SaferAfrica wins Prince Michael Award

10 December 2019

The consortium of the SaferAfrica project has received the prestigious Prince Michael International Road Safety Award 2019 for its work in Africa. The prize was handed over to the project coordinator, Prof Luca Persia, Director of the Research Centre for Transport and Logistics (CTL), La Sapienza University of Rome, Susanna Zammataro, Director General of the International Road Federation (IRF) and other members of the consortium in a special ceremony held at The Savoy in London in the presence of His Royal Highness, Prince Michael of Kent.

In Africa, the average road fatality rate is 26.6 per 100.000 population compared to 9.3 of European countries. A dialogue between Europe and Africa can only be beneficial to improving safety in many African countries. The Consortium composed of 17 European and African partners, coordinated by the Research Centre for Transport and Logistics, Sapienza University of Rome, set up a Dialogue Platform, led by a Management Board made up of with 11 prominent international institutions – including the African Union (AU), the European Commission (EC), the World Bank (WB), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). Through the Dialogue platform, a lively community of 192 stakeholders from 42 African countries has been created to foster a regular and structured dialogue and exchange of expertise.

"I am truly honored to receive this prestigious award, in recognition of the great work made together with the Consortium to improve road safety in Africa" – said Prof. Persia commenting in the margins of the ceremony. "The Dialogue Platform is certainly one of the most important results achieved with a host of resources and functionalities designed to link and assist policy makers, donors and professionals in planning and designing effective road safety interventions.

In its three-year existence, SaferAfrica - a EU funded project under Horizon 2020 programme – has set up also an African Road Safety Observatory. The platform hosts a comprehensive repository of knowledge including country capacity reviews, webinars and e-learning courses on the five pillars of the Decade of Action and has crowdsourcing functionalities that allow local communities and stakeholders to flag out problems and to identify solutions together.

"We have been delighted to work over the past 3 years with this dedicated group of people. SaferAfrica is really in line with that spirit of partnership and collaboration that is the distinctive mark of IRF since more than 70 years" said Susanna Zammataro, IRF DG. "Beside allowing better understanding of the issues at stake in Africa, the project has also spurred more action and we see now follow-up projects and initiatives gradually taking shape in several countries" she continued.