That demon is called road accident and the struggle to tame it is far from succeeding. When 12-year-old Edina Kambala died in van motor accident seven miles from Gairo, her mother Theresia Edward Kalenda said an evil spirit reigned at Gairo taking lives of innocents.
Gairo is a fertile tract between Dodoma and Morogoro municipalities. Unsuspecting Edina was selling sweet potatoes along the Dar es Salaam-Dodoma highway when a speeding van veered onto the wrong side of the road killing her instantly. The driver escaped after the accident.
Her mother wailed saying: “The accidents are endless in Gairo because of the reigning evil spirit here … and these speeding drivers are in service of this spirit.” The name of real demon is ‘road accident’. Data from the traffic police reveal chilling truths: in 2013 alone 23,842 road accidents killed 4,002 people and thousands were injured, some disfigured for life.Accidents shot up by 1.1 per cent from the year before. In 2012, there were 23,578 accidents resulting in 3,969 deaths. Dar es Salaam Region had the lion’s share: 12,983 accidents representing 54 per cent of the national figure. The road carnage picture of 2014 is not any rosy.
That might not give you the real picture of the alarming situation. Look at this statistic: Between January and March this year, 960 people died on Tanzanian roads and 2,363 were injured. At world level the United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO) says 1.24 million die each year on the roads while between 20 and 50 million people are seriously injured.
The agency warns that road accidents and injuries that are killing people aged between 15 and 29 years shall jump from ninth to the fifth leading cause of death by 2030, higher than HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Can road accidents and deaths be tamed?
It looks; but if technology will be given a chance and if Tanzania’s decision- makers will choose to use home-grown technological innovations to fight accidents.
A gifted young innovator, Godfrey Magila, who has developed Safe Road software, says Tanzania can advance in taming the demon using his software. But, and a big BUT, he says the software must be accepted and popularised; it must be put to use. “Authorities should give technology a chance in a bid to end accidents in our country,” he pleads.
He repeated the same plea when President Jakaya Kikwete visited his pavilion at the Julius Nyerere Conference Centre in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday (June 24, this year). The president smiled perhaps in affirmative. The Chief Traffic Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Mohamed Mpinga, talks of plans to apply information and communication technology (ICT) to curb road accidents in Tanzania --- to the delight of people like Magila.
Last year the Deputy Commissioner showed journalists an imported speed detector now used by traffic police force tame speeding drivers, saying “technology has a role to play in curbing accidents Tanzania.” Had Magila been around he probably would have clapped.
Tanzania Bureau of Standards’ Public Relations Officer Roida Andusamile buys the idea, but leans towards standards. “Stakeholders in the transport sector must observe standards and accidents will drop. We shall continue to advise stakeholders observe correct standards.”
With the help of the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), Godfrey has formed Magila Tech Company (Magilatech) so that mass production of the software could be rationally effected and coordinate. Godfrey’s software is a modest contribution that further imposes on Tanzanians the habit of using intelligence and available technology to reduce to fight misery and suffering.
When one talks to Magila one realises quickly three immediate elements in dealing with road accidents in Tanzania - both having to do with education.
First, the driver should be trained to respect and value their career and value lives of road users. The second element is that prospective drivers must be exposed to the provisions of the traffic law and their implication on their day-to-day activities.
The third element is to value products of labour of Tanzania’s talented brains. Magila is nature’s gift to Tanzania; a self-taught computer programmer --- now in with seven years in information communication technology (ICT) security industry.
He is an acknowledged software developer who has specialized in mobile application development. He works closely with the business incubator hub of the COSTECH. How was Godfrey’s talent spotted? It all started a competition organised by the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) in one of the annual road safety week activities.
TCRA asked software developers to offer different mobile solutions that would solve road accidents. Godfrey developed one. The programme is installed on electronic gadgets. It monitors a speeding car and alerts the nearest police station through GPS coordinates.
The increasing number of horrible accidents are now a cause of worry in many institutions! The Tanzania Bureau of Standards says accidents could be reduced by observing the following standards: TZS 617 for tyres and bus or truck body builders must strictly observe TZS 598 standard. A home-grown technological innovation is a key element in Tanzania’s future development.
To allow effective functionality of an innovation of this nature there must be support from the government and the private sector. Things of this nature have to be considered in the light of public-private partnership (PPP) initiative.
The government should throw its weight behind COSTECH so that the commission works closely with the Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS), Surface and Marine Transport Regulatory Authority (SUMATRA), National Business Council (NBC), the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) and the Private Sector Foundation (PSF), in promoting the products of local talents via PPP initiative.
Magila responded to TCRA’s call and developed a programme that could reduce road accidents that are mainly cause by over-speeding vehicles. What became of this programme?
In this particular case, COSTECH could act as a coordinator or secretariat and bring together representatives of the NBC, TIC, PSF, traffic police and associations of taxi, bus, truck owners to discuss local innovations that have a bearing on transport and transportation.
Magila says: “But in doing all this I had another aim in mind: to accelerate use of e-solutions in solving existing community problems,” he notes. That may not be far from truth for he has also developed a Bio-metric Voting System that probably needs perfection before it is put to extensive use.
/Daily News.
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