The future of mobility in Africa

Abstract

The future of African mobility exists against a bleak backdrop of challenges. The purpose of this essay is to make a case for why a speculative approach to the question of mobility within an African urban setting is required. It builds on over one hundred years of the sometimes intimate, sometimes uneasy relationship between transportation and the uniqueness of the everyday practices of ordinary Africans in an urban and or rural context. The specificities of which hold the livelihoods, aspirations, socialites, aesthetics, and space of its inhabitants amidst conditions of widespread poverty and deprivation. The speculative approach is aimed at breaking with tendencies that reduce observations and explanations around the question of mobility to a materialist reading of these challenging conditions. Focussing instead the question of mobility in a creative process that foregrounds innovation and invention as response to transport justice; equality of access; multiplicity and diversity; intermodal and trans-modal mechanisms; commuter-centric design; waiting times; socio-political factors; future trends; first and last-mile services; adaptability within public transport; variable terrain; vehicular hierarchies; safety; innovation; social enterprise; and, the pragmatics of a post-pandemic era. To propose a glimpse of what personal transportation in the cities of the future might look like through an exploration of the transformative potential of transport.

A team of UCT architects, planners, and designers, various experts and government officials undertook a creative process to speculative on a mode of transport that breaks with the debilitating frameworks and systems of public transport. To consider and optimise a design proposal that could connect between different and differentiated modes of transport. Through this exploration, the idea of a U+ that transforms into an US+ was put forward as a mono-vehicle that conceptualises an alternative future for mobility in an African setting. Aimed at enhancing individual mobility and safety, with an emphasis on the first and last mile.