What You Can Learn about Africa from Observing Traffic
April 3, 2023 - The way people drive tells me a lot about the country.
Is traffic orderly? Do people predominately obey the laws, the speed limits, stop at red lights, etc?
Or is it an “anything goes” or “the boldest one wins” type of environment?
In the absence of or due to limited accessibility to public transport in most major cities across Africa (helped along by the often non-interventionist policies of local authorities), many informal transportation options spring up and today form the backbone of countries’ urban transport.
Local Transport Solutions
In Nairobi it’s the matatus that rule the roads! These minivans and minibuses are found across many African countries helping professionals get to their offices, children to school and shopkeepers to market. They have colorful names in each country such as: bush taxi (Benin and Chad), chapa (Mozambique), car rapide (Senegal), minibus taxis (South Africa), and dala dala (Tanzania).
Living in Uganda, one quickly learns that the bodabodas rule the roads. An accident? It’s never the fault of the bodaboda; it’s the car or bus or pedestrian that must be at fault. These motor-bikes that are built to carry 2 people, regularly carry a family of 5 or even a sofa couch!
These same motor-bikes are found across West and Cetnral Africa under some fabulous local names: zemidjan or zem in Benin and Togo, bendskin in Cameroon, kabu-kabu in Niger, okada or alalok in Nigeria, and oleyia in Togo.
Giving Directions
I have also noticed that every country I have visited or lived in has its own unique way of giving directions.
The first time I was given directions in South Africa, I was told to go to a certain street and make a right at the robot. I am thinking, The robot? A robot like you see in movies? I soon discovered that a robot is the local term for “stoplight” in US English or “traffic lights” in British English.
When I was given directions in Uganda, I was told to go to a certain industrial area and, at the fork in the road, turn right and look for the woman sitting underneath the blue umbrella selling airtime for mobile phones. I was told to park the car there and give my contact a call, and he would come pick me up. What did I learn? First of all, GPS is not needed because there are no streets signs in Uganda. I also learned how important relationships are and how this woman knew everybody and everything that was going on in the industrial area, all because she was selling airtime under a blue umbrella. Is a woman under an umbrella “primitive technology”? No: it’s the most effective for that region and perfectly fit for purpose.
Entrepreneurial Spirit
Togo has an estimated 250,000 motorbikes for its 13 million people. The harmful fumes they emit have prompted enterprising entrepreneurs – like the startup M Auto. They have introduced 2000 e-bikes into Cotonu, Togo’s capital city, in just the past 9 months with more on their way. Currently imported from Chiina, M Auto’s assembly plant in Cotonu’s Special Economic Zone will be operational by September.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), an all-female engineering team, led by engineer Therese Izay who lost her brother in a traffic accident, came up with a novel solution to improve the safe flow of traffic: robots. Her company Women’s Tech designed solar-powered robots which are approximately 8 feet (2.5 meters) tall, have cameras and make announcements, feeding information to the police so that they can see where the roads are busy. I know of no other country that has pulled off this feat, and you could say that this makes the DRC more advanced than some Western countries when it comes to directing traffic!
So the next time you are driving down the road, sitting in a taxi or stuck in a traffic jam, look around.
What can you learn about the country, the government, its people and their creativity by watching traffic?
Photo source: Brian Sokol