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Advancing data-related capacity building through the African Road Safety Observatory

Overview

Advancing data-related capacity building through the African Road Safety Observatory

UK AID COMPONENT ⌵

With the support of UK Aid, the African Road Safety Observatory was able to enhance the capacity of African countries to manage road safety data and therefore design evidence-based interventions to improve road safety outcomes across the continent.

With these activities, GRSF collaborated with UN organizations, Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), other global or regional international organizations or NGOs, including the IRTAD; ITF; WHO; FIA; AfDB; African Union; and UNECA.

GRSF funding directly leveraged US$100,000 grant funds for road safety studies in Mozambique and Southern African countries focusing on data management and capacity. This involved the support of WHO and FIA for a workshop in Tunis for improvement of vital registration data management, and FIA for ESRA attitudinal and behavioral surveys in five African countries.

HIGHLIGHTED ACTIVITIES SUPPORTED BY UK AID

With the goal of changing Africa’s road safety narrative, SSATP with the support of the African Union Commission, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, European Union, and the GRSF, with funding from UK Aid, launched the African Road Safety Observatory's #Roads4Life storytelling contest to generate awareness on Africa’s road safety crisis and identify road safety champions who are working hard to make Africa’s roads safer. SSATP received more than 150 story submissions and organically reached more than 16.9 million people worldwide.

The winners of the #Roads4Life storytelling contest were:

  • Road safety leadership: Roads for Life in Zimbabwe.

  • Innovations for road safety: App for Improving Road Crashes Responses in Cameroon.

  • Personal stories of taking a stand to address road safety issues: Botswana’s Donkey Carts Story.

  • Notable mention under Personal Stories: Chris Kaganzi’s Start Over Initiative in Uganda.

CAPACITY BUILDING 

On April 3-5, 2019, WHO led an ARSO workshop in Tunis on improving vital registration data management with 10 countries participating: Botswana, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Tunisia. The workshop explored with participants the quality of their data, the strengths and weaknesses of data systems and the ability to integrate mortality data and to develop protocols to identify gaps within existing systems and assess the extent of underreporting.

DATA COLLECTION 

A population-representative attitudinal and behavioral data was collected in six African countries: Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia. Surveys were also delivered on an additional six countries (Benin, Cameroun, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Tunisia and Uganda). In total, 2,416 key contacts were interviewed.

COMMITMENTS 

The process to acceding to African Road Safety Charter started. The African Union Commission sent out a memorandum outlining procedures for African countries to accede to and ratify the Charter in December 2019.

TOTAL FOUNDATION COMPONENT

In January 2020, GRSF welcomed its newest donor, Total Foundation. This new partnership has been supporting a joint collaboration in advancing data-related capacity building through the African Road Safety Observatory. The project aims to provide training, assistance and guidance to countries, with the goal of boosting their road safety analytic and data usage capacities.

The project directly assists African nations to improve their road safety data and information systems and expand the use of data for better targeting of road safety treatments, better monitoring, more rigorous evaluation, and more effective advocacy. The initiative also improves the data provided to the Africa Road Safety Observatory (ARSO), and further facilitate country to country learning opportunities from the Observatory.

This program of funding strengthens the ongoing partnership between Total Foundation and GRSF. The organizations have worked together on road safety in Africa previously, including jointly supporting work on high crash risk corridors in Africa.

IDEAS IN ACTION

Training programs offered by the GRSF will aim to improve the understanding of the challenges faced, as well as strengthen the skills and commitment of all stakeholders, to support the use of data collection and analysis tools on the ground. The goal is to enable decision-making based on reliable information, while fostering collaboration across the continent.

WHY IS IT A PRIORITY TO EXPAND THE USE OF DATA?

Effective use of sound data generates powerful opportunities to save lives and prevent injuries. Resources can be allocated on a sound evidence base; advocacy can be better informed and more effective; the selection of interventions to address road safety can be more accurately targeted to the real nature of the problem; and serious crash locations (black spots) can be accurately identified from crash data for effective treatment.

HOW WILL THE SUPPORT OF TOTAL FOUNDATION MAKE THE DIFFERENCE?

Total Foundation funding will be used by GRSF to improve understanding of the value of good data, and to increase the capacity of African countries for road safety data collection, analysis, and usage in the development of road safety projects and policies. Total Foundation funding will support buildup of a professional group of data specialists, including among academics and NGOs. It will also facilitate networking among road safety professionals capable of using data and exchanging good practices for maximizing road safety benefits.

"With the African Road Safety Observatory, Total Foundation continues its commitment to advance road safety. Total is a major player on the continent, widely present on its roads. For this reason, we wish to provide support to (...) fight this scourge more effectively. We are convinced that it is through partnerships like this one, which involve governments, institutions, experts and the private sector, that we can significantly reduce the number of road traffic deaths."  — Manoelle Lepoutre, Senior Vice President, Civil Society Engagement, Total Foundation

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The Key Impact

  • Event icon 2

    Winning project
    of the 2020 Prince Michael Awards

  • People

    16.9 million people reached 
    and 150 story submissions received with the ARSO #Roads4Life Storytelling Contest 

  • funds

    US$100,000
    in grant funding leveraged by GRSF for road safety studies on data management and capacity (Mozambique & Southern African countries)

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Learn more about this project

GRSF 2020 Annual Report
Pages:66
Document:PDF