Road safety capacity in Africa: benchmarking professional education through a Safe System lense

Abstract

Africa faces a growing road safety crisis, with the highest global traffic fatality rates and a 17% increase in deaths between 2010 and 2021, in contrast to declining trends globally. Structural and institutional challenges, including weak crash data systems, limited use of evidence-based measures, and insufficient implementation capacity, continue to hinder progress. While the Safe System approach has become the foundation of road safety policy in high-income countries, its implementation across African contexts remains limited. Professional road safety education and training are central to embedding Safe System principles, yet systematic knowledge about the scale and structure of such capacity in Africa is lacking. This study provides a Safe System cross-pillar comparison of professional road safety education and training in three African countries (Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia), benchmarked against three European countries with established Safe System practices (Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands). Drawing on stakeholder interviews and national data, we assess training capacity and qualification requirements across the five pillars of the Safe System: road-safety management, safe roads, safe vehicles, safe road user behaviour, and post-crash care. The findings reveal substantial disparities in both the availability and institutionalisation of training. For example, the number of certified road safety auditors ranges from 0.2 per million inhabitants in Ghana to over 40 in Norway, while ambulance personnel availability differs by an order of magnitude between the African and European countries. Across pillars, common challenges include limited access to specialised and interdisciplinary education, weak formal qualification frameworks, and insufficient capacity in key domains such as infrastructure safety and post-crash care. Based on the empirical analysis, the study proposes a conceptual framework linking education and training to road safety outcomes through professional and institutional capacity. The findings suggest that strengthening road safety in African countries requires a coordinated policy approach that integrates education, regulation, and institutional development. This includes establishing formal qualification requirements for key roles, investing in interdisciplinary and locally anchored training programmes, and embedding Safe System principles across sectors. Such efforts are essential for translating the Safe System approach into effective and sustained reductions in road traffic deaths and serious injuries.