CODATU continues its action in Madagascar

Jean-Jacques Helluin, CODATU’s General Delegate, and Charles Rakotonirina, CODATU’s representative in Madagascar and a member of CODATU’s Board of Directors, led the session “Improving urban mobility in Madagascan cities” at the annual meeting of Mayors of the Association of Mayors of the Major Cities of Madagascar (AMGVM), in Antsirabe on 30 September 2023.

CODATU and AMGVM have been partners since 2019, and CODATU has supported the cities of Majunga and Antananarivo in joining MobiliseYourCity.

CODATU is currently supporting the local authorities to organise an Urban Mobility Forum in Antananarivo, which will take place in April 2024 (MobiliseYourCity funding), and to make a success of an ambitious minibus pilot line operation to demonstrate the possibility and interest of professionalising paratransit in this city (funding from AFD, in partnership with the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Land Use Planning and Services, and the Antananarivo Urban Commune).

In Antsirabe, the mayors present all confirmed the urgent need to take action now, as urban mobility problems are growing rapidly in provincial towns. The needs are diverse: training of managers in the current absence of specialists in the town halls, production of simplified urban mobility plans to have a strategy for a decade or so, implementation of pilot projects to take better advantage of the potential of paratransit or active modes.

CODATU will be carrying out a survey of the needs of Mayors and will present the results at a forthcoming International AOM Club meeting.