SaferAfrica wins prestigious Prince Michael of Kent Award
The consortium of the SaferAfrica project has received the prestigious Prince Michael International Road Safety Award 2019 for its work in Africa. The prize was handed over to the project coordinator, Prof Luca Persia, Director of the Research Centre for Transport and Logistics (CTL), La Sapienza University of Rome, Susanna Zammataro, Director General of the International Road Federation (IRF) and other members of the consortium in a special ceremony held at The Savoy in London on Tuesday 10 December in the presence of His Royal Highness, Prince Michael of Kent.
Future perspectives for Road Safety in Africa
The SaferAfrica project hosted its final conference in Tunis on 18th September to present and discuss results of three years of work and also to discuss future development opportunities for addressing effectively road safety in Africa. IRF DG, Susanna Zammataro animated the final roundtable bringing together key stakeholders engaged in the continent and internationally.
Opened by the Tunisian Minister for Youth and Health, Mrs Sonia Ben Cheikh and the Minister of Equipment, Mr Noureddine Selmi, the conference was attended by prominent international institutions, African regional and national bodies’ representatives, policymakers, researchers and civil society organizations. “There’s a wealth of knowledge which has been created: Now it’s time to go and implement it” was the opening statement of Mr William Bird from the European Commission. Indeed the project has produced a significant number of analysis on key issues, country capacity reviews, training tools and methods and African stakeholders are already engaged thanks to the African Road Safety Observatory (www.africanroadsafetyobservatory.org ) and the African-European Dialogue Platform – both created within SaferAfrica-and linkingpolicymakers, donors and professionals to plan and design road safety actions. At the core of the dialogue, a Management Board composed by high-level members, including ten top-level international Institutions active in the field of road safety, namely: European Commission (EC), World Bank (WB), African Development Bank (AfDB), Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) World Road Association (PIARC), World Health Organization (WHO), International Road Transport Union (IRU) and International Transport Forum (ITF).
Coordinatedby the Research Centre for Transport and Logistics of Sapienza, University of Rome (CTL), SaferAfrica counts on a Consortium of 17 partners from both Europe and Africaclosely working with more than 200 African stakeholders coming from 41 African countries and in tight connection with the SaferAfrica Management Board.
The Conference held in Tunis provided the opportunity to discuss – in between others - projects’ implementation plans which have been prepared as part of the SaferAfrica deliverables. Thanks to this work some African countries more closely involved in the project are now stepping up action on standards for vehicles and for roads, on education and capacity building and on institutional reforms.
The recommendations of the EU-Africa Task Force on Road Safety acknowledge the contribution of the SaferAfrica project and suggest to the future ARSO to build upon the knowledge base, tools and network of SaferAfrica thus continuing its legacy. As stated by Prof. Luca Persia – SaferAfrica coordinator - “The members of the SaferAfrica stand ready to support this transition with their expertise to ensure a rapid and effective transition”. That will in the end translate into concrete actions to save lives in the African continent. “United we deliver” concluded Mrs Susanna Zammataro, IRF DG, by closing the final roundtable about future perspectives.
You can access all the deliverables from the SaferAfrica Project here: http://www.saferafrica.eu/en/publications
A short video on the Final conference is available here:
https://www.facebook.com/2217217145208468/videos/620313085165515/?sfnsn=mo
SaferAfrica Webinar Series: Road Safety Data Practices in Africa on 20 December
As a member of the SaferAfrica consortium, IRF took the lead and presented the first two of a series of webinars intended for anyone involved in African Road safety management, research and education. The third webinar will be staged on 20 December and will present results of the research carried out on road safety data practices in Africa.
In October 2018, the Horizon 2020 EU-funded SaferAfrica project, of which IRF is a consortium member, started a successful series of webinar sessions. The first couple of sessions recorded participants from 4 continents and 17 countries, comprising 10 African countries such as Cameroon, Ethiopia and Nigeria, and included stakeholders from institutions, road safety professionals, academics, NGOs and policy makers.
The first webinar, held on 29th October 2018 by IRF Director General Susanna Zammataro, was an introductory session providing background on the SaferAfrica project and highlighted key focus areas. It offered a brief overview on the African Road Safety Observatory and the Digital Dialogue Platform including the crowdsourcing functionality, which allows everyone to participate in making African roads safer.
Mid-November, the second webinar was hosted by Dr. Cristian Gonzalez, IRF Director of Data & Statistics. This session on Data Collection and Management discussed existing methods of road safety data collection (best practices, methods and tools), drew awareness to the discrepancies often found between official national data and WHO estimates, and provided suggestions on how to bridge these. In particular for developing countries, the need to centralise data from local sources such as the police, health services (ambulances, hospitals etc.) and government institutions was highlighted in order to obtain a more accurate picture and to be able to draw meaningful conclusions with regard to road safety.
The third webinar will be held on 20th December 2018 by Prof. George Yannis, Professor in Traffic Safety and Management at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). This session will address road safety data practices in Africa as documented in the context of SaferAfrica project. Initially the findings from a review on road safety data collection systems and definitions will be presented. At a second stage, recommendations and guidelines for a minimum set of harmonised data collection procedures and standard definitions will be provided applied in the short– to medium term aiming to improve African data collection systems. Finally, the road safety data collected in previous phases will be analysed and certain risk factors based on specific topics will be identified and reported.
To sign up for the SaferAfrica webinars, or to watch the recordings of webinars one and two, please visit the following website:
http://www.africanroadsafetyobservatory.org/road-safety-knowledge/capacity-building/saferafrica-webinars/
For more information, please contact the IRF Secretariat: info[@]irfnet.ch
SaferAfrica Project discusses Data Collection in Africa
Members of the consortium of the EU-funded SaferAfrica project met in Athens on 24-27 April 2018 to discuss advancements and to present first results to the Management Board. IRF (Geneva) who is a member of the consortium shared its experience on data collection during the dedicated workshop held jointly with the Management Board. Representatives from the African Development Bank, UNECA, SSATP/World Bank, FIA, WHO, IRTAD, IRU, PIARC were also present to address the issue of data in Africa and the specific needs of the African countries when it comes to implementing the Action Plan of the Decade.
The SaferAfrica Project aims to establish a Dialogue Platform between Africa and Europe focused on road safety and traffic management issues. The primary role of the Dialogue Platform is to act as a high-level and high-powered body that can help positively influence changes in the African regions.
The platform works at two different levels: high-level via the Management Board made-up of prominent institutions like the European Commission, International Financial Institutions, UN Regional Commissions and other relevant stakeholders. The technical level which involves government and research institutions, international organisations and transport stakeholders (e.g. NGOs), with a balance between African and EU partners.
The project activities are oriented to the “Safe System” approach and grouped around four pillars: Road Safety Knowledge and Data; Road Safety and Traffic management Capacity Review; Capacity Building and Training; Sharing of Good Practices. These have been specifically identified to be aligned with the mid-term review of the African Road Safety Action Plan.
SaferAfrica aims at:
- Contributing to developing/designing actions related to the Action Plan (and, in particular, to its mid-term review) together with individual African countries/organisations.
- Assessing progress toward the goals of the Action Plan and, based on assessments of the solutions adopted by various countries, releasing recommendations.
- Increasing the endogenous capacities of African countries.
- Fostering the adoption of the principles of the Safe System approach, in which all elements of the road transport system are defined in an integrated way, with the aim of ensuring crash energy levels below what would to cause fatal or serious injury.
Learn more on SaferAfrica and Athens’ meetings on the SaferAfrica website: http://www.saferafrica.eu/news/saferafrica-dialogue-platform-workshop-management-board/
