Hosted by WRI at their D.C. office, DT4A’s annual meeting recapped mapping work in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Santiago de los Cabelleros, Dominican Republic. Speakers incude Iman Abubaker (WRI Africa) and Sarah Williams (MIT).

Building on the conversations from last year’s workshop in Paris,

The second SSATP Annual Meeting under the Third Development Plan (DP3) will take place in Abuja, Nigeria, during the week of July 2-6, 2018. The mission of SSATP is to facilitate policy development and related capacity-building in the transport sector of Africa. Sound policies lead to safe, reliable, and cost-effective transport, freeing people to lift themselves out of poverty, and helping countries to compete internationally.

During 2018 annual meeting, SSTAP agenda includes a workshop session on “Digital Transport for Africa: Towards an Open & Collaborative Digital Platform to Improve African Urban Public Transport”. This workshop will be the opportunity to launch officially the resource center and present different pilote experiences.

Given expected urban growth in Africa, the development of sustainable urban mobility policies is crucial to ensure efficient and “livable” cities. In most African cities, urban transport services are dominated by fragmented private operators, that provide a dynamic service for all, at no cost for the municipality, but with negative side impacts on congestion, pollution and road safety. We think that the challenge is not fight against paratransit operators but rather ensure transition of this sector toward optimized and inclusive mobility system. Digital technologies are a tremendous opportunity to deal with these multitude of operators and develop win-win scheme. Workshop held in Paris objective was to mobilize stakeholders (public authorities, start-ups, academics, etc.) around an open and collaborative toolbox using digital as leverage to enhance the overall transport network.

Based on shared lesson with recent experiences and workshop enable to brainstorm on next steps for a digital approach enhancing paratransit mobility services.