Fleet Forum's first steps in West-Africa

The conference was a success; around 100 participants, varying from government officials from West African countries, commercial organisations, donor organisations and international and local NGO’s.

The conference was opened by the Minister of Telecommunications, Tics, Rail and Road Transport Mr Agne who stressed the fact that West African countries had to create an action plan that is in line with the ‘Moscow Declaration’ (for those of you who are not familiar with the declaration; last year November there was a huge conference on Road Safety which was signed by UN member states, stating that countries have to work actively to combat the road safety crisis) and there is a need for collaboration between governments, the corporate sector, humanitarians and civil society organisations.

After the official opening by Mr Agne, we had two days of presentations on how various organisations were working on the issues of Safe, Clean and Healthy Transport. North Star Alliance addressed the health issue and the problem of HIV/AIDS in the transport sector, UNEP did a presentation on how the transport sector could develop a Clean Fleet Strategy, gTKP (global Transport Knowledge Partnership) presented the role of the commercial transport sector and what they have done to make transport safer and what was good to see is that there are a lot of local initiatives and that the attention for transport as an enabler for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals is growing.

In the closing statement, the Secretary General of the Senegalese Transport Ministry urged the participants again to work together and also to organise these regional conferences more often so that the attention for the transport issues in low and middle income countries will not fade away.

For me personally, co-organising this conference was a great experience. It gave me the opportunity to network and present Fleet Forum in a part of the world that we haven’t been before, it gave Fleet Forum exposure in the media and it can be a start of Fleet Forum projects in the region. All in all: mission completed!