What is the current situation and what are the possible implementation difficulties in Central Africa of the African Road Safety Plan? It is to answer these questions that the Central African Office of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa is organising a meeting of experts from 30 November to 1 December 2015 in Douala-Cameroon.

During the two-day meeting, road safety experts from land transport ministries of ECCAS member States as well as representatives of ECCAS, CEMAC, WHO, World Bank and civil society organisations working in the area of civil safety, will propose concrete measures to speed up implementation of the said plan.

Drafted during an experts meeting organised in November 2011 in Addis Ababa-Ethiopia, by the ECA and the African Union, the African Plan is supported by five pillars: management of road safety, mobility, vehicles, road users and post-accident intervention. It derives from a global plan on the issue designed following the proclamation in March 2010 by the United Nations Assembly of the 2011-2020 period as the Decade of Action for Road Safety. The objective of the Decade is to stabilise and reduce the number of deaths attributable to accidents and thus save five million lives worldwide during the said Decade. According to the 2013 report of the World Health Organisation (WHO) on global road safety, the annual number of deaths attributable to road accidents is nearly 1,240,000. Of these deaths, 24.1 per cent occur in Africa, representing the highest global rate for all the continents.

It is against this backdrop that the experts convened in Douala will review a study conducted by the Sub-Regional Office for Central Africa of the ECA on the situation of road safety in Central Africa in order to validate it and thus permit its ownership by the various countries. They shall also formulate recommendations to speed up implementation in Central Africa of the African Decade of Action Plan for Road safety.