Lagos State Government has advocated a comprehensive, sophisticated, and more integrated approach to transport planning in Africa, to achieve an efficient, equitable, and environmentally sensitive system.
The state’s Commissioner for Transportation, Dr. Frederic Oladeinde, made this known at the 6th Africa Sustainable Mobility Course in Lagos on Wednesday.
Oladeinde stated that environmentally sensitive transport cannot be achieved simply by improving the efficiency of vehicle designs or traffic management.
According to him, it also requires changes in the way people think about transportation and how they identify and evaluate solutions to transport problems.
The course, organized by Ochenuel Mobility Nigeria and supported by LAMATA, had participants from Uganda, Liberia, Germany, South Africa, India, Malawi, Tanzania and
Nigeria.
Delivering his keynote address, on the theme of the course, “Pathway to the Future Mobility of Africa”, Oladeinde said for the African transportation landscape to become sustainable, planning must focus on access.
“This can be improved with strategies that reduce the need to travel altogether, such as land management and improved communications.”
He noted that the rapid urbanization of Africa in the past decades had resulted in complex social, economic, and environmental challenges.
Oladeinde said this was with the auto-centric pattern of development resulting in traffic congestion, urban sprawl, and pollution.
He said the 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.
He said apart from the lack of investments in infrastructure to meet the needs of the rapidly growing population, there is an urgent need to mainstream the prioritization of public transport and non-motorized transport (NMT).
Besides, Oladeinde stated the need for a transition to cleaner or renewable energy sources to power Africa’s mobility space.
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He described this as a critical component of the plan to reduce the negative environmental impacts of transportation and mobility.
“Compressed natural gas (CNG), hydroelectricity, biomass, geothermal energy, wind manpower, and solar energy are all eligible energy sources.
“Hybrid and electric vehicles (EVs) 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, the Managing Director of Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA), Mrs. Abimbola Akinajo, shed light on the import of the course.
Akinajo said the course was to accommodate the organizational capacity of the different executing MDAs, local government, and local council development areas.
“It is also to coordinate their activities towards achieving a common and consistent policy basis for sustainable transport development in Lagos.
“There is clear evidence that knowledge of sustainable urban mobility is limited in Africa, given the nature of contemporary urban transport developments,” she noted.
Akinajo pointed out that transport development in Africa essentially focuses on building wider roads that promote motorization.
This, she said, ultimately increases traffic congestion and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
