Africa Road Safety 2016 marked the 5th GRSP road safety event in Africa since 2012. The event this year was held in Durban, South Africa.
Under the banner, ‘The Challenges for Communities, Cities, Companies and Countries’, GRSP and partners brought together 120 stakeholders from more than 20 countries representing government, civil society, research bodies and the private sector for a comprehensive event comprising a range of stimulating capability building workshops, keynote addresses, high level panel discussions and plenary sessions over two full days.
South African Minister for Transport, Dipuo Peters, who also attended our 2014 event when it was last in South Africa, gave a rousing address in the opening plenary urging those with capacity to act, to act – and encouraging stronger collaboration across the country and continent to take road safety activity to scale. The South African Minister focusing on young people in road safety, drawing attention to the biggest burden facing youth globally; road traffic crashes.
Reinforcing the Minister’s words, United Nations Special Envoy for Road Safety, Mr Jean Todt, sent a personalised video message to participants of the event calling for greater coordination of efforts in Africa in order to reach the ambitious road safety targets as set out in the Sustainable Development Goals.
YOURS Director Mr Floor Lieshout met with South African Minister for Transport, Dipuo Peters
Together with thought provoking keynote presentations from GRSP, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the event focused on capacity building through a programme of 3 engaging panel discussions and 6 interactive workshops which addressed key aspects concerning data, children, youth, policing, the private sector and infrastructure.
We were involved in the youth workshop focusing on how we can activate young leaders to take responsibility for road safety as advocates, youth ambassadors and key actors.
There was also an open ‘Speak Up’ session giving participants an opportunity to share challenges and successes, to highlight their take-aways from this event, and to reflect on learnings from previous GRSP events.
Participants left feeling connected with other like-minded actors, enriched with ideas and examples of good practice and motivated to take learnings back to their community, company, city or country and strive for real change.
GRSP’s regional events have become flagship events on the road safety calendar. Since 2007, GRSP has conducted 14 such events in 10 countries bringing together more than 2100 road safety practitioners from over 50 countries to share knowledge and professional experiences, discuss successes and challenges, showcase good practice and build strong regional networks where previously few had existed.
Africa Road Safety 2016 was made possible because of the generous support from Event Partners Shell, Total and Toyota, and Event Supporters the Ethekwini Municipality and Alcolizer.