According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Africa has the worst rate of road traffic accidents anywhere in the world. Earlier this month, a severe road crash was reported in Senegal which wounded 24 and killed another 20. BBC World covered the crash in a piece called Focus on Africa. To put things in perspective, we had a chat with one of our youth leaders based in Nigeria, Simon Patrick Obi, to talk about the situation in the region.

Road Safety in Africa
It has been recorded that Africa has a fatality rate of 26.6 deaths per 100,000 – three times the recorded rate in Europe. In our conversation, Simon shares that there are several interconnected reasons behind the region’s high road crash fatality rate. For one, Simon notes that poor education and road traffic regulation contribute greatly to the lack of road safety. 

He also notes that there are factors that need to work together so that people are kept safe on African roads. He says; 

“There are three factors that are responsible for road safety; the mechanical factor which has to do with the conditions of the vehicle, the environmental factor which has to do with the condition of the road, and the human factor which has to do with the behavior and attitude of the road users.”

Simon does acknowledge that there are obstacles faced by the African region in implementing road safety policies – obstacles which include funding for road infrastructure. “The funding available is not sufficient to respond to the ever-growing challenges of road safety due to the increased motorization in the continent.” 

What can be done? 
Despite the current road safety situation in the region, Simon sees that there are steps that can be taken to address the current traffic issues. 

“In terms of solutions that government should adopt, I would say that government should imbibe community actions in developing and implementing interventions. For instance, road crashes are the single biggest killer of young people – this means that interventions in policy which do not involve young people will likely lead to little or no results.”

He emphasizes the need to have inclusive strategies and policies in road safety to address the needs of all road users in the region.

Sharing some best practices, Simon talks about Ethiopia and how it adopted a non-motorized transport strategy that will improve sustainable mobility and reduce road crashes affecting vulnerable road users such as young people.

He shared how Nigeria is also doing its part to end road traffic deaths through the creation of lead agencies in charge of road safety through the Management of Road Safety Affairs.”

Simon ends by emphasizing that there is still more work to be done in efforts for more inclusive road safety strategies. Young people need to be involved.

LISTEN TO BBC’S FOCUS ON AFRICA 

Our Advocacy Director, Stefania Minniti, is attending the Inaugural Meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) Youth Council in Geneva, Switzerland from the 27th to the 30th of January to represent YOURS – Youth for Road Safety. The purpose of the meeting is to bring together the WHO Youth Council in person to finalize work plans and strategize on a roadmap through its working groups.

What is the WHO Youth Council? 
According to WHO, the WHO Youth Council is a newly set up mechanism for meaningful youth engagement that will provide direct advice to the Director-General. The Council will consist of international youth organizations supporting and providing recommendations on critical health and development issues affecting young people through a comprehensive and inclusive WHO Youth Engagement Strategy. 

The Youth Council will raise the profile of youth contribution to public health at a global, regional, national, and local entry-level. The Council will also support WHO in its efforts to strengthen youth contributions to public health systems through advocacy actions. 

The WHO Youth Council will drive a global advocacy initiative with related mandates and indicators. 

YOURS at the WHO Youth Council
YOURS joins the WHO Youth Council as one of the youth organizations promoting meaningful youth participation in road safety. YOURS has over a decade of experience in youth empowerment and meaningful youth participation. With the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety, YOURS represents over 1600 young people from 115 countries worldwide. 

Because road traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for youth aged 5-29 years, it is crucial that young leaders with experience in road safety and sustainable mobility are represented among the members of the WHO Youth Council.

Road safety is a facilitator of multiple Sustainable Development Goals, particularly good health and well-being, quality education, reduction of inequalities, sustainable cities, and climate action. Tackling road safety through meaningful youth participation as part of an overall approach to saving lives on the road will bring massive development co-benefits to overall development.

We will follow up with more details after attending the inauguration.

MORE ABOUT THE WHO YOUTH COUNCIL MEETING

From November 2020 to February 2022, the Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety invited young leaders worldwide to participate in a second round of our Youth Consultations to gather data on young people’s overall ideas and actions on road safety challenges in their communities. The second call resulted in 117 consultations that were participated by over 700 young leaders.

Our youth leaders were guided by our Youth Consultations toolkit which allowed them to design project ideas they could possibly implement in their communities. They mapped out relevant stakeholders that could act as partners to implement the suggested ideas.

During the consultations, our youth leaders discussed how their voices were heard and represented through the Youth Statement. They identified the main road safety challenges they faced in their communities and used them as guidance to design their project’s objectives and potential activities through an action plan template also in the toolkit.

After following the Youth Consultation toolkit, youth leaders were able to co-design a project safety plan and develop steps to potentially turn the ideas into concrete evidence-based projects. 

