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Africa is the continent in the world with the highest mortality in traffic, and the trend points to further deteriorations over the next fifteen-year period. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), road traffic fatalities in Africa increased from 24.1/100,000 population in 2010 to 26.6/100,000 population in 2013. Moreover, road trauma in Africa is expected to worsen further due to the fact that emerging economies are experiencing big increases in traffic for which their traffic systems are not yet sufficiently prepared.

Increased knowledge is a prerequisite
In order to improve road safety performance in African countries, many barriers need to be overcome. Among them stands the lack of detailed knowledge on road casualties in terms of their number as well as associated factors leading to road accidents or affecting their consequences. There is a lack of road safety data on African countries, and even when data are available, e.g. through the reports from WHO, little is known about data collection systems and data definitions.

As an initial approach, it is essential to assess the needs of stakeholders in African countries in terms of knowledge, data and information tools, and deliver concrete data and information to be accessible by all stakeholders involved in road safety.

SAFER is supporting transfer of knowledge
Based on the United Nation’s 2011-2020 Decade of Action for Road Safety, the African Union (AU) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) defined the African Road Safety Action Plan 2011-2020 focused on promoting the implementation of measures to improve road safety in Africa.

The SaferAfrica project is based on the idea that Europe could play an important role by supporting African countries in improving road safety and achieving the Action Plan targets. The project aims to build favourable conditions and opportunities for the effective implementation of road safety actions in African countries by setting up a Dialogue Platform between Africa and Europe. SAFER is involved in a number of work packages among others dealing with road safety data and safety performance indicator collection, standardisation of vehicles and road infrastructures and curricula definition and e-learning tools.

The SaferAfrica consortium is composed of sixteen partners: thirteen from the most important research centres and institutions in Europe and three key institutional actors from Africa. The project started in October 2016 and has a duration of thirty-six months.

SAFER's first contribution: Analysis of the traffic situation
In this autumn SAFER plans to finalize a first study within the SaferAfrica project on the status of the road safety problem in Africa and the status of road safety measures. The methodology that will be used was successfully developed in the SAFER work carried for the United Nations in Asia. Jac Wismans is the project leader for this report. For more information please contact jac.wismans@chalmers.se.

Saferafrica Newsletter and website
Welcome to learn more about the project on the website below. Here you can also sign up to the newsletters. Each SaferAfrica Newsletter issue aims to disseminate project updates as well as news and comments on road safety management.