Mandla Gantsho, Vice President for Infrastructure at the AfDB (centre) being presented with a copy of the Make Roads Safe report
The Make Roads Safe recommendations for safer road design have been presented at a meeting of the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa attended by leading G8 donors.
The Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA) discussed African road safety issues at a major donor conference hosted by the African Development Bank (AfDB) in Tunis on 3-4 December.
Delegates heard a joint presentation by David Njoroge, Africa’s representative on the Commission for Global Road Safety and David Ward, Director General of the FIA Foundation. They highlighted the urgent need for action to reduce road traffic injuries in Africa which has the world’s most dangerous road network with a fatality rate of 28 per 100,000 population.
The ICA meeting was opened by the President of the AfDB Dr Donald Kaberuka and was attended by donors from the G8 leading industrialised nations, multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, African regional economic associations, financiers and transport experts. Established following the Gleneagles meeting of the G8 in 2005, the ICA is leading a global effort to promote investment in African infrastructure, including roads. The Tunis meeting heard that only 14% of sub-Saharan Africa’s roads are paved and that in many countries the network is in poor condition. However, plans are being developed to increase the paved road network by 2.4% every year until 2030 and G8 donors and multilateral agencies have pledged to support new investment in Africa’s transport networks, especially in regional road corridors.
New roads, whilst helping sustain Africa’s current 5.3% yearly growth rates, will also increase risk from road traffic injury especially among vulnerable road users. Highlighting this concern David Njoroge called for a new strategic framework for road safety in Africa. He urged the ICA and the World Bank’s Sub Saharan African Transport Programme to ensure that road building and repair programmes include a strong road safety component to help meet the target agreed by African health and transport ministers to cut road fatalities by 50% by 2015. David Ward described the key recommendations of the Make Roads Safe report, in particular the potential of road infrastructure design and assessment to contribute to achieving casualty reduction targets.
The Make Roads Safe campaign’s call for 10% of all road infrastructure budgets funded by international donors to be earmarked for road safety received further strong support in a letter to the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa from the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, Achim Steiner. In his letter dated 3rd December, Mr Steiner calls on the ICA and G8 donors to ensure that “use…funds to help institutionalise, through funding polices and project design criteria, the recommendations of the Commission for Global Road Safety, in particular the 10% rule”.
Click here to download letter to ICA from UNEP Executive Director >