News
Freetown
By SLURC Team
In Freetown, the T-SUM team was established. The Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre (SLURC)’s directors Dr. Joseph M. Macarthy and Mr. Braima Koroma will be supported by Research Officer Sudie Austina Sellu and Research Assistant Mary Kamara.
World Bank representative Fatima Arroyo supported the establishment of a database repository in Freetown by sharing relevant data. This database is now being completed by SLURC.
The T-SUM team in Freetown is now starting to establish a network of relevant stakeholders and to collate relevant data for the T-SUM inventory.
SLURC’s partners will be closely collaborating with Freetown’s local authority, Sierra Leone’s Transport ministry and Sierra Leone Road authority.
Above: SLURC Team Freetown
Updates and news
Strategic vision for sustainable urban transport and mobility in Sierra Leone
June 2020
Outputs from both the first and second workshop held in Freetown were published as part of T-SUM’s participative governance processes. The workshops' briefs are available on the website:
Workshop 1:
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Strategic vision for sustainable urban transport and mobility in Sierra Leone: Lessons and insights from Freetown.
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See briefing note here
Workshop 2:
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Practical Implementation constraints and opportunities: Lessons and insights from Freetown. See briefing note here
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Timeline of policy priorities to achieve the vision. See timing diagram here
City Profile Freetown: Base Conditions of Mobility, Accessibility and Land Use
December 2020
The city profile is the first rigorous attempt at producing evidence-based knowledge for understanding the main drivers of current development trajectories and their influence on urban mobility, accessibility, social and environmental issues in Freetown. It is available to view on the T-SUM website here
Shared Mobility Experience – Mode Race in Freetown
March 2020
Prior to the T-SUM workshop 3, key decision-makers were invited to take part in a Shared Mobility Mode Experience in Freetown. The participants took different transport modes such as walking, cycling, kekeh, Poda poda, bus, okada, Taxi, and Tap Tap, to get to the SLURC office. The aim of this initiative was to invite key stakeholders and decision makers to experience the different modes in order to have not only an evidence-based but also experience-based discussion on the future urban mobility trajectory of Freetown.
Workshop 3: Practical implementation issues, Freetown
March 2020
T-SUM Workshop 3 took place in Freetown in March 2020. It aimed to discuss practical implementation issues in the capital. As a vision and desired trajectories were identified (during workshops 1 & 2), this workshop 3 identified new policy instruments, and what implementation issues could prevent Freetown from achieving this vision. The outputs from the activity were a second version of the Strategic Vision and a Mobility Action Plan.
Interviews and data collection
2019 - 2020
The Freetown T-SUM team undertook semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and focus groups involving residents from four different neighbourhoods. The team carried out an in-depth diagnosis of the socio-economic, environmental, spatial, and governance conditions for urban and transport development. This study provides a multi-dimensional overview of the recent physical, social, economic and environmental changes in the urban context - these are critical in the transition to a sustainable urban mobility and could serve not only as a blueprint for consideration by transport stakeholders, but also as a repository of knowledge.
The T-SUM team in Freetown has mapped geo-referenced coordinates of transit and collection points of the various modes of transport (eg. motorbikes, rickshaws and mini-buses (poda-podas), and completed the transcription of the field data collected.
New collaborations & projects
2020
SLURC has successfully collaborated and established partnerships with several agencies/institutions based in Freetown, including the Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation, Sierra Leone Road Safety Authority and Sierra Leone Institution of Engineers. The collaboration and partnership discussions were mainly centred on how to boost sustainable urban mobility drawing on T-SUM research and the creation of synergies on knowledge management and data dissemination for policy and action. Memoranda of Understanding and/or statements of intent were signed by several entities.
SLURC also started a collaborative engagement on a new joint research project with Osaka University involving Dr Oviedo at UCL on a three-year project titled ‘Developing an Urban Mobility Model for Sustainable Improvement of Informal Settlements in Freetown’. This project seeks to analyse accessibility and connectivity patterns in urban informal settlements, and strengthen the local capacity to address emerging issues. This is a timely addition to our research portfolio on urban mobility and complements well with the T-SUM funds and activities.
T-SUM workshops in Freetown
December 2019
As part of T-SUM Work Package (WP 3 ‘Vision pathways and implementation strategies’) deliberative workshops were designed and run in Freetown, drawing on findings and data from WP1 and WP2. The objective of these workshops was to initiate participative governance processes to foster new models of development based on a sustainable mobility trajectory. This was achieved through evidence-based engagement with public and professional stakeholders across different sectors and levels of governance.
The event was featured on several national TV channels, including Prime Times News AYV video, live TV discussion, and various radio and newspaper interviews. Among other outcomes, the workshop results were given to the Minister for Transport, who now will consider relevant action in other cities across Sierra Leone. In addition, regular meetings will be held to align the work-streams of the ministry of transport and the Freetown City Council’s on urban transport.
Resilient Urban Mobility Hackathon
July 30, 2019
The Resilient Urban Mobility Hackathon brought together tech developers, experts in transport and resilient urban mobility, transportation service providers and users, media professionals, development workers, data science analysis, entrepreneurs and students from private, governmental, non-governmental, educational and public service organizations and institutions across Sierra Leone.
SLURC researcher Sudie Austina Sellu participated in the activity.
The video is available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW0CTAc5vzI
In the Media
African Young Voice (AYV)
Prime time news & discussions
Live TV discussion at AYV with partners from Freetown (Braima Koroma) and UCL (Dr. Daniel Oviedo). The TV appearance has had more than 1.5k viewers.
It can be found online at www.ayv.com
Prime Times News AYV channel has interviewed one of the T-SUM representatives, Dr Clemence Cavoli, together with other policy-makers in Freetown, Hindolo Shiaka (Director, Ministry of Transport and Aviation), Mariama Whitmore (Mayors Delivery Team, Freetown City Council).
The video of the interview is available online here.
Prime Times News AYV (African Young Voice). The channel has interviewed T-SUM representatives from Sierra Leone, Braima Koroma (Project Manager, Sierra Leone Urban Research), Leonoor Schouten Netsen (Urban Planning Cluster, Mayors Delivery Team, Freetown City Council).
Global Times Newspaper
04 December 2019/ 05 March 2020
Sierra Leone’s researchers team have made appearances in Global Times Newspaper (4th December 2019), Premier News (5th March 2020), and Momentum Newspaper (4th December 2019). They also appeared in discussion programmes on Radio Democracy 98.1. More than 1.6k listeners received insights of the project through the programme, which was broadcasted in December 2019. The T-SUM representative Braima Koroma also spoke on the project in Good Morning Sierra Leone.
