The Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS) Africa Regional Partner Meeting has opened in Accra.

Participants at the three-day event, which began on January 18th and ends on 20th January 2023, at the Kempinski Hotel in Accra, Ghana, are expected to review progress to date and strategize on moving road safety implementation and policy efforts forward, plans for road safety program evaluation at the city and country level as well as highlight outcomes, strategize on communicating wins and address challenges. 

The delegates from Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda are also expected to share lessons and learned implementation strategies between city and country teams, and emphasize the essential policy frameworks and opportunities to strengthen national legislation.

Minister for Transport, Kwaku Ofori Asiamah, in a keynote address stressed the need for shared and collective responsibilities of stakeholders equipped with the needed resources to implement best practices that reduces traffic crashes and save lives to change the worrying statistic.

He noted that the government had introduced a number of interventions aimed at promoting the efficient movement of goods and people whilst ensuring that road traffic crashes and related injuries and fatalities are reduced to the barest minimum adding that governments and stakeholders needed to strategize and form alliances to address the canker on the continent.

"We have strengthened the capacity of our lead road safety agency with an enhanced mandate to enable it to ensure institutional compliance. This means that while the lead agency works to promote road safety by raising public awareness, the agency will also work to ensure that institutions tasked to carry out specific activities that impact road safety are held accountable," he said.

He pointed out that Ghana was developing a Road Accidents Data Management System (RADMS) to adequately capture, store and use data to inform policy calling for stronger ties with strategic partners in the area of technology, data management, traffic, law enforcement practices and post-crash care.

The Mayor of Accra, Elizabeth Kwatsoe Sackey, said the AMA-BIGRS initiative since its inception had chalked several successes in the areas of safer streets & mobility, communications, surveillance and enforcement.

Some of these, she said, include road safety enhancement works undertaken on the London Market Street and the Lapaz intersection, development of the AMA Road Safety Strategy, implementation of the Pedestrian Safety Action Plan, launch and execution of mass media campaigns on speeding in 2019 and 2022 and capacity building of key journalists and communication experts in road safety stakeholder organizations within the city.

Others, she said, were the formation and capacity building of the Police MTTD task force team to intensify enforcement of the risk factors and donation of policing items to the police MTTD as well as the launch of 3 Road Safety Reports for AMA spanning 2011 to 2020.

The event was also used to outdoor the General Audience Report for Accra.

The Bloomberg Philanthropies has supported road safety since 2007, committing $500M to reduce road traffic fatalities and injuries in low- and middle-income cities/countries.