From the consultations’ results, the Youth Coalition classified the most common project types; community mobilization, peer-to-peer engagement, infrastructure change, and advocacy. The predominant project-type recommendations fell under community mobilization because youth see a need to get more people involved in efforts to fight road traffic crashes as the biggest threat to the lives of young people. 

These four project types are now reflected in the four main priorities for Local Actions 2023. 

Other results of the consultations include a list of stakeholders and other key actors that would support youth leaders in realizing their projects and ensuring their impact locally. The stakeholders identified include; the government and public sector, academia, civil society, and youth.

From the consultations’ results, the Youth Coalition classified the most common project types; community mobilization, peer-to-peer engagement, infrastructure change, and advocacy. The predominant project-type recommendations fell under community mobilization because youth see a need to get more people involved in efforts to fight road traffic crashes as the biggest threat to the lives of young people.

These four project types are now reflected in the four main priorities for Local Actions 2023.

Other results of the consultations include a list of stakeholders and other key actors that would support youth leaders in realizing their projects and ensuring their impact locally. The stakeholders identified include; the government and public sector, academia, civil society, and youth.

Young people under 25 comprise over 40% of the global population with adolescents aged 10 to 19 years old. This accounts for an estimated 1.2 billion in the overall population.^[1] Despite the size of the adolescent population and the short and long-term benefits of investment in this age group, there is a struggle in efforts to leverage attention, funding, and political will toward adolescent health and well-being.

Adolescents have often been considered healthy but persistent and complex factors act as barriers to the health and well-being of many young people who contend with challenging contexts.^[2]  The second decade of life is a period of rapid development and growing independence with internal and external factors influencing adolescents’ present and future health and well-being.^[3]  Because of this, adolescents face complex challenges compounded by gender stereotyping, economic factors, and other social determinants of health that require a unique approach to the diverse range of needs within this demographic.^[4]

Importantly, adolescent health trends in recent decades have not seen improvements in health outcomes observed in the first decade of life. This is despite the fact that the majority of fatalities are related to preventable causes.^[5]  In fact, an estimated 1.1 million adolescents die each year from preventable causes^[6] such as interpersonal violence, HIV/AIDS, suicide, maternal health, and road traffic injury. ^[7]

Road traffic injury is a major public health burden globally, especially for children and youth. It is the leading cause of death for those aged 5 to 29.^[8] It is the third leading cause of death for adolescents aged 10 to 14 and the leading cause for those aged 15 to 19.^[9] Beyond fatalities, an estimated 10.5 million children and adolescents under 20 are injured or disabled by road traffic injury.^[10] Environments that are dominated by motorized traffic greatly impact adolescent health beyond injuries; outdoor air pollution, and lack of safe infrastructure for active transport contribute to other non-communicable diseases.^[11]

Despite the wide-ranging impacts of road traffic injury on adolescent health and the car-dominated environments that enable it, funding and political will are nowhere near commensurate with the scale of the issue. There is already a major funding disparity between the total global health assistance and investment in targeted interventions for adolescent health; only 2.2% is directed toward adolescents.^[12] Within this spending, only an estimated 0.3% of financing is invested in road safety interventions for this age group despite road traffic injuries being the leading cause of death for adolescents.^[13]

The pervasive overrepresentation of adolescents in road crashes, despite the multitude of road safety interventions in the past decade, suggests that innovative approaches are required to understand and address adolescents’ road crash risks. The focused attention required is often undermined by research. 

This results in missed opportunities to address specific challenges experienced by adolescents at risk of road injury.^[14]  We need more systematic and targeted practices to identify, assess, and address adolescent needs.  

Understanding the heterogeneous experiences of young people informs policy and programmatic interventions so that they can be more responsive to adolescents’ realities requires extending traditional research methods to embed multiple methods that prioritize youth participation as a key principle. The Gender and Adolescence Global Evidence (GAGI)^[15] is an example of what such an initiative could look like.

The collaborative and co-creation approaches that foster meaningful participation where researchers are engaging with adolescents and their stories provide opportunities to understand the highly diverse contexts, experiences, and strengths of adolescents across the globe. This particularly would pave the way to affirming the skills and agency of young people to achieve their aspirations for transport access and safety rather than be seen merely as abstract subjects for whom generic interventions are designed.^[16]

Additionally, while we recognize that there are methodological challenges to overcome reflecting decades of inaction in this respect, greater effort must be invested to enable the enthusiasm of young people so that they can translate these challenges into opportunities where they become active agents in evaluating interventions designed to serve them.

This requires prioritizing initiatives that meaningfully and practically engage young people in the design and implementation of project evaluations that consider and reflects their diverse values, identities, and culture. Incorporating adolescents in the evaluation process in turn increases the validity of findings. For example, when conducting interviews or presenting findings, youth partners are highly effective and authentic communicators, particularly when engaging with their peers as well as underserved or underrepresented populations. 

