A Look at the State of Africa’s Mass-Transit Post COVID-19
Based on lessons from China, Singapore, and South Korea, the World Health Organization recommends a set of measures to slow down the spread of the Corona Virus. However, unlike the West — with similarities in infrastructure and technology adoption to the above-mentioned countries — Africa is in an almost unique position with specific risk factors.
- The cash problem
In the wake of the pandemic, Uhuru Kenyata (Kenyan President) and many other state leaders pointed to cash as a potential virus spreader and issued directives towards financial institutions to set up a temporary environment that is cashless friendly.
Following the directives, telecom operators such as Safaricom and MTN Uganda have temporarily waivered all transaction fees on amounts below US $10. Yet, merely issuing a directive and financial institutions lowering transaction fees overnight can’t guarantee country-wide adoption.
Currently, by design, the masses in most African countries are deeply wired to pay or get paid in cash for both offline and even online transactions. According to Jumia, between 65 and 95 percent of all orders are paid using cash on delivery.
- Informal economy
Most households across the continent live hand-to-mouth. Implying that they can not last a couple of days without earning an income. And, for most, to earn, they have to be physically available at their place of work. This is because, according to the IMF, in Africa, the informal sector is the largest employer accounting for between 30% to 90% of total nonagricultural employment.
Therefore, based on the above challenges, despite the continent facing the same pandemic as the rest of the world, it does not have the luxury of copying and pasting the same approach. Leaving it in a dilemma and a need for unique solutions.
Hunger vs Heath: the African Dilemma
Coronavirus cases across the continent are continuing to grow and many fear it might be the next epicenter. This has prompted various African governments to implement a number of measures including a lockdown of either the whole country (Kenya, Uganda, South Africa) or only the parts that are deemed at higher risk.
Although these measures are well-meaning, they will be harder to enforce for long as the masses are likely not to adhere to them. Not that they are stubborn, but out of the need to survive by going out to earn an income.
Mobility in Africa is closely interlinked with value creation. Therefore, if people can’t move to go to work for a few days, there’s no value creation hence no revenue and definitely no bread on the table. The longer the lockdown, the more value that is going to waste and with it the much-needed income, especially at this delicate time.
Sooner or later, governments across the continent will thus have to let people move. Once this happens, it is guaranteed that they will get back to business as usual — packing themselves in mini-buses and relying on cash even more.
The conversation should now focus on how they can open up without risking causing a second, and potentially deadlier, wave. More importantly, how can they design mass-transit in a way that ensures antifragility to similar incidents in the future.
Moving people, differently
At Eywa, we’ve been designing better ways to move masses by eliminating crowds and jostling, years before this pandemic. We also saw the unique role mobility plays in value creation for any other sector in the African economies, especially in commerce. Today, we would like to highlight unique ways these countries could leverage digital technologies as a way out of the COVID-19 dilemma
a) Moving people in a new, organized fashion
Currently, taking mass-transit in Africa consists of joining a crowd at a bus station and waiting anxiously, ready to fight to secure a seat when the vehicle arrives. The bus is overloaded with random commuters and consequently has to stop at random points to drop (and pick up passengers) consequently losing time.
This practice is so prevalent that none took the time to question it for decades. Even those that tried to turn it around approached it in a lacking way. For example, most “payment led” approaches to digital transit simply focus on fare collection and ignore the hard to manage and very messy crowds.
At Eywa, we are re-organizing transit from bus waiting (in pools) to pick up. Instead of a single messy crowd, commuters are pooled in 3 to 4 waiting groups based on their destination zones along the given route. The demand size for each destination is communicated to the coming buses. The bus driver (at peak hours) simply picks up a pool and drives them ‘express’ to their destination zone. Then comes back faster, int time for another trip.
Therefore, instead of a one trip bus overloaded with commuters and stopping several times, we run multiple, shorter express trips at a higher frequency, filled with smartly selected pools of commuters. In the end, the same bus makes more trips per day (without wasting time making abrupt stops) and move more people especially at peak. Technology helps to gather the right commuters pool instead of random crowd pickup
- Waiting pools are SMALLER groups and the waiting is organized to avoid crowding
- Higher frequency (coupled with the ability to track coming buses) avoids anxiety and jostling
- Drivers run more trips per day and generate more revenues. No more need to overload.
- Eywa (alongside authorities) can add further hygiene measures such as distributing masks, placing sanitizers at stations, etc.
b) Automated, cashless boarding
Many players tried to bring cards and automated boarding in transit. Yet, typical cards such as NFC or RFID are too costly (at 2$/card) to be mass-distributed. This is especially pronounced in the informal transit sector which moves 2–20 million commuters daily in major cities.
We created a new transit card using simple QR codes (with Eywa specific controls) which are printed locally for a fraction of the NFC cost and mass-distributed, free of charge to commuters.
Cards can be reloaded from various channels (Mobile Money, Banks, Fintech) and scanned (at a distance) by the bus driver when the commuter is boarding. The driver is settled directly in their bank or mobile wallet. This is how cash can be eliminated at scale, especially in mobility — one of the top sectors that carry millions of people daily, in dense cities.
c) Contact tracing made simple
One of the main benefits of digital technologies is the ability to provide some form of tracing for both commuters and bus staff (drivers, conductors).
With the appropriate legal framework, we can determine, for a given positive case: which commuters were waiting and boarded with the said case; which bus drivers, conductors were in contact with him. Healthcare authorities can then isolate and test the relevant contacts.
This contact tracing is limited to transit-related contacts and does not cover all the places from where a citizen can contact others.
This, however, provides a clever and simple approach to contact tracing in the African context.
The world, Africa included, is grappling with a tragic pandemic which hopefully will come under control in the next weeks or months. However, despite all its adverse effects, there are many lessons that we ought to learn from this crisis. One crucial lesson is the need to re-invent how the masses move. The continent’s mass-transit sector is currently characterized with;
- Overly crowded bus stations with commuters jostling as early as 6 am to catch a seat.
- Packing commuters beyond the limit in a 15 seater vehicle, in the heat for 2 hours, and making random stoppages every few minutes.
- Risking the commuters’ lives by recklessly racing against other bus drivers in an effort to make more money.
COVID-19 should, therefore, be looked at as a mere wake-up call. Now is the opportune time to make the changes that should have been made a long time ago in order to achieve radical improvements necessary. These changes do not only apply to the transportation sector but to others too.
One of the ways to do this is through the digitization of many sectors. Beyond the temporary social distancing, there is a need to re-invent the way we produce, travel, trade to create and share value in order for the continent to develop the antifragility necessary to withstand a future pandemic.
