Cities, Transport and Equity in Africa: Unasked Questions

In a fair world it should be unthinkable to ignore the needs of close to one billion of the poorest people on the earth living in its second-largest and second most-populous continent. A part of the world with already one-third of the population living in cities, most of whom in slums, and with the flow of people from the country side continuing at record rates.

The transportation arrangements in most people’s daily lives in Africa come in several flavors, few of them appetizing: ranging from world-class traffic jams making it close to impossible to negotiate the streets of the larger cities for hour each day, to at the other extreme no provision for vital survival transport (water, wood for fires, food) for the remainder of the continent.

Now the fact is that most of transport policy and investments on the continent are aimed at the creation and extension of motorized transport infrastructure. And it is precisely this strategy that had led to the present choking imbalance.

The key to unlocking the African Streets challenge can be summed up in a single phrase: Fair transport for women and children. What works well about this, is that when women and children are fairly served, everybody ends up being better off. This can and should be our central theme as we move ahead in this program.

So, in 2013 World Streets hopes to do what we can to bring far more attention to the challenges and accomplishments of fair transport in Africa. Get in touch and help us advance this effort. Your children will be proud of you.

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You can follow progress on our attempted contributions to African Streets here at:   http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/category/region/africa/

Or own our collaborative Facebook page: Thinking about Africa: Transport, Efficiency and Equity at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thinking-about-Africa-Transport-Efficiency-and-Equity/183396531766673

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