In summary, to generate policy-relevant data and foster road safety interventions that can address the distressingly persistent impacts of road injury experienced by adolescents, we must meaningfully engage diverse communities and thoughtfully create spaces where young people have a voice and the tools to be integral agents in the solution.

Bournemouth University and volunteer disability activists from East and Central Africa have come together to lead the Disability Advocacy in East Africa Project which looks to fuse academic research with practice in the fields of disability studies, political science, policy, education, advocacy, communication, arts, and more to build a research and action-oriented network to support persons with disabilities in East and Central Africa.

People behind the initiative
The project is being funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) – a group that prioritizes growing networks of academics, non-profit organizations, and disability activists focused on combating issues facing disabled people, specifically in East and Central Africa. 

ADD International will serve as the Project’s primary partner. ADD International is a disability rights organization that has been supporting disability activists to fight discrimination and ensure every disabled person gets a chance to live their best life. 

Other partners include YOURS – Youth for Road Safety, the Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), Humanity and Inclusion, and the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety.

The Disability Advocacy Project
The Disability Advocacy in East Africa Project looks to equip a new generation of disability activists with the tools, skills, and resources required to build powerful movements for change by utilizing the knowledge, expertise, and network of existing partners. 

Through the Project, disability activists will be able to influence governments and other actors to adopt practices that consider the needs of disabled people and challenge the stigma of disability through a more robust public voice that champions and represents persons with disabilities.

To implement the Project, Bournemouth University will implement the following activities; (1) hold a four-day Festival of Disability Advocacy scheduled this April 2023 in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania that features capacity building and knowledge exchange workshops to connect international networks with disability activists, (2) create a program of online knowledge exchange and networking events led by disability activists and other partner groups, (3) develop a series of advocacy campaigns led by disability activists, and (4) develop an accessible website of training materials, case studies, and campaign toolkits. 

How can you get involved? 
The Project is looking for new participants to grow the network so that it becomes a powerful force for change. Here are some things you can do; volunteer yourself or a relevant colleague to lead knowledge-sharing sessions at the Festival for Disability or other online events, become a delegate and attend our events to learn and network with like-minded people and organizations, and act as a mentor to disabled activists implementing their own advocacy campaigns. 

Anyone who is interested in disability advocacy is more than welcome to participate in the Project and the events around its implementation. 

Send an email to jacksond@bournemouth.ac.uk and share a bit about who you are and the work you do. In the email, you can decide whether you want to join the official mailing list for updates, become a volunteer, become a delegate to attend the events, or become a mentor to disabled activists.

The Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety’s call for proposals for Local Actions 2023 is still live! The Local Actions is an opportunity for young people to create and implement road safety projects in their communities as a way to realize the demands presented in the Global Youth Statement for Road Safety and the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030.

What is a Local Action? 
A Local Action is a short-term or mid-term grassroots action plan that is oriented toward addressing the most pressing road safety issues in the community. The project must address some of the four priorities initially identified to create the most impact. The priorities include; community mobilization and awareness, advocacy, peer-to-peer engagement, and infrastructure change. It is encouraged to combine two priorities for a much better chance of getting selected for a grant and support from the Youth Coalition.

This is the third consecutive year of the Local Actions initiative.

Since 2021, the Youth Coalition has funded and supported 29 youth-led road safety projects all around the world. In 2020, YOURS – Youth for Road Safety, the initiators of the Youth Coalition, supported three projects through the Impact Generator Challenge launched during the 2nd World Youth Assembly for Road Safety.

Every project was a clear response to the Youth Statement and the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030. There were also clear-cut objectives that also address other Global Goals that are connected with road safety and sustainable mobility. 

The Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety’s call for proposals for Local Actions 2023 is still live! The Local Actions is an opportunity for young people to create and implement road safety projects in their communities as a way to realize the demands presented in the Global Youth Statement for Road Safety and the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030.

What is a Local Action?
A Local Action is a short-term or mid-term grassroots action plan that is oriented toward addressing the most pressing road safety issues in the community. The project must address some of the four priorities initially identified to create the most impact. The priorities include; community mobilization and awareness, advocacy, peer-to-peer engagement, and infrastructure change. It is encouraged to combine two priorities for a much better chance of getting selected for a grant and support from the Youth Coalition.

This is the third consecutive year of the Local Actions initiative.

Since 2021, the Youth Coalition has funded and supported 29 youth-led road safety projects all around the world. In 2020, YOURS – Youth for Road Safety, the initiators of the Youth Coalition, supported three projects through the Impact Generator Challenge launched during the 2nd World Youth Assembly for Road Safety.

Every project was a clear response to the Youth Statement and the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030. There were also clear-cut objectives that also address other Global Goals that are connected with road safety and sustainable mobility.