Contents

Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter One - Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 2
1.1 Definition of CBE ............................................................................................................................... 2
1.2 Objectives ........................................................................................................................................... 2
1.2.1 General Objectives ....................................................................................................................... 2
1.2.2 Specific Objective ........................................................................................................................ 2
1.3 Problem Statement .................................................................................................................................. 2
1.4 Phase- I Review Transportation .............................................................................................................. 3
Chapter Two - Road Maintenance ................................................................................................................ 4
2.1 Road Maintenance in Africa (Approaches and Perspectives) ............................................................. 4
2.2 Smart Cities: From Plastic Pollution to Plastic Roads ........................................................................ 5
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................... 7
Solutions and Recommendations for Hermata Mentina ........................................................................... 7
References ..................................................................................................................................................... 8

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Abstract
The prior research was conducted in Jimma town, Hermata-Mentina Kebele to collect data about
residences; water supply and sanitation framework, transportation and communication. The
Kebele is bounded in four directions; from the east by Hermata Kebele, Seqa by the west, Merkato
by the north, and Mentina Kebele by the south. The study implements CBTP (Community Based
Preparing Program stage - I) which stresses on statistic overview and recognizable proof.

In this phase we attempt to find sustainable solutions for the problems that we observed, by using
locally available products and labor from the community itself.

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Chapter One - Introduction
1.1 Definition of CBE
Community Based Education, CBE
Community Based Education: - is an innovative educational curriculum in which the community
is extensively used as a learning environment.
As a learning philosophy CBE uses community as a learning environment, the students and
instructors of the institution are offered a unique opportunity
 to understand the technological, social, economic environment for better interaction
 to correlate theoretical knowledge with practice
 asses the needs of the community and develop problem solving ability
 to acquire lifelong interest to issues of societal development

1.2 Objectives
The primary goal of this research is to bring awareness of problems facing the community of
Hermata-Mentina Kebele and how to solve them.

1.2.1 General Objectives

To find innovative solutions for problems facing our community by using locally available
products and labor.

1.2.2 Specific Objective

 Produce competent professionals who are responsive to the felt needs of society
 Redirect the learning approach into participatory, team learning by taking into account
 the development needs of the community
 Ensure participatory development by involving the community in the problem
 identification and solving process.
 Empower the community to address their development needs within local resources and
ensure sustainability of the development projects

1.3 Problem Statement

In Jimma, there are various infrastructural problems which need solutions. As civil engineering
students, we have attempted to pave the way for solutions of some problems with in the
community.
From the data that we obtained through our research by CBTP-Phase I project in Hermata-Mentina
Kebele, we identified the following problems in the community.
 Lack of proper water drainage of roads
 Lack in supply of water
 Accessibility of Public-Latrine
 lack of recreational hubs

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  Failure of gravel and mud roads during rainy seasons
 Absence street lights and fixed line cables
We have identified these problems but the problem we think is the most critical is the road system.

Image; Left- open channel in Hermata Mentina Kebele

Right- Road condition Hermata Mentina Kebele

1.4 Phase- I Review Transportation

Transportation is all about moving goods and people from one place to another. It is also Safe,
efficient, reliable, and sustainable movement of persons and goods over time and space
Transportation engineering
 Transportation engineering is a type of civil engineering which focuses on the
infrastructure of transportation: all the elements which support the movement of goods and
people.
 Transportation engineers design runways, build bridges, layout roads and plan docking
facilities. They look at traffic patterns, determine when new transport facilities are needed
and come up with better ways to get from point A to point B.
Good transportation is that which provides safe, rapid, comfortable, convenient, economical, and
environmentally compatible movement of both goods and people.
Most people in the kebele use public transportation to travel while some had an animal driven cart
but they were only a few. The roads are mostly gravel and mud foot paths. The main road that
connects it the Kebele to the rest of the town is asphalt, but it is overly eroded and needs
maintenance.
The main problem lies in the leveling of the roads, some of the foot paths elevation are higher than
the elevation of the houses. This causes problems when there is heavy rain as it causes flooding,

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this causes loss of property and it is hard to get rid of the water. The roads are corroded due to time
and natural factors such as rain, so they need to be properly maintained.

