The SSATP, World Bank, UN-Habitat, UNEP and the Government of Kenya are launching the Africa Sustainable Transport Forum (ASTF) to provide a platform for African stakeholders to learn, share, collectively commit and self-initiate an action framework to reduce congestion, climate emissions and improve road safety and health and accessibility for its citizens.
Accessibility and transport choice
Some of the highest incidences of HIV have been found along transport corridors, particularly at border crossings where there is a high turnover of truck drivers, migrant workers and commercial sex workers. These areas can become ‘hot spots’ for sexual networks, where individuals are likely to engage in risky behaviors that can result in HIV transmission. These places can become ‘hot spots’ because they are favorable places to rest, refuel, eat, stay overnight and provide sexual entertainment.
The Ethiopia Road Sector Development Project (RSDP), implemented by Ethiopian Roads Agency, was the first transport project to include HIV/AIDS mitigation clauses in its works contracts. The work started in 1998, and it took three years to mainstream HIV/AIDS prevention and control activities within ERA and in the RSDP construction projects. The project team encountered multiple obstacles in implementing HIV/AIDS programs because the issues surrounding sex and STIs were considered as taboo, and awareness within the ERA staff about HIV/AIDS was very low.
HIV/AIDS programs do exist which encompass policy, strategy and service delivery engaging road, rail, and other transport systems, principally directed at prevention. Such activities have been undertaken by the public and private sectors, including through public-private partnerships.
The Abidjan-Lagos transport corridor is the major east-west transport corridor in West Africa, connecting the capital cities of five countries (Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria). Travel along the corridor is recognized as critical to the socio-economic development of the region, but it also offers opportunities for the fast transmission of communicable diseases, including HIV/AIDS.
Access to transport enables women to receive timely obstetric care that is essential for their survival. Transport contributes towards reaching the fifth Millennium Development Goal, to reduce maternal mortality by 75 per cent by 2015.
This widely case study to investigate the magnitude of the transport burden incurred by women and men in order to obtain access to domestic facilities - collection of water and firewood in Sub-Saharan Africa has yet to be replicated. The study confirms that in SSA it is the women, assisted by their daughters, who are responsible for water and firewood collection and for travel to the grinding mill. By examining data from four household surveys in Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia, the study shows that these domestic transport activities are both time consuming and burdensome.
Uganda’s Second Road Sector Support Program was designed with the objective of empowering women by improving their opportunities to participate in and benefit from the roads sub-sector and thus contribute to an improvement in their quality of life and of their families. The program’s principle of equality of opportunity to both women and men resulted in the most visible and direct gender outcomes. There was improvement of women’s access to employment in the roads sub-sector, both as workers and contractors and in training opportunities in labor-based methods of road works.
