Stakeholders’ Collaboration for Road Safety in Ethiopia Key Players’ Perspectives

Abstract

Effective collaboration among stakeholders of road safety is strongly recommended to ensure road safety system. This study aimed at identifying how road safety players collaborate to achieve the goal of reducing road traffic crashes (RTCs) and their impact in Ethiopia. The study employed qualitative research design, with FGDs and in-depth interviews as instruments of data collection. The data were collected from key road safety players working at the federal and regional levels, the academia, and the private sector, and thematically analyzed. Findings reveal that there is strong interest for road safety stakeholders to involve in and contribute their share to address the problem. Accordingly, Ethiopia has established a lead agency that exclusively coordinates the road safety works which is expected to collaboratively work with a number of multi-sector stakeholders. The country also launched National Road Safety Strategy which is designed based on the Safe Systems approach that call for collaboration among several stakeholders to prevent loss of lives, serious injuries and economic loss. In line with the Safe System approach, strong multi-disciplinary and multi-sector stakeholder engagement that stretches from the federal to regional and city administrations, and from government sectors to development partners, civic organizations, and private sectors can meaningfully reduce road traffic crashes and their devastating consequences. However, collaboration among the key stakeholders is by far less than the desired level and expected standards that implies the need of more efforts and commitment of all parties to improve it.