In 2017, Lusaka joined the Partnership for Healthy Cities, a global network of cities supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies in partnership with WHO and Vital Strategies, to focus specifically on road safety. ZRST was the implementing partner on the ground, working with Lusaka City Council to translate the global evidence base for 30 km/h speed limits into a locally applicable regulatory change.

The advocacy approach was practical and evidence-led. First, ZRST established the evidence case, drawing on WHO’s Speed Management Manual and the emerging global consensus around the Streets for Life #Love30 campaign led by WHO, the FIA Foundation and the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety. Second, ZRST translated that evidence into Zambia’s specific pedestrian fatality context, using Zambia Police Service data to demonstrate that pedestrians accounted for nearly half of all road deaths in Zambia in 2020, the highest burden of any road user group. Third, ZRST implemented infrastructure pilots around seven schools in Lusaka’s school corridors, demonstrating measurable speed reduction before making the regulatory case.

In 2022, Lusaka City Council issued a decree reducing speeds in school zones to 30 km/h. This was the first formally gazetted low-speed zone regulation of this type in Zambia. The evidence behind this change is clear: WHO evidence shows that at 30 km/h, fewer than 10% of pedestrians struck by vehicles die, compared with more than 80% at 50 km/h. The mortality risk is not linear: the reduction from 50 km/h to 30 km/h saves the majority of lives that would otherwise be lost at impact.

Speed compliance monitoring on Kafue Road, one of ZRST’s assessed school zone corridors, recorded 94.7% compliance with the reduced speed limit following physical traffic calming measures. Average speeds on monitored school zone corridors fell by 25% compared with pre-intervention baselines. These figures are recorded in ZRST’s programme monitoring data and have been communicated to the FIA Foundation as the funding partner for the Safe School Corridors programme.

The global framework behind this work

The Streets for Life #Love30 campaign, organised by WHO, the FIA Foundation, YOURS – Youth for Road Safety and the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety for the 6th UN Global Road Safety Week (2021), mobilised advocates in 53 countries to support 30 km/h commitments. The campaign was endorsed by the WHO Director-General, UNICEF, UNDP, the FIA President and ministers and mayors from across the globe. It was awarded the 2021 Prince Michael International Road Safety Award. ZRST’s school zone advocacy in Zambia was a direct and documented contribution to this global movement at the national level.

The Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety’s 30 km/h Talking Points (2023) confirm that introducing 30 km/h speed limits where pedestrians and vehicles mix can reduce pedestrian fatal and serious injuries by up to 40%, can save over 40% of lives in cities more broadly, and produces co-benefits for air quality, noise, physical activity and economic productivity. These are not theoretical projections, they are documented outcomes from implementations in cities across Europe, Asia and the Americas.

In 2024, Lusaka City Council adopted the Cycling and Pedestrian Safety Policy, mandating that all new roads built in the Zambian capital include safe bicycle lanes and pedestrian routes. This was an important planning and infrastructure policy, the first of its type in Zambia, that ZRST supported alongside Vital Strategies’ Partnership for Healthy Cities and the Mayor of Lusaka, Councillor Chilando Chitangala.

The policy emerged from sustained advocacy that ZRST contributed to across several years. Following the success of the 2022 school zone speed decree, ZRST and its partners in the Partnership for Healthy Cities network continued to build the case for embedding walking and cycling infrastructure requirements directly into Lusaka’s road development regulations. Rather than relying on project-by-project decisions, the policy creates a permanent planning obligation: every new road in Lusaka must include provision for pedestrians and cyclists.

The policy was developed with direct technical support from Vital Strategies’ Policy Accelerator programme, which works within the Partnership for Healthy Cities, a global network of 74 cities supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies in partnership with WHO. Lusaka Mayor Chilando Chitangala joined a cycling promotion event as plans for the policy were developed, signalling high-level political commitment to the outcome. The Mayor subsequently participated in the 2025 Partnership for Healthy Cities Summit as one of twelve mayors from around the globe, representing Lusaka’s role as a city leading on road safety and non-motorised transport.

