Capacity building workshop in Uganda

The workshop was held in two parallel sessions, one on “Driver Training and Testing Component” and the other on “Road Safety Audits and Infrastructure Assessment”. In the joint session, the UNECE expert presented an overview of United Nations Road Safety Conventions on Road Traffic and Road Signs and Signals as well as benefits of becoming a contracting party and steps of accession process. 

The workshop was attended by over 100 road safety officials from across the country, many of which have shown interest in acceding to and implementing the United Nations road safety conventions, to which extent another capacity building assistance request is expected to be received from the Government of Uganda. 

Prior to the workshop, the Special Envoy was joined by Dr. Vera Songwe, Executive Secretary of United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) at a meeting with the high-level government officials of Uganda to speak about road safety situation in the country and to encourage careful implementation of the road safety performance review (RSPR) recommendations. One of the concerns voiced by government officials was lack of adequate funding to improve infrastructure, post-crash care and law enforcement. Although lack of financial resources is likely to be addressed with the establishment of the UN Road Safety Trust Fund, the Special Envoy and the Executive Secretary of ECA strongly encouraged government officials to start implementing low- or no-cost solutions, such as acceding to UN road safety conventions and implementing some of the RSPR recommendations in the meanwhile.