Question

Identify the main issues in Urban Transport Planning in Africa. What can Governments do to effectively resolve those issues

Answer 1

Urban Transport Planning is one of the crucial issues in Africa, because of rapid growth in urbanization. According to a study conducted jointly by Africa-European Union (EU) partnership, a takeoff in urbanization is to take place in Africa, where around 50% of the total population in Africa will move to urban areas by 2025 with rapid growth in secondary cities.

The main challenges in Urban Transport Planning in Africa are:

1. The current condition reveals that, except few capital cities, most of the urban areas are with poor urban planning.

2. People have not realized the importance of paratransit services, the current paratransit services are fragmented and private owned, with very poor quality of service.

3. Another issue in Urban Africa is that of poor road safety and poor design of urban roads. In Africa, the urban roads are 7% of total urban area. Where as in Europe, it is 30% and it is 20% in Latin America.

4. The governance of urban transport in Africa is very challenging. The institutional framework and the planning is very weak in Urban Africa. There is no coherence between planning and budgeting.

Some of the ways to tackle this issues are:

1. Strengthening the institutional framework and governance on urban transports.

2. Increasing the investments in urban transport sector, by making public private partnership (PPP) design.

3. Implementing effective policies at city level

4. Looking for financial cooperation from various NGOs and international bodies to improve the infrastructure

5. Issuing proper guidelines for the public regarding the urban transport facilities and spread awareness among people about using public transport instead of individual modes

6. Seeking technical and financial assistance from developing countries, which might have faced same kind of issues in the past.

7. Usage of energy efficient and fuel efficient vehicles for being environmental friendly and for sustainable development.

Through the above mentioned ways the governments can effectively resolve the issues in Urban Transport in Africa.