Zambia’s own crash data makes the case for this policy. In 2025, 227 cyclists and bicycle passengers were killed on Zambia’s roads, and 934 pedestrians were killed, together accounting for over 44% of all road deaths. The majority of these deaths occurred on roads that provided no dedicated infrastructure for walking or cycling. A planning policy that requires all new roads to include safe lanes and routes directly addresses the infrastructural cause of these deaths. It does not rely only on asking people to behave differently. It changes the road environment around them.

The Cycling and Pedestrian Safety Policy aligns with Zambia’s Non-Motorised Transport Strategy and with the international evidence for Safe System infrastructure design. More than 70% of school-age children in Zambia go to school on foot every day. The roads they walk on determine whether they arrive safely. This policy changes those roads.

In 2026, ZRST submitted a draft Statutory Instrument, the Road Traffic (Fleet Safety Management) Regulations 2026, to the Minister of Transport and Logistics of Zambia. The submission followed ZRST’s development and piloting of the ZRST Fleet Safety Standard, a Bronze, Silver and Gold certification framework for organisations operating vehicle fleets in Zambia, modelled on the UK’s Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS).

The case for regulation is straightforward. Work-related road crashes are a distinct and preventable category of road deaths. Organisations that operate commercial vehicle fleets, including mining companies, logistics operators, public service vehicle operators and NGOs, have management systems for financial, environmental and employment risk. Road safety risk management is absent from most of these systems in Zambia. Vehicles are deployed without structured driver assessments, without route risk analysis, without fatigue management policies, and without formal incident reporting.

The ZRST Fleet Safety Standard provides a structured, auditable and scalable framework to close this gap. ZRST secured verbal alignment with RTSA Chief Executive Officer Amon Mweemba and sent a formal partnership letter (Reference: ZRST/CEO/RTSA/001/2026). A commercial pilot cohort of seven organisations is underway across mining, logistics, public transport, NGO and corporate sectors. The RTSA has confirmed that the fleet safety framework is currently positioned as guidelines rather than gazetted law, making the submission of the draft Statutory Instrument the critical next step in converting voluntary best practice into a binding regulatory baseline.

Motor vehicle passengers accounted for 643 deaths in 2025, 25% of all road fatalities, and motor vehicle drivers for a further 279 deaths. Together, occupants of managed commercial and public transport vehicles represent 35.9% of all road deaths in Zambia. A regulatory framework that requires fleet operators to maintain safety management systems, conduct driver competency assessments and report incidents would directly reduce this death toll.

In May 2026, following two fatal crashes that killed five university students in Lusaka, ZRST published a campaign launch press release demanding systemic reform of road crash data collection by the Zambia Police Service and the Road Transport and Safety Agency. The central demand is the routine publication of age-disaggregated crash data, enabling Zambia to identify, monitor and respond to road death trends among specific demographic groups, including children, young adults and the elderly.

The current official reporting framework confirms total deaths, total injuries and road user type, but does not systematically publish crash outcomes by age group in a format accessible for public policy analysis. This means that deaths among children are reported in aggregate but cannot be tracked as a trend in publicly available data. It means that the emerging pattern of university student deaths, young adults travelling on motorcycles, in minibuses and on foot, cannot be formally characterised, prioritised or funded as a specific target.

ZRST’s advocacy combines three tracks. The first is a series of invite-only policy roundtables bringing together government officials, RTSA, Zambia Police, university representatives and development partners to agree a minimum data standard for age-disaggregated crash reporting. The second is a public awareness forum series, the first, titled “Why Are University Students Dying on Our Roads?”, is scheduled for 20 June 2026 in Lusaka, to generate public and media pressure for institutional reform. The third is the 3rd AfroSAFE Academy International Conference (8–11 June 2026, UNZA School of Engineering), which will produce peer-reviewed research on road safety data quality in sub-Saharan Africa as an academic underpinning for the advocacy case.

The global evidence for data reform as a road safety intervention is well-established. WHO’s Global Status Report on Road Safety 2023 identifies data quality improvement as one of the foundational requirements for effective road safety policy in low- and middle-income countries. Approximately 50% of road traffic fatalities in Zambia are estimated to go unreported in official statistics, confirmed by peer-reviewed capture-recapture analysis in Lusaka Province. You cannot reduce what you cannot count.