The meeting was attended by donors from the G8 leading industrialised nations, multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, African regional economic associations, financiers and transport experts.

The Tunis meeting heard that only 14% of sub-Saharan Africa’s roads are paved and that in many countries the network is in poor condition. However, plans are being developed to increase the paved road network by 2.4% until 2030 and G8 donors and multilateral agencies have pledged to support new investment in Africa’s transport networks, especially in regional road corridors.

New roads, whilst helping sustain Africa’s current 5.3% yearly growth rates, will also increase risk from road traffic injury especially among vulnerable road users. Highlighting this concern Njoroge, the Chief Executive of the AA of Kenya called for a new strategic framework for road safety in Africa. He urged the ICA and the World Bank’s Sub Saharan African Transport Programme to ensure that road building and repair programmes include a strong road safety component to help meet the target agreed by African health and transport ministers to cut by 50% road fatalities by 2015. Ward described the key recommendations of the Commission for Global Road Safety, in particular the potential of road infrastructure design and assessment to contribute to achieving casualty reduction targets.

The Make Roads Safe campaign’s call for 10% of all road infrastructure budgets funded by international donors to be earmarked for road safety received further strong support in a letter to the ICA from the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, Achim Steiner. In his letter dated 3rd December, Mr Steiner calls on the ICA and G8 donors to ensure that they “use…funds to help institutionalise, through funding polices and project design criteria, the recommendations of the Commission for Global Road Safety, in particular the 10% rule”.