Smart transport systems in SADC countries

African cities face many challenges related to transport. These include poor infrastructure, congestion, and lack of connections between different modes and providers. These challenges make traffic slow, unreliable, and inefficient, impacting the ability to do business and the quality of life of residents. Smart transport systems are being applied in many cities to ease traffic problems. Recent research seeks to benchmark levels of smart transport in cities. These benchmarks assume smart systems that are solely technological and operate without human intervention. They also rely on good infrastructure. In contrast, other researchers are investigating the use of Mobile Crowd Sensing and Computing systems that make use of people as elements in smart systems.

This paper investigates the extent to which cities in SADC (Southern African Development Community) countries could make use of cellphone apps to provide such smart systems with low infrastructure needs. We examined transport-related apps that have been produced in SADC countries and the extent to which they exhibit the characteristics of smart systems. We propose a new framework for evaluating the smartness of such apps. The data suggest that there are such systems operating in SADC countries and that such smart transport systems could contribute to improving traffic in SADC countries.

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