In Bamako, after a collision between a tanker truck and a car that left five dead and eleven injured on September 24, 2019. MICHELE CATTANI / AFP
grandstand. The road kills, more in Africa than anywhere else. The bus accident that occurred on January 9 near Kaffrine, Senegal, attracted a great deal of attention because of the number of victims: 40 dead and 101 injured. But it is reminiscent of a very common situation in most African countries. This drama thus adds to a long list of recent macabre clashes.
On January 5, a bus crash in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast, left 14 dead and 70 injured; 25 dead in August 2022 north of Abidjan; 30 dead in south-east Kenya at the end of July 2022, 25 dead in central Egypt in the same period. At Kaffrine, the cause of the accident – a tire burst – revealed the dilapidated condition of the means of transport and the lack of control of the safety elements.
However, in 2010, under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly, the Decade of Global Action for Road Safety was proclaimed. Ten years later, in February 2020, the Stockholm Declaration emphasized that no low-income country had reduced its road fatality and morbidity rates. Africa has the highest rates. The average death rate is estimated at 27.5 per 100,000 people on the continent, while it is more than three times lower in high-income countries. Traffic accidents are also the leading cause of death among children and young adults aged 5 to 29 years.
Undervalued national balance sheets
If this decade has failed in terms of reducing mortality and injuries, it will at least have had the merit of putting the issue at the center of political agendas: within the framework of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) the goal is to reduce the number of injuries and deaths on the world’s roads by 50% by 2030.
But first, the real question is whether African countries are able to produce reliable statistics. For example, many West African countries get their data from police deployment reports. However, the national police are not the most involved actor when a serious accident occurs.
It is mainly the firefighters who intervene to rescue victims and transport them to treatment centers. Several studies conducted in Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire show that data from firefighters and hospital emergencies can be more accurate. There are then four times more injured and dead. The national balance sheets are therefore underestimated.
Also read: Strong measures are announced in Senegal after the tragic accident in Kaffrine
The issue of injuries is also crucial. They are forced to engage in caregiving, which is often too costly for their income. The admission and supply capacities in the hospitals are insufficient and would have to be expanded and modernized, especially outside the capital cities. Some of the injured suffer from permanent disabilities that are more difficult to treat in Africa than elsewhere. Therefore, traffic accidents and related injuries are also (and above all?) a major but neglected public health problem: few resources are allocated at the pre-hospital, in-hospital and post-hospital levels to meet the needs .
African states are establishing road safety agencies under the supervision of transport ministries to implement policies, educate users and develop specific accident-prone locations. The majority of countries also have the full legislative arsenal of road traffic regulations, but a large majority of these laws are not applied. Wearing a helmet, wearing a seat belt, or even blood alcohol levels are almost never checked in the field.
Short term actions
States rely on these agencies without really having the means to act. They are dependent on other ministries, which rarely accept external orders. There are interdepartmental commissions, but they meet infrequently or when a major event occurs, as was the case with the Kaffrine accident. As a result, a number of measures were taken to improve road safety, which, however, led to short-term field actions.
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In Côte d’Ivoire, the government decided in 2021 to enforce helmet wearing after several fatal accidents in the north of the country. A year later we returned to the previous situation: almost 20% of users wear a helmet. States are trying to act, but road safety needs to be carried out in the long term and in several sectors at the same time, in difficult economic, social and security contexts for these countries.
Finally, the Kaffrine accident should not obscure all other road accidents: those involving so-called vulnerable users such as pedestrians, two-wheelers – motorized or not – which represent the vast majority of injuries and fatalities in Africa. We don’t talk about them much, but they occur every day and generally among the most disadvantaged populations.
Action to improve road safety requires more commitments from States and more international assistance. This also includes early education about dangers in road traffic in order to change behavior. It is under these conditions that real progress will come.
Emmanuel Bonnet is Research Director at the Institute for Research and Development (IRD) (UMR PRODIG), a specialist in road safety in Africa.