The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) have launched a major media initiative to strengthen road safety reporting across Africa as road crashes continue to claim nearly 250,000 lives annually in the continent.
The initiative was unveiled on Tuesday in Abuja at a three-day African media forum on road safety, bringing together editors, journalists, content creators and road safety experts from several African countries.
The forum is expected to pave the way for the development of Africa’s first road safety media guidelines, designed to promote evidence-based reporting and encourage stronger public demand for policies capable of preventing road deaths and serious injuries.
According to WHO, the African Region accounts for about one-fifth of global road traffic fatalities despite having only three per cent of the world’s registered vehicles.
Road deaths are also rising in the region, in contrast to the global trend.
Nigeria has the highest number of road traffic fatalities in the African Region, with more than 36,000 deaths recorded annually.
WHO Representative in Nigeria, Dr. Pavel Ursu, said the initiative was aimed at bridging the gap between scientific evidence and how road crashes are presented in the media.
“This is about closing the gap between science and story. It’s about correcting misperceptions on an urgent and preventable health crisis and driving accountability for action that saves lives,” Ursu said.
He said media leaders could influence public conversations and help drive the adoption of policies capable of reducing deaths and serious injuries on the roads.
WHO noted that media reports frequently focus on individual crashes while overlooking broader factors such as unsafe infrastructure, inadequate laws, inappropriate speeds and weak enforcement.
The proposed guidelines will be based on the Safe Systems approach, which recognises that road users can make mistakes and seeks to ensure that transport systems are designed to prevent such errors from resulting in death or serious injury.
Head of WHO’s Violence and Injury Prevention Unit, Dr. Nhan Tran said the approach was about “building safe streets for people, not fast-moving motor vehicles.”
He said road safety should be prioritised in the design of transport systems because human error could not be completely eliminated.
Chief Executive Officer of CJID, Dapo Olorunyomi, said editorial choices could influence whether road crashes were understood merely as individual tragedies or as wider public policy failures.
He said the partnership would help establish an evidence-based standard for road safety reporting across Africa, with the media playing a stronger role in holding authorities accountable.
Twenty participants from Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda are taking part in the forum.
They include representatives of the BBC, AFP, Deutsche Welle, Xinhua, AllAfrica, Premium Times, Nation Media and the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
The guidelines are expected to be completed by mid-2027.
The initiative, supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, builds on WHO’s global road safety journalism programme, which has trained more than 5,000 reporters in countries with high road fatality rates.
WHO said improved road safety would also support public health and climate goals through safer infrastructure, appropriate speeds and quality public transport.
Ayodeji Ake
Follow us on:
