AFRICA: Leaders in Urban Transport Planning - Cities needs analysis workshop

Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s most rapidly urbanizing region with a current urban population approaching 500 million. This number is expected to double over the next 20 years. In 2000, one in three Africans lived in a city; by 2030, one in two will do so.
Growing and sprawling cities together with rapidly increasing incomes and changing behavioral patterns, make conventional public transport less and less able to meet the mobility and access needs of the bulk of urban residents. This results in a growth of “informal” transport, mostly unregulated, consisting of shared-ride taxis, minivans and buses, 3-wheeler, and motorcycle taxis.
To address these challenges, PPIAF supported a regional workshop that brought together key government officials from various Southern Africa Countries in a regional dialogue on transportation to establish a more nuanced understanding of these challenges within the Bank and amongst development partners and start the process of capacitating decision-makers in the region towards the development of context-sensitive approaches to improve mobility in these cities.
The support facilitated the delivery of a discussions paper documenting urban transport environment in several countries and identifying institutional regulatory gaps and areas for future support in formulating city specific solutions. The support also resulted in the development of city specific case studies recommending solutions for Lilongwe, Maseru amongst other cities.