Expanding Walkability in Two African Cities: What's at Stake?

John Howe, a widely published academic in the field of African infrastructure and transportation, posed a series of questions back in 2001. Each sprung from a larger, underlying curiosity: Why haven't African cities been investing in pedestrian infrastructure?

The reasons undergirding urban Africa's relative dearth of pedestrian infrastructure are the subject of incomplete debates on the influence of history and colonialism, among many other factors. But what is undeniable is that people in Africa's cities commute heavily on foot. In Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and home to 10 million residents, an estimated 60 to 80 percent of travelers walk, according to a 2012 report. In Dar es Salaam, the largest city in Tanzania, about 70 percent of all travel is done either on foot or bicycle. "The share of walking trips in sub-Saharan Africa is higher than in any other region of the world," a 2013 U.N. report states.