To help improve road safety across Africa, and with the support of the FIA Foundation, iRAP is proud to announce grants to support 60 road safety professionals from low and lower-middle-income countries to build their capability to use the iRAP methodology.
iRAP Global Programme Director Greg Smith said more than 90 per cent of road fatalities occur in low- and middle-income countries and Africa is particularly hard hit.
“Over 19,000 people are killed every day in low- and middle-income Africa and injury is an additional hidden burden,” he said.
According to iRAP’s Vaccines for Roads Big Data Tool, it is likely that some 194 people suffer spinal injuries including paralysis, 1,589 people are left with brain injuries and 20 loose limbs in road crashes at a cost of USD$247 million – every day. With road traffic crashes now the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5–29 years, the aim is to empower young professionals with the best skills and knowledge – creating a better future for their community.
“Road trauma is a crippling burden borne by families and communities,” Mr Smith said, “Improving capacity to manage road infrastructure safety is a critical step in eliminating high-risk roads and saving lives. We believe it is critically important to support young engineers and give them the opportunity to learn about safer roads and the iRAP methodology. We have created categories specifically for the under 29-year-old professionals to help support and benefit them,’ he added.
The Global Status Report on Road Safety published in 2018 states that progress to save lives on roads is evident in the use of the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP) methodology and the star rating tool for road networks.
By helping to build the capacity of professionals in low and lower-middle-income countries to use the iRAP methodology, the Training and Accreditation grants are a tangible contribution towards supporting the achievement of the Decade of Action for Road Safety goal to halve the number of road deaths and injuries by 2030 and the United Nations Global Road Safety Performance Targets. Target 3 states: “By 2030, all new roads achieve technical standards for all road users that take into account road safety, or meet a three-star rating or better”; and Target 4 states: “By 2030, more than 75% of travel on existing roads is on roads that meet technical standards for all road users that take into account road safety”.
Successful grant recipients will:
- Gain access to all iRAP online courses for a period of 12 months;
- Be eligible to apply for accreditation within the first 6 months;
- Those that gain accreditation, be eligible for accreditation renewals for the following 2-year period.
The courses include content on-road surveys, road attribute coding, analysis and reporting and star rating for designs. From there, successful recipients can also gain advanced knowledge on how to use the iRAP ViDA software to perform road assessment projects.
The Grant Scheme was announced on the final day of the World Bank and iRAP helping save lives in Africa – BIGRS 2020-25 webinar series which attracted more than 1,160 registrations from 112 countries for the free event.
For further questions, please contact iRAP Training and Accreditation Coordinator Alessandra Francoia via email: training@irap.org