Global Vice President for infrastructure at the World Bank, Makhtar Diop, has suggested to Africa governments to effectively collaborate with exporting countries from where over aged fleet of vehicles are shipped to the continent.
Acknowledging the enormous challenge this could pose he said, yet, it is necessary to getting old and rickety transports off the roads in most parts of Africa. Such significance he added could reduce the impacts of old fleets during road crashes.
African countries including Ghana are taking steps such as the introduction of huge disincentive taxes to curtail the importation of vehicles aged more than 10 years into the country. However many buyers fall within the low and middle income bracket with pocket linings that can only afford used imported cars, rather than go to an auto showrooms to drive home a new car.
Ironically, with existing public transport system offered by the state almost collapsing in most African countries, the governments themselves are also beneficiaries of such dilemma and thus allowed the private sector to fill the vacuum by providing commercial buses, mini buses and taxis often over-aged and shipped from Europe, Asia and North America.
Making the suggestion at a roundtable meeting of Africa Ministers of Transports in Stockholm, Sweden, Diop who is Senegalese by birth, observed that beside the behavior factors that contribute to road crashes, over-aged fleet of vehicles pose more dangers to Africa’s development. Hence he added that solution to dealing with the challenge should include engaging the supply side of such over-aged fleets.
The World Bank Vice President, at the meeting with heads of delegation facilitated by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the African Union Commission, held on the fringes of the Global conference to halving road crashes by 2030, stated that climate change, an issue to deal with, shouldn’t be overlooked in Africa’s development including mobility.
“Transport must be put at the centre of climate change discussions in Africa so that countries can tap into resources that are available to dealing with climate change,” Makhtar Diop emphasized.
Roads crashes kill more than 1.35 million people every year, with over 90 percent of this happening in low-and middle-income countries. The majorities of the victims are women and children, hence a lot more political commitment, leadership and greater action is expected to reducing the impact of road crashes.
A declaration dubbed “the Stockholm declaration,” which was adopted at the third global ministerial conference o road safety in February this year, received pledges toward ensuring that the decade of action meet targets including SDGs 3.6 of reducing to half, road traffic fatalities and injuries by 2030.
Story by: Nelson Adanuti Nyadror.
Back from Stockholm, Sweden. This was made possible through the International Center for Journalists’ Road Safety 2020 Reporting Fellowship.
