Yango widens road safety scheme for Lusaka schools

LUSAKA — A school road-safety scheme run by Yango Zambia and the Zambia Road Safety Trust is now reaching 32,000 children in Lusaka, after the mobility-technology firm widened the programme.

The expansion puts a tech company's money where the danger is. Road crashes are among the biggest killers of school-age children across Africa, and the walk to and from school — across fast, unmarked roads — is where much of that risk sits. By scaling Safer Journeys to School, Yango Zambia is treating road safety as part of the same mobility problem its app exists to solve.

Yango Zambia said the expanded Safer Journeys to School scheme now covers 32,000 pupils in Lusaka, up from a smaller pilot, pairing classroom road-safety training with practical work on crossings and signage near schools. Yango is part of the global technology group Yango, which runs ride-hailing, delivery and mobility services across dozens of markets, and the company has framed the programme as a natural extension of a business built on moving people safely.

The Zambia Road Safety Trust brings the local expertise. The partnership focuses on the highest-risk points — the junctions and stretches of road where children cross to reach school gates — and on teaching pupils the habits that keep them alive in traffic. Reaching 32,000 children is a meaningful footprint in a city where school-run congestion and pedestrian risk rise together each term.

The initiative lands as Lusaka's mobility market goes digital. Ride-hailing, delivery and mapping apps are reshaping how the city moves, and Kwacha News has tracked the policy side of that shift, from the push to protect Zambian inventors and innovators to the way global tech-tax fights reach African markets. Safe streets are the unglamorous foundation that lets a mobility economy grow without a rising toll of crashes.

Safer Journeys to School is about giving children the knowledge and the infrastructure to get to school and home safely. Reaching 32,000 children in Lusaka is a milestone, and we intend to go further.

— Yango Zambia, <a href="https://yango.com/en_zm/">Safer Journeys to School announcement, 26 June 2026</a>

Why road safety is a mobility-tech problem

Road traffic injuries are the leading killer of children and young people aged 5 to 29 worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, and the burden falls hardest on low- and middle-income countries. Africa has the highest road-death rate of any region. For a company whose product is movement, that toll is both a human tragedy and a brake on the market — every parent who fears the roads is a reason fewer people walk, cycle or let their children move freely.

Mobility-technology firms also hold data that can target the danger: where trips cluster, where roads are most used, where crashes recur. Channelling some of that insight and investment into safer school routes is a logical move, and it is the kind of private-sector contribution that fits Kwacha News's technology coverage of how digital mobility reshapes Zambian cities.

Background

Yango is a global technology group offering ride-hailing, delivery and other mobility services across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and beyond, operating in Zambia as Yango Zambia. The Zambia Road Safety Trust is a local organisation working to cut the country's road-traffic toll through education, advocacy and safer infrastructure. Their Safer Journeys to School partnership targets the school commute, one of the most dangerous parts of a Zambian child's day. Zambia has signed up to global road-safety targets that aim to halve traffic deaths, a goal that depends on exactly this kind of school-zone work.

What to watch

Watch whether the scheme moves beyond Lusaka to the Copperbelt and other towns, and whether it is paired with hard infrastructure — speed humps, marked crossings, school-zone signage — that outlasts any single campaign. The real test is the crash data: a road-safety programme works when it cuts the number of children hurt on the way to school, not just the number trained. Pedestrian injuries near schools are a recurring feature of Lusaka's traffic each term, the baseline against which any expansion will be measured.

Sources

Yango Zambia: company information and Safer Journeys to School announcement. Road-safety context: World Health Organization, road safety.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers have been asking about the expanded scheme. Short answers follow, drawn from Yango Zambia's announcement and the public record on road safety.

What is Safer Journeys to School?

In short, it is a road-safety scheme run by Yango Zambia and the Zambia Road Safety Trust. The answer, simply put, is that it combines road-safety training for pupils with safer crossings and signage around schools. The data shows it now reaches 32,000 children in Lusaka.

Who is Yango?

The key is mobility technology. According to the company, Yango is a global technology group offering ride-hailing, delivery and mobility services across many markets, operating locally as Yango Zambia. Its road-safety work extends a business built on moving people.

Why does child road safety matter in Zambia?

The answer is the toll. Data from the World Health Organization shows road traffic injuries are the leading killer of children and young people aged 5 to 29, and Africa has the highest road-death rate of any region. Evidence points to the school commute as a high-risk moment.

How many children does the scheme reach?

In other words, 32,000. Yango Zambia says the expanded Safer Journeys to School programme now reaches 32,000 children in Lusaka, up from an earlier, smaller phase. Research on road-safety education shows reach matters most when paired with safer infrastructure.

What would make the scheme more effective?

Analysis of road-safety programmes shows the biggest gains come from combining education with engineering — marked crossings, speed control and school-zone design — and from measuring outcomes in crashes avoided. Evidence suggests training alone fades unless the road itself is made safer.