Transport, Transgression and Politics in African Cities

Characterizing the movement patterns of minibus taxis in Kampala's paratransit system

“…Several mapping projects have used floating car data to describe the routes taken by the informal paratransit minibus taxis in developing cities, such as Accra (Saddier et al, 2016), Nairobi, Maputo (Klopp and Cavoli, 2019), Kampala (Ndibatya et al, 2016), Dar es Salaam and Stellenbosch (Ndibatya et al, 2014). These projects have in some instances produced route maps, such as Digital Matatu for Nairobi (matatu referring to "minibus" in Kenya (Heinze, 2018)) and the Mapas Dos Chapas for Maputo (chapa referring to "minibus" in Mozambique), as well as the standardized data in the general transit feed specification (GTFS) format used by developers to build mobile applications (Klopp and Cavoli, 2019). However, the paratransit mapping projects produced static maps, and the researchers ignored the possibility of changes in the routes that would render the maps irrelevant after less than five years.…”

Minibus taxis in Kampala's paratransit system: Operations, economics and efficiency

“…Across developing cities of sub-Saharan Africa, transport authorities are struggling to fulfil the mobility needs of rapidly growing populations, especially the urban poor. The transport systems that are supposed to connect commuters to jobs, services and markets have limited capacity and are loosely regulated and inefficient (Behrens et al, 2015;Agbiboa, 2018). Since the 1090s these typically quasi-demand-responsive services -referred to in the scholarly literature as "paratransit" or "informal transport" -have filled the gap left by the collapse of the colonial-era state-owned transport companies (Cervero and Golub, 2007;Kumar et al, 2008;Kumar, 2011).…”