Safer and Cleaner Used Vehicles for Africa

The Project of Safer and Cleaner Used Vehicles for Africa was established to contribute to the safer sustainable development of Africa by creating access to safer and cleaner used vehicles. Various studies have been carried out by different international bodies on the quality of the vehicle fleet in developing countries and commonalities in these studies (two of which are examined in Chapter 3) was that the quality of the vehicle fleet in developing nations (with a focus Africa) were poor compared to their counterparts in the exporting regions. Another commonality was that a greater percentage of the vehicle fleet were used imported vehicles, and these vehicles originated from exporting regions where the overall vehicle fleet were of a higher standard. Consequently, it was seen that there was little to no regulation in most African countries and there were no globally harmonized policies based on technical requirements for used vehicles transferred across borders.

The Safer and Cleaner Used Vehicles for Africa project has the major objective to develop and harmonize minimum criteria for the safety and environmental elements of used vehicles to be exported/imported from one region/continent to another. This report gives a technical view to the background of the project, it highlights available international technical regulations which could be utilized by stakeholders and touches on some activities of the project. 

This report highlights some of the key research carried out by notable organizations and it gives the basis for the reason behind the establishment of this project while creating awareness to the problem faced in the importing regions. Due to its Technical nature, this report highlights some of the key elements of the three United Nations Agreements which are the United Nations Regulations for vehicle approval (1958 Agreement), Periodic Technical Inspection (1997 Agreement) and Global Technical
Regulations for vehicle certification (1998 Agreement) which may be used to facilitate the project objectives. The three UN Agreement are important technical work that may be applied in international vehicle regulations and is overseen by the World Forum for the Harmonization of vehicle Regulations (WP.29).