Chapter Two - Road Maintenance

2.1 Road Maintenance in Africa (Approaches and Perspectives)
After independence, some African countries inherited road networks which were developed for
the sake of colonial manipulation and military ascendancy. These networks were developed and
maintained to a certain extent because of the limited availability of funds. Road density, although
low in general, started to increase and this increase was vividly noticed in some countries e.g.
Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, and Niger. Generally, road conditions have improved in most
African countries in recent years as governments have strived to increase the density of their road
networks.
Remarkable progress has been made in founding organizations to manage and maintain African
roads. Nonetheless, only one in three rural Africans have access to an all-season road and in cities,
road construction has not kept pace with urbanization. In many countries, road maintenance
remains inadequate. This is, mainly, because of lack of proper funding. Most African countries
have followed a steady path in the roads sector, with the focus on improving the availability of
funds for road maintenance and the capability to execute public works. One of such initiatives is
the Sub-Saharan African Transport Policy Program. The main focus has been on the creation or
enhancement of road funds which provide ring-fenced revenues for road maintenance, based on a
user charge concept expressed through fuel levies.
Another area of interest has been in the formation of independent Road Agencies in most of the
African countries. This is all to achieve the main target of executing and maintaining good roads.
One example is The South African National Road Agency Ltd (SANRAL) in South Africa. This
paper looks at the different maintenance schemes and trends in some of the African countries. For
the sake of length of the paper, only one country from each region in Africa is presented. The aim
is to investigate the similarities and differences in the African maintenance perspectives.
2 East African Countries: Ethiopia Approach Ethiopia is classified as am underdeveloped country
and over the years has increased the size of the road network due to the approach to road
maintenance and rehabilitation. Ethiopian road network has increased approximately from 6,400
km in 1951, 46,812 km in 2010 and in 2015 to 85,966 km. Earlier, a lack of a comprehensive
approach to maintenance in Ethiopia has led to an accumulation of backlog of road maintenance.
However, with the reformation of the building blocks of road management initiative; which are:
management, ownership, financing and responsibility; Ethiopia is gradually coming out of the
shadow of poor road network.
The increase in road networks in Ethiopia resulted from the controls and regulations put in place
by the RTA and the attention given by the Ethiopian government, as this was an endeavor taken
by the government to help improve the country’s economy. RTA was established in the 1967 to
oversee matters related to roads and vehicles using roads in Ethiopia. RTA’s vision statement is;
“…ensure the provision of a modern, integrated and safe road transport services to meet the needs of all
the communities for strong and unitary economic and political system in Ethiopia”.

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Therefore, RTA sees maintenance as the core in achieving this vision. It is known that the road
management aspect is always hampered by funding, but in the case of Ethiopia, this was resolved
by the introduction of a road fund. The road fund in Ethiopia was established in 1997, after great
consideration to resolve the maintenance issues. The road fund in Ethiopia was developed on the
fee-for-service principle. However, to a great extent this reformation has been encouraging and
thus, Ethiopia was classified as a good performer in terms of road maintenance. Overall, the
maintenance culture in Ethiopia has greatly increased over the years, as a result of proper funding
through the road fund model and the reformation made in the road management sector.

2.2 Smart Cities: From Plastic Pollution to Plastic Roads

The article below was written by Susan Fourtané, titled Smart Cities: From Plastic Pollution to
Plastic Roads.
Smart City developments are rapidly advancing the way we live, work, and commute in our daily
life. Smart City infrastructure is currently seeing a high-level of innovation toward a more
sustainable future in the Netherlands. Using post-consumer plastic waste PlasticRoad builds
sustainable roads of plastic reducing plastic pollution along the way.

Image; Plastic Road

Consumer plastic waste represents a serious problem that is damaging the environment and many
species on the planet. Globally, more than 40 species of fish are known to consume plastic.
Eventually, that plastic reaches human plates. Packaging alone generates 141 million tons annually
of single-use plastic waste, being responsible for almost half of global plastic waste. This is the
sector which also uses the most plastic: 146 million tons per year, representing 42 percent of the
global total.
The innovative and unique concept of building roads made of plastic contributes to solving the
overwhelming problem of plastic pollution. The idea of plastic roads was conceived by looking at
the problems that municipalities, provinces, regional water authorities and contractors deal with
on a daily basis including societal problems such as plastic waste, extreme precipitation,
consolidation of the subsoil, an increasing need for mobility, and a crowded subsurface as well as
the increasingly stringent requirements for future roads.

