Skip to main content

Tanzania road safety takes Ten Steps forward

International Road Federation among key stakeholders in 30-month implementation
March 3, 2023 Read time: 2 mins
Dar-es-Salaam: safer roads (© Wirestock | Dreamstime.com)

More than 16,000 people die on Tanzania’s roads annually, according to World Health Organisation figures.

Road crashes are the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged five to 29 years old.

But the Tanzania Ten Step Plan Project, celebrated at a completion event in Dar-es-Salaam this week, aims to improve the situation.

"We have a moral obligation to act and to reverse this trend and the Ten Step Project has equipped us with the knowledge, skills and tools to do so," said Makame M. Mbarawa, the country's minister for works and transport.

Jointly funded by the United Nations Road Safety Fund (UNRSF) and the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (UKAid), through the Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF) of the World Bank, the 30-month pilot project has built sustainable institutional capacity for safer roads, and partnerships to save lives and reduce serious injuries resulting from road crashes. 

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) has helped a consortium led by the International Road Federation (IRF) to implement the project.

It includes the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP), the World Road Association (PIARC) and the Tanzania Roads Association (TARA). The project has brought together the Government of Tanzania through MoWT, TANROADS, TARURA, National Institute of Transport (NIT), and other leading institutions, NGOs and industry stakeholders in Tanzania. 

Since its launch in March 2021, the project has helped to embed improvements in how thousands of new and existing kilometres of Tanzania’s road network will be designed, upgraded, and managed for improved road safety now and in the future.

Over 500 local stakeholders have been trained and certified on road safety audits, iRAP assessments, and start rating of designs.

Infrastructure safety data has now been expanded to more than 10,000 km.  

The project has also delivered recommendations for a National Road Infrastructure Safety Strategy and Action Plan.

The establishment of TanRAP, a locally owned and led Road Assessment Programme for Tanzania, the revision of the road geometric design manual, and the development of a dedicated training and accreditation scheme are among the key project achievements.

Project results and ongoing TanRAP activity will support in Tanzania the implementation of the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030 which provides a road map for how countries can halve road deaths and serious injuries by 2030. 

Related Content

  • Truck platooning trials take to the highways
    July 24, 2017
    There is rising enthusiasm in America and beyond for the concept of truck platooning with trials being planned in several US states, as David Crawford reports. Growing numbers of US states are considering or implementing plans for trials of electronically-linked truck platooning on public road networks. This is in response to the interest being shown by the US$70bn a year road freight industry, where fuel represents 41% of the operating costs making the prospect of improving fuel economy by trucks travellin
  • Truck platooning trials take to the highways
    July 24, 2017
    There is rising enthusiasm in America and beyond for the concept of truck platooning with trials being planned in several US states, as David Crawford reports. Growing numbers of US states are considering or implementing plans for trials of electronically-linked truck platooning on public road networks. This is in response to the interest being shown by the US$70bn a year road freight industry, where fuel represents 41% of the operating costs making the prospect of improving fuel economy by trucks travellin
  • ITS America concerned over use of 5GHz spectrum band
    February 28, 2013
    ITS America has raised con­cerns with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the potential use of the 5GHz band spec­trum by unlicensed national information infrastructure devices. It wants to protect the 5.9GHz band for dedicated short-range communications (DSRC)-based systems. These crucially underpin the development of connected vehicle (CV) technologies which could help slash the US’ annual tally of six million road traffic accidents and over 30,000 deaths. Within the US Department of Trans
  • Progressing work zone safety systems
    February 1, 2012
    David Crawford investigates progress in a key safety area - work zones. Highway construction zone safety is taken seriously enough in the US to merit a special spring National Work Zone Awareness Week, which in 2010 ran from 19-23 April. Headed by the US Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), this aims to reduce an annual toll of work zone deaths - 720 in 2008 (an average of one every 10 hours) with more than 40,000 traffic injuries (an average of one every 13 minutes).