station to be loaded on the back of a low loader and delivered to a suitable point, probably one of those very small business centres that at least provide the commercial centre for a small community.
The tanks can be large enough to hold 40 000 litres of fuel, important for viability when you consider the cost of driving a fuel truck into the middle of the back of beyond. While Zera will be licencing these mini service stations for rural areas, the Government has ensured that they are legal by gazetting amendments to the required regulations.
Good regulation will be required. Safety cannot be compromised just because the functioning part of the service station is operating out of a shipping container, although we assume that the operator will want to build at least a small office, and possibly start selling certain common accessories that those with tractors, cars and trucks will often need.
Zera will also need to put in place rules about how the little business must operate, and since the safety is built around a sealed container, rather than underground tanks, what sort of precautions the operator will need to follow. It is something new, but it still has to be safe and offer legal and unadulterated fuels, just like the most glistening new service station in Harare.
Liquid petroleum gas deliveries could well be enhanced and that sector built up as more and more people move away from a firewood and candle home to solar panels for the lights and the fridge, a solar water heater for hot water and gas stoves for cooking.
But even as household wealth rises in rural areas, the fundamental difference will always remain, that while urban families can be crowded, especially with flats and cluster homes, with a dozen or more households on a hectare, rural households need a lot more space since they farm the land or provide services to farmers or process the raw materials from farms.
This means that there will always be a rural-urban divide, although more and more based on this dramatic difference in population densities rather than in services required. So there will always be need for some of the services to be mini-businesses as well as businesses that are more self-sufficient.
The container service stations are thus more than just a quick fix for the next few years. They, and similar innovations in other areas, may well be needed for decades or even forever.
The Government and Zera had the right approach. First notice the problem, then start looking for solutions that will work, then make sure that these workable solutions do not create further problems by putting in sensible regulations.
Containerised service stations are obviously just one of a series of new innovative ideas that will be needed to make life in rural areas a lot more convenient, and make rural-based businesses, such as farms, more viable.
But they must not be thought of as second-best solutions, rather the right solutions to do the job and thus more able to push forward the development of our rural areas. Urban solutions might not be the best solution to every need, and so others also need to think outside the box.
