This research examines the history of transportation planning in African cities and how paratransit has been taken into account in the production of planning documents. On the rise since the 1980s, paratransit today is the most common motorized transportation mode in many African cities. The dominant approach among policymakers has been to limit paratransit, in some cases even to ban it. The question this research explores is how distrust of paratransit, and underappreciation of its intrinsic qualities, have been reflected in urban transportation plans. Having selected two cities—Cape Town, South Africa and Nairobi, Kenya—we conducted an in-depth analysis of planning documents at national and local levels. South Africa has a long tradition of transportation planning, with documentation available at the national, provincial, and municipal levels. In the 1990s, paratransit was a national-level concern. It gradually became a municipal issue with the implementation of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). In Kenya, planning has a shorter history. Development agencies (e.g., Japanese International Cooperation Agency [JICA]) have played a key role in recent planning processes and encourage the formalization of paratransit. However, planning documents contain no explicit references to “matatus.” In both cities, the focus in the documents is still mainly on developing infrastructure rather than improving mobility. While the role of paratransit is increasingly recognized, this trend is still more apparent in regulation than in planning.

In the last decade, ride-hailing services have spread all over the world. While these technologyenabled services account for a small part of the modal split in many Western cities, the situation is different in the developing world, where many people use ride-hailing on a daily basis. To better understand the role of ride-hailing in the mobility system and to confirm the hypothesis that ride-hailing is a new mode of commuting, we constructed, tested, and administered a questionnaire on travel behavior and ride-hailing practices in Tehran, Iran. 601 questionnaires were completed in February 2019. Descriptive analysis is combined with correlation tests and a frequency model. The findings show substantial adoption of ride-hailing in the population, used by people from all social backgrounds as it is the most versatile and flexible mode of transportation in the metropolitan area. While there is a high rate of adoption, frequency of use is mainly determined by smartphone use and income level. Ride-hailing presents the comfort and speed of the private car to those who can afford this new mode on a daily basis, especially for university students, workers in the formal sector and women. Local authorities might consider ride-hailing as an alternative to the private car, in complement to public and semipublic transportation systems.