The Urban Mobility Forum, opened by His Excellency Martin Adjei-Mensah Korsah, Minister of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development (MLGDRD), was an opportunity to bring together Ghana's urban mobility stakeholders to discuss the challenges facing the Ghanaian capital. With its 3.5 million inhabitants, the Greater Accra metropolitan area (which includes the port of Tema) is one of the driving forces behind the country's economic growth. However, as the urban area expands north of the N1 motorway, which crosses it from east to west, congestion is becoming increasingly problematic. Greater Accra's transport system still relies mainly on walking and trotros - paratransit operators - while individual motorised transport is growing steadily each year.
To date, despite a demand for mobility that is expected to double in the next 10 years, no mass transport system is under consideration. The Forum was therefore an opportunity to discuss the challenges facing Ghana's decision-makers if they are to put in place a multimodal strategy to avoid a decline in the attractiveness of the city and increased use of motorised two-wheelers. The event, which brought together nearly 150 professionals, ended with a discussion of the challenges of the transition to electric mobility, as the country recently adopted a roadmap for the electrification of the transport sector.
Since 2017, the MLGDRD has received support from the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) as part of the Ghana Urban Mobility and Accessibility Project (GUMAP). Transitec has been heavily involved in providing technical assistance to the Ministry, the municipalities of Greater Accra, the national technical agencies and their partners in order to better analyse mobility conditions in the Ghanaian capital and identify actions that can be taken in terms of traffic management on the one hand and improving public transport on the other. The results of the most recent studies were presented at the event and at workshops the following day.
The GUMAP project has given rise to a number of specific studies on traffic management at both metropolitan and more local levels, the professionalisation of paratransit, the governance of mobility, and so on. In addition, a great deal of attention has been paid to training issues, in particular through the development of a master's degree at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in partnership with the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).