CAMA- Collaboration for Active Mobility in Africa

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“Let's build a red carpet for pedestrians and cyclists”

As part of the CAMA - Collaboration for Active Mobility in Africa – project a research team from Germany (University of Kassel, led by Prof. Angela Francke; Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, led by Prof. Jochen Eckart), will investigate how walking and cycling in East African partner countries (Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia) as well as in Germany could be promoted and what challenges there are to overcome.

Project information

Network coordinator

University of Kassel, Department of Cycling and Local Mobility and Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences

Project duration

06/2021 - 05/2025

Funding programFederal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
Project participants
  • University of Nairobi (Nairobi, Kenya)
  • Makerere University (Kampala, Uganda)
  • Mekelle University (Mekelle, Ethiopia)
  • University of Applied Sciences Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe, Germany)
Contact person

M.Sc. Azeb Tesfaye

ContactFaculty 14
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Mönchebergstr. 7
Engineering III, Room 3711
34125 Kassel

For the launch of the project our researchers from the University of Kassel (Prof. Dr. Angela Francke, Yana Tumakova) visited the city of Nairobi in Kenya. They are collaborating with a team of the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (Prof. Jochen Eckart, Catharina Lutz, Annika Röder, Jonas Hansert).
Together they participated in consultations with the Institute of Developing Studies (Prof. Winnie Mitullah, Dr. Anne Kamau) at the University of Nairobi. In a scope of CAMA, a survey of mobility preferences, including walking and cycling is rolled out, the audit of non-motorized transport infrastructure is conducted, and a digital crowd mapping tool will be implemented.

CAMA is funded by DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany). The research project CAMA is running till 2025.

 

CAMA online survey 2023

The online survey is the first work package(WP1) that explores the mobility behavior of active mobility users in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in depth. The main objective of the survey is to better understand perceptions, preferences, everyday experiences and individual barriers to active mobility by providing a deeper insight into cyclists' and pedestrians' perceptions and distances traveled while cycling and walking.

The surveys comprised a total of 37 questions divided into four parts: socio-demographic data, user experiences, preferences, perceptions of active mobility, existing infrastructure and recommendations for infrastructure improvement. In addition, motivations and barriers to walking and cycling in everyday life were discussed. The surveys were conducted with all project partners and adapted to local conditions in order to better understand the mobility conditions and needs in these areas. Some open-ended questions were also asked to allow respondents flexibility in their answers. The selected target groups included motorists, cyclists, pedestrians and shopkeepers. When collecting data, we tried to include heterogeneous groups of society (women, elderly people, children and people with disabilities).

The online survey was conducted from December 2022 to March 2023 in Nairobi, Mekelle and Kampala. The original plan was to collect 1,200 data sets, 400 from each country. In the end, 1,367 data sets were collected, achieving more than 110% of the planned target.

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