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The increasing demand for more functionality from roads began to raise the question of whether
the traditional asphalt is still the answer to these increasingly stringent requirements. If roads in
smart cities should have an increasingly longer lifespan, shorter construction and maintenance
time, be more sustainable, achieve ever-higher noise reductions, and also be financially
competitive then roads made of plastic is what ticks all the boxes and what inspired the idea of the
PlasticRoad initiative.
Zwolle is a city west from Amsterdam, reachable by train in just one hour. Zwolle is both historical
and trendy. The city hosts one of the biggest markets in The Netherlands with 450 stalls. Art works
from Dutch painters Vincent van Gogh and Piet Mondriaan delight art lovers who visit the
Museum of Fundatie.
It is here, in Zwolle, where the world's first plastic road prototype was built using recycled single-
use plastic. The first internal trial was ready in 2016. For over a year, cars and small trucks drove
over the small plastic road every day without presenting any difficulties. Finally, in 2018, Zwolle
became the first official city in the world to have a truly plastic road.
The Netherlands is well known for its heavy use of bicycles that populate the Dutch cities
contributing to the promotion of clean and fresh air, daily exercise, and less general pollution. On
September 11, 2018, a 30-meter bike path opened to the public in Zwolle. The road includes
sensors which collect data proving information for further development, space for services to run
underneath, and its own storm water management system.
Building the plastic road presented many advantages including cheaper materials than traditional
road-building materials and less time required for complexion before the road was fully installed.
After the success of the first plastic road, a second one was installed in late 2018 in the city of
Giethoorn, also in The Netherlands. In this occasion, the goal was to test how the plastic road
responded in weak soil conditions.
PlasticRoads plans on building more bike paths, pedestrian areas, and car parks around other cities
in The Netherlands. Looking into the future, the three PlasticRoad partners are planning on
building urban highways made of plastic. In the future, single-use plastic might become a thing of
the past. Presently, consumers use 500 billion single-use plastic bags per year with 75 percent of
post-consumer plastic waste being sent to a landfill.
It takes 10 years to 1,000 years for a single-use plastic bag to decompose. Plastic bottles take 450
years; in many cases it could take even more than that. Think all the plastic bottles you have
discarded in your whole life will still be around polluting the planet centuries after you die.
Faster construction (months shorter) and less maintenance time. Higher quality and a longer
lifespan. It is homogeneous and prefabricated. The lifespan is two to three times longer than a
traditional road paving.
Little to no maintenance required. The material is virtually impervious to conditions such as the
weather and weeds. The innovation is considerably more sustainable. The goal is to make the
PlasticRoad out of 100 percent recycled plastic and to make it fully reusable. It is perfectly in line
with the Cradle to Cradle philosophy and the principles of the circular economy

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Everything on and around the road can be prefabricated including road markings and guardrails.
It is scalable. The concept offers opportunities for further innovation. Examples include solar
heated roads, light poles, and traffic loop sensors. A great added advantage is the contribution to
the global social problem of plastic waste in an innovative and sustainable way
PlasticRoad is an innovative concept initiative of KWS, a Royal VolkerWessels company and
market leader in road construction and the production of asphalt in The Netherlands. KWS
partnered with Wavin, a company which operates within Orbia, and is a market leader in the
recycling of plastics as well as specialist in making recycled plastic products for drain water
drainage, and also with Total, to improve the properties of plastic, the recycling of plastic, and the
available production techniques.
It all started when leading road builder KWS' engineers came up with a smart solution to build
more sustainable roads: Using plastic. Since then, the group has grown with partnerships that join
forces to make cities smarter and sustainable.

Conclusion
Solutions and Recommendations for Hermata Mentina
Our country is a developing country which relatively poor, we don’t have massive budgets like the
Netherlands. But we can still solve our environmental problems while solving other problems at
the same time. Climate change is a major issue in the world right now, building roads out of
recycled materials is one step towards solving these problems.
We recommend that the government makes road out of recycled materials and locally available
materials because it is better for the environment and is much stronger and resistant to erosion and
corrosion.
Using recycled materials for roads can solve improve the condition of the roads throughout our
country, because there aren’t many roads in our country and the roads that we have are overly used
not well maintained. The roads are also expensive and Ethiopia doesn’t have hard currency readily
available.

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References
[1.] Community in the Kebele
[2.] Kebele Administration of Hermata-Mentina
[3.] Jimma construction and urban development
[4.] Bureau of statistics
[5.] Module of the senior students
[6.] Fage, J D, A History of Africa 2002 Taylor and Francis, fourth edition.
[7.] RTA: Ethiopian road transport authority 2014 [Online] available at http://www.rta.gov.et/
[Accessed 24 April, 2015].
[8.] Foster, V and Briceno-Garmendia, C 2010 Africa’s Infrastructure: A Time for Transformation.
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / the World Bank.
[9.] The World Bank Ethiopia Road Sector Support Project 2015 Report No PAD700.
[10.]Road Sector Development Program 2001 Road Fund in Ethiopia: From Inception to
Realization Mid - Term Review Meeting of RSDP, 6-7 February, 2001
[11.] Interesting Engineering

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