Lagos State Commissioner for Transportation, Dr Frederic Oladeinde has advocated a comprehensive, more sophisticated and more integrated approach to transport planning in Africa to achieve efficient, equitable and environmentally sensitive transport.
At the 6th Africa Sustainable Mobility Course in Lagos, Oladeinde said that an environmentally sensitive transport cannot be achieved simply by improving the efficiency of vehicle designs or traffic management, but one that required changes in the way the society thinks about transportation, and how it identifies and evaluate solutions to
transport problems.
Organised by Ochenuel Mobility Nigeria and supported by Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA), the course has participants from Uganda, Liberia, Germany, South Africa, India, Malawi, Tanzania and
Nigeria.
In a keynote address, on the theme of the course, “Pathway to the Future Mobility of Africa,” Oladeinde said for African transportation landscape to become sustainable, planning must focus on access, which can be improved with strategies that reduce the need to travel altogether, such as land management and improved communications.
He noted that Africa’s rapid urbanisation in the past decades had resulted in complex social, economic and environmental challenges with the auto-centric pattern of development resulting in traffic congestion, urban sprawl and pollution.
Oladeinde said that current approach to problem solving in the transport sector tended to fail when confronted with so many challenges and described conventional decision-making as reductionist.
Apart from lack of investments in infrastructure to meet the needs of the rapidly growing population, he said that there is the urgent need to mainstream the prioritisation of public transport and non-motorised transport.
Besides, Oladeinde stated the need for transition to cleaner or renewable energy sources to power Africa’s mobility space, which he described as a critical component of the plan to reduce the negative environmental impacts of transportation and mobility.
“Compressed natural gas, hydroelectricity, biomass, geothermal energy, wind power, and solar energy are all eligible energy sources. Hybrid and electric vehicles would assist to reduce pollution while also easing the burden of rising gasoline prices. Energy security is however a primary hurdle to electric car acceptability in Africa”, he said.
In her welcome address, LAMATA Managing Director, Engr. Abimbola Akinajo said that the course was brought to
Lagos with a view to accommodate more people in building institutional and organisational capacity of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies, local government and local council development areas, and coordinate their activities towards achieving a common and consistent policy basis for sustainable transport development in Lagos.
“There is a clear evidence that knowledge of sustainable urban mobility is limited in Africa, given the nature of contemporary urban transport developments”, Mrs Akinajo noted, pointing out that transport development in Africa essentially focusses on building wider roads that promotes motorisation, which ultimately increases traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions.
