Policy Briefing
The Data Gap
Zambia’s national road crash data system, maintained by the Zambia Police Service, age-disaggregates casualties in only one category: children aged 0 to 16. Every road death, serious injury, or crash victim aged 17 or older is recorded without age.
This means that any person aged 17 to 25, including university students, college-going youth, apprentices, and young workers, who is killed or seriously injured on a Zambian road is statistically invisible. Their age is not captured. Their presence in crash data is not recoverable. National road mortality figures cannot be broken down to show how many young people die on Zambian roads each year.
This is not a data quality problem. It is a data architecture problem. The system was not designed to see young adults.
Why It Matters
Road traffic injury is the leading cause of death among young people aged 15 to 29 globally, according to the World Health Organization. Zambia has no domestic data to confirm or contradict that finding for its own population.
Without age-disaggregated data for the 17 to 25 cohort, Zambia cannot:
- Identify whether university corridors, peri-urban routes, or specific road types carry disproportionate youth mortality risk
- Design targeted road safety interventions for young road users with any epidemiological grounding
- Report to international frameworks, including the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021 to 2030, on youth-specific progress
- Access youth-focused road safety funding from bilateral and multilateral partners who require demographic evidence
What the Available Data Shows
The Zambia Police Service 2025 Annual Road Crash Report documents the following national figures:
| Indicator | 2025 Figure |
| Total recorded road crashes | 38,712 |
| Road deaths | 2,567 |
| Serious injuries | 7,045 |
| Deaths per 100,000 population (est.) | 14.0 |
| Deaths among children aged 0–16 (disaggregated) | Available |
| Deaths among persons aged 17–25 (disaggregated) | NOT RECORDED |
Source: Zambia Police Service Annual Road Crash Report 2025
Two recent fatal crashes involving university students, at Mulungushi University on 3 May 2026 and at the University of Lusaka on 9 May 2026, illustrate the consequence of this gap. Both incidents were reported in the national press. Neither victim’s age cohort will appear as a distinct category in the 2026 annual crash statistics.
ZRST Position
The Zambia Road Safety Trust calls on the Zambia Police Service, in coordination with the Road Transport and Safety Agency and the Central Statistical Office, to amend the national road crash reporting framework to age-disaggregate all recorded casualties across the full age spectrum, with specific bands for 0 to 16, 17 to 25, 26 to 35, 36 to 59, and 60 and above.
This change requires no new data collection infrastructure. It requires a revision to the crash report form currently completed by traffic police at the scene of every recorded incident. ZRST is prepared to work with RTSA and ZPS to develop a revised instrument and to support a pilot data collection exercise on a defined corridor.
Recommended Immediate Action
- RTSA and ZPS to convene a technical working group on crash data disaggregation by Q3 2026
- Ministry of Transport to include age-specific crash data reporting in the revised Road Traffic Act implementation framework
- Development partners to condition road safety sector support on the adoption of full age-disaggregated crash reporting
- ZRST to publish an annual Youth Road Mortality Gap Report as a public accountability mechanism from 2027
Daniel Mwamba
CEO/Executive Director
Zambia Road Safety Trust (ZRST)
daniel.mwamba@zambianroadsafety.org