September 16, 2023
Yet, improvements to city services, infrastructure, and transit are not keeping pace with this growth. The majority of transportation-related investments are road construction, even though the vast majority of Africans do not own cars. Instead, people must rely on inconsistent, informal, and often dangerous modes of public transport.
ITDP first began working in Africa in the late 1980s, bringing bicycles to midwives and women farmers in Mozambique to improve their mobility and productivity. In 1998, ITDP launched Afribike, a program in South Africa to distribute bikes to poor communities and healthcare workers. This paved the way for the Access Africa program, which has assisted thousands of people with opportunities for work, education, and improved access to essential services such as health clinics.
Over the years, ITDP Africa has worked with cities in designing and implementing high-quality bus rapid transit (BRT) systems, bike networks, and pedestrian projects. These include: the Dar es Salaam BRT, or DART, which opened as the first world-class BRT in East Africa in 2016; Johannesburg’s silver-standard Rea Vaya BRT; and Cape Town’s bronze-standard MyCiTi BRT.
Today, ITDP works throughout Africa from our central regional office in Nairobi, Kenya and additional offices in Egypt, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania. Our larger ongoing projects include: planning, improving, and/or expanding the BRT systems in Cairo, Dar es Salaam, Kigali, Kampala, Addis Ababa, and Nairobi, as well as the Addis Ababa NMT.
