West Africa’s Transportation Crisis: Why cities are failing to plan for the future

In West Africa’s rapidly growing cities, movement is a daily struggle. Lagos, Accra, Dakar, and Abidjan are in the middle of an urban explosion, yet their transportation networks remain stuck in the past. Traffic congestion cripples’ productivity, unreliable public transport forces commuters into inefficient and costly alternatives, and pedestrian fatalities continue to rise as infrastructure fails to keep up with demand. Governments pour billions into new roads, overpasses, and transit systems, but the situation never seems to improve.

“West African cities are operating in the dark when it comes to transportation planning,” says Tayo Amos Taiwo, a mobility expert and urban planner specializing in data-driven transportation policy. “We don’t know exactly how many people use public transport daily, how congestion patterns shift over time, or where the highest-risk areas for pedestrians are. Without data, everything we build is just a shot in the dark.”

For decades, transportation reform in the region has been driven by infrastructure-first approaches, where governments focus on expanding road networks and introducing new transit systems without first analyzing whether they are actually solving the core problems. Billions have been spent on highway expansions in Lagos, but traffic remains just as bad, if not worse. Accra’s tro-tro system has been targeted for regulation, but without accurate ridership data, policymakers have struggled to develop an effective replacement. Dakar’s new roads were meant to ease congestion, yet peak-hour gridlock persists.

“Transport planning in West Africa still relies too much on assumptions rather than real-world evidence,” Taiwo says. “Cities build BRT corridors without studying actual commuting patterns. They expand highways without understanding congestion dynamics. We have no national crash database, so we don’t even know where the deadliest intersections are. That’s why our transportation systems are failing.”

The consequences of poor transportation planning are far-reaching. People waste hours every day in traffic, limiting productivity and economic growth. Public transport is unreliable because it was designed without real-time data on demand and usage patterns. Road safety measures are ineffective because governments lack the crash data needed to identify and fix the most dangerous intersections.

In Lagos, the introduction of the Blue Line rail was meant to ease congestion and provide a reliable alternative to the chaotic danfo minibuses. Yet capacity remains limited, and expansion plans have been slow. The reason, Taiwo argues, is that the government never fully mapped commuter movement before launching the project. “They knew there was demand, but they didn’t analyze whether the rail’s routing and frequency matched the actual commuting patterns of the people who need it most,” he says. “That’s why uptake has been lower than expected.”

In Dakar, road expansions were meant to alleviate congestion, but in many cases, they have actually made traffic worse. “Adding more lanes doesn’t always solve congestion,” Taiwo says. “If you don’t study traffic flow patterns, you can end up encouraging more car use and creating bottlenecks elsewhere. This is why so many of these projects fail.”

In cities like London, Singapore, and New York, transportation planning is driven by data and technology. Governments use real-time GPS tracking, AI-driven predictive modeling, and commuter analytics to optimize transit networks and road usage. Machine learning algorithms predict congestion before it happens. Commuter data from ride-sharing platforms and transit apps provide insights into demand shifts throughout the day. In these cities, transportation planning is not reactive—it is proactive and constantly evolving.

“We have the technology to do this in West Africa, but we’re not using it,” Taiwo says. “We should have real-time GPS tracking on buses, dynamic scheduling that adjusts to peak hours, and commuter data integration that allows cities to predict how demand will shift over time. Instead, we are still relying on once-in-a-decade surveys and outdated traffic reports.”

The solution to West Africa’s transportation crisis is not just building more roads or buying more buses. It is about collecting the right data and using it to design systems that actually work for the people who use them.
“Before cities spend billions on new projects, they need to invest in understanding commuter behavior,” Taiwo says. “They need to start tracking real-time ridership, mapping traffic flow, and analyzing accident data. That should be step one.”

Crash data is one of the most urgent areas for reform. West Africa has some of the highest road fatality rates in the world, yet there is no centralized system for tracking accidents. Governments cannot reduce pedestrian deaths if they don’t know where they are happening.

“In countries with low road fatalities, every single crash is logged, analyzed, and used to improve infrastructure,” Taiwo says. “Here, we don’t even have reliable records of how many people die in traffic accidents each year. How can we fix a problem if we don’t even have basic numbers?”

He also argues that governments need to open up transit data to researchers and the private sector. In cities like San Francisco and Berlin, public transit agencies share anonymized mobility data, allowing researchers and private companies to develop apps, optimize transit schedules, and provide new mobility solutions.

“The future of transportation will be shaped by data,” Taiwo says. “The question is whether West African cities will embrace it in time or continue making the same mistakes over and over again.”