Building capacity in Africa through ‘4th GRSP Africa Road Safety’ event

Africa Road Safety 2015 – Bridging the Road Safety Gap marked our 4th African event and was held in Lusaka, Zambia on September 2 and 3, 2015. The event put the focus on some of the serious gaps in road safety management in countries across the African continent, particularly in the sub-Saharan region.

The event welcomed just on 100 road safety experts, practitioners, representatives from local businesses and NGOs, journalists and senior government officials from all over the region and the world for a programme of informative presentations and participatory capacity building workshops. The event also presented the opportunity for sharing best practices, successes and challenges in the region, as well as building strong networks of like-minded road safety actors which will be fostered through GRSP communication strategies around our regional event calendar.

The event also served as a high profile platform to help bring road safety to the forefront of government policy thinking and to stimulate support and action around the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020.

Together with thought provoking keynote presentations from the Zambian Deputy Minister for Transport, MP Mr James Kapyanga (pictured left), the GRSP, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the Road Traffic Safety Authority, Zambia, the Federal Road Safety Corp, Nigeria, Toyota and Total, the event focused on capacity building through a programme of 6 workshops and one panel discussion:

• 1.1 Applying behaviour change theory to road safety
• 1.2 Effective advocacy for road safety
• 1.3 Social marketing in road safety
• 2.1 Working across government departments and agencies to create synergy
• 2.2 Involving various role players in communities to create safer road environments
• 2.3 Enhancing road policing in Africa
• Panel Discussion: ‘Can safe system thinking help to bridge road safety gaps in Africa?’

Feedback on the content of this year’s event has been overwhelmingly positive and, together with the organizing partners, GRSP will work to maintain the camaraderie and focus the energy created through the event on positive road safety actions by participants in the public sector, private sector and civil society organizations throughout the region.

Link to download the programme and presentations.

The event was jointly organized by the Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) Geneva and Zambia, Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA) Zambia and the Sub Sahara Africa Transport Policy Programme (SSATP) with funding and technical support through the Global Road Safety Initiative, a private sector road safety collaboration comprising Shell, Total and Toyota.