AFRICA’S ROADS ARE NOT UNDERDEVELOPED.

Guest Article 

By Daniel Mwamba Founder, Zambia Road Safety Trust Road danger in Africa is often described as a problem of weak infrastructure. That is only partly true. In many cases, the deeper problem is infrastructure injustice: a pattern in which roads that move goods and vehicles are upgraded first, while the roads used daily by children, pedestrians, cyclists, traders, and public transport users remain unsafe for years. The Lusaka to Ndola corridor illustrates this uncomfortable reality. It is one of the most economically important roads in Zambia and in the wider region. ZamStats data show that in 2020 Lusaka contributed 30.4 percent of national GDP and Copperbelt contributed 22.5 percent. Together, the two provinces accounted for more than half of Zambia’s economy. Government understands the value of this corridor. It is financed, maintained, patrolled, and discussed at the highest levels because freight, mining output, business travel, and national productivity depend on it. That investment is not the problem. The problem is that many of the children who walk to school near busy roads, or who cross high speed corridors to reach markets, clinics, or bus stops, are still left with little meaningful protection. From a public health point of view, that is not an unfortunate side effect of development. It is a failure of priority setting. Across the WHO African Region, road traffic injury remains one of the clearest examples of preventable loss of life. Africa has a small share of the world’s motor vehicles but a far Zambia Road Safety Trust | 10 Mulundu Street, Woodlands, Lusaka | RNGO 101/0503/2015 info@zambianroadsafety.org | +260 961 475 610 | www.zambianroadsafety.org MOBILITY SOLUTIONS SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT ROAD SAFETY larger share of the world’s road deaths. The burden falls most heavily on people outside cars: pedestrians, motorcyclists, cyclists, passengers, and children. In other words, the people with the least physical protection are often exposed to the greatest danger. Zambia reflects that pattern sharply. The UNDP Road Safety Investment Case estimates that road crashes claim more than 2,100 lives each year in Zambia and cost the economy ZMW 16.7 billion annually, equivalent to about 4.7 percent of GDP. These are not only transport losses. They are health losses, education losses, household income losses, and long term development losses. They place pressure on hospitals, on social support systems, and on families who can least absorb the shock. Nowhere is the injustice more painful than in child road safety. A child does not choose the design speed of a road, the absence of a footpath, the width of a crossing, the placement of a bus stop, or whether drivers are effectively controlled near a school. Those are adult decisions, institutional decisions, and budget decisions. Yet when the system fails, it is often the child who pays the highest price. Zambia’s child road safety burden Key figures that should shape policy, not sit in the footnotes. 2025 annual child casualties 1,493 children under 16 were involved in road crashes. 243 were killed. Quarter 1 of 2025 342 child casualties, 51 deaths, 115 serious injuries, 176 slight injuries. Quarter 2 of 2025 365 child casualties, 63 deaths. Quarter 3 of 2025 385 child casualties, 56 deaths. Most child victims were reported as pedestrians and passengers. 411 child casualties, 73 deaths. Quarter 4 of 2025 These are not small numbers. They mean that, on average, Zambia lost about twenty children every month on the roads in 2025. That should be treated as a national emergency. No education strategy can be taken seriously if children remain unsafe on the journey to school. No child protection agenda is complete if it does not include road safety. And no credible urban development programme can ignore the daily exposure of children who walk along road edges, cross wide carriageways, or wait for transport in spaces never designed for safety. This is why the phrase infrastructure injustice matters. It names a pattern that is often hidden behind neutral language. When a country can mobilise money, engineering effort, and political attention for the fast movement of freight, but fails for years to provide safe crossings, sidewalks, traffic calming, school zone protection, and speed management Zambia Road Safety Trust | 10 Mulundu Street, Woodlands, Lusaka | RNGO 101/0503/2015 info@zambianroadsafety.org | +260 961 475 610 | www.zambianroadsafety.org MOBILITY SOLUTIONS SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT ROAD SAFETY where children are present, that is not just a technical gap. It is an unequal distribution of safety. It is infrastructure injustice. That phrase should not be read as rhetoric. It is grounded in how risk is distributed. A high speed road without safe crossing points does not affect everyone equally. The motorist inside a vehicle and the child on foot do not face the same physics. The burden of poor design falls hardest on those with the least protection and the least influence over infrastructure decisions. In public health terms, that is precisely why road injury is an equity issue. The encouraging news is that this problem is solvable. Safe System practice has shown repeatedly that deaths and serious injuries are not inevitable. When speeds are reduced near schools, when crossings are made visible and direct, when walking space is protected, when roadside activity is recognised in design, and when enforcement is targeted at the highest risks, casualties fall. In Zambia, school route assessments using the Star Rating for Schools approach have shown that practical changes can move a road environment from low protection to a much safer standard. That is the point policymakers should focus on: danger is designed in, but safety can also be designed in. The road safety sector also needs to be honest about where knowledge resides. African countries do not lack understanding of their own road risks. Local researchers, city engineers, civil society organisations, police officers, teachers, health workers, and communities know where danger sits and how it is experienced. International frameworks remain useful, including those of WHO and other global partners, but they work best when they strengthen local evidence and local institutions rather than speaking over them. The task is not to import concern. The task is to back African leadership with f inance, data systems, and implementation authority. For Zambia, the policy direction is clear. Child road safety should be treated as a cross government priority linking transport, education, local government, police, health, and f inance. Every major road project should disclose what it does, or does not do, for pedestrians and school children. Thirty kilometre per hour school zones should be standard, not exceptional. Road safety audits should be routine before and after investment. And the roads around schools, markets, clinics, and bus stops should be treated as core public infrastructure, not optional extras to be added later if funds remain. Africa’s roads are not underdeveloped in any simple sense. Many are being upgraded. Traffic volumes are rising. Major corridors are receiving attention. The harder question is who those upgrades are truly for. Until the daily journeys of children are protected with Zambia Road Safety Trust | 10 Mulundu Street, Woodlands, Lusaka | RNGO 101/0503/2015 info@zambianroadsafety.org | +260 961 475 610 | www.zambianroadsafety.org MOBILITY SOLUTIONS SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT ROAD SAFETY the same seriousness given to the movement of goods and vehicles, claims of progress will remain incomplete. That is why the right phrase is not merely weak infrastructure. The right phrase is infrastructure injustice. And once we name it clearly, we are no longer dealing with an invisible problem. We are dealing with a policy choice that can, and must, be changed. What infrastructure justice would look like in practice 1. Standard 30 km/h school zones on roads used by children. 2. Safe crossings, footpaths, refuge islands, and traffic calming treated as core infrastructure, not add-ons. 3. Mandatory road safety audits before and after major investment, with public disclosure of child and pedestrian risk. 4. Speed enforcement focused on school routes, markets, clinics, bus stops, and other high exposure locations. 5. Joint action by transport, police, education, local government, health, and finance, backed by local data. Data note: Figures cited in this article draw on ZamStats provincial GDP data, WHO Africa road safety facts, the UNDP Zambia Road Safety Investment Case, RTSA annual crash statistics, and Zambia Police 2025 quarterly and annual crash summaries