How to make the transition to green transport in Southern Africa a reality was the focus of the annual Smarter Mobility Africa Summit held this year in Pretoria, South Africa from the 5-7 October.

Mobility For Africa’s research and policy person, Lisa Marie, joined Remeredzai Joseph Kuhudzai a sharing their experiences working on Zimbabwe’s E- Mobility policy and roadmap. It was a dynamic discussion on how adopting a forward looking long term policy was critical to attracting investment especially by larger OEMs. They also shared experiences from the year long consultative process and the challenges of bringing many different ministries together to develop and ultimately adopt and implement the policy.

While many countries are now moving forward in developing their own policies, it is urgent that there is a pan African regulatory framework that encourages the larger long term investment needed to fund the infrastructure and ecosystem needed to be built to support and sustain the transition, and leverages the potential of Africa’s more than one billion people and its growing population.

While high-end electric vehicles are now becoming available in the South African market, the Summit highlighted that the real potential of E-mobility is catering to huge need for safe reliable and affordable public transport in both rural and urban areas and the potential for green mass transport, shared transport and micro-mobility.

The SMA Summit presented a great opportunity for Govt., EV operators, OEMs and financiers to come together and discuss ways to take the green mobility agenda forward.

A big congratulations to Ben Pullen and team from SMA summit for a successful event.