ADDIS ABABA, June 29 (Xinhua) -- African experts and policymakers on Saturday urged concerted efforts to improve road safety across the continent as the continent registered growing fatalities from traffic accidents.
They made the urgent call amid an increasing trend of road traffic fatality across the continent over the past years.
Figures from the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) indicate that "despite being the least motorized region - with only 2.3 percent of the world's vehicles - Africa has the highest road traffic fatality rates in the world."
According to the ECA, Africa has the highest road traffic fatality rates in the world which stood at 26.6 per 100,000 people.
"This translates to 650 deaths per day, half of which involve vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists," the ECA revealed in a statement issued on Saturday.
African Union (AU) Director for Infrastructure and Energy, Cheikh Bedda, also said on Saturday that "to achieve the targets set out in the African Road Safety Action Plan will require a concerted effort on the part of all African countries," an ECA statement quoted Bedda as saying on Saturday.
"It is my hope that the Observatory will serve as a platform for sharing good practices on improving road safety conditions among AU member states," the AU director stressed.
Benedict Eijbergen, World Bank's East Africa Transport Practice Manager, who recognized the urgent need to scale up efforts to combat road traffic fatalities across Africa, also stressed that "the time for road safety action is now."
According to Eijbergen, more than 300,000 people are losing their lives every year on Africa's roads, and "the situation is getting worse due to growing vehicle ownership and rapid urbanization."
"I am confident that by increasing the visibility of Africa's road safety challenge, the newly established Observatory will generate the momentum needed to drive meaningful change on Africa's roads that will impact the lives of all Africans," Eijbergen stressed.
African countries, in a bid to halt the growing epidemic of road fatalities, are also scheduled to convene the first general assembly which will bring the heads of Africa's road safety agencies together with road safety data coordinators from the transport and health sectors to formally establish the observatory as the continent's network of road safety leaders charged with monitoring Africa's road safety performance, the ECA revealed.
The first general assembly of the African Road Safety Observatory (ARSO), which was hosted by the ECA, is expected to centralize the collection, analysis, and exchange of reliable road accident data, and providing a data-driven platform for identifying the root causes of traffic accidents, according to the ECA.
"ARSO will help African policymakers effectively address and mitigate the key risk factors contributing to the region's road safety crisis," the ECA statement read.
