Safer schools in Botswana: Amend project in Botswana makes journeys safer for kids.

Photo credit: Julio Urzua, iRAP 2018

In December 2018, Amend undertook investigations and upgrades at the Bophirima Primary School to improve the safety for students. Amend is working in more than a dozen countries in the developing world to improve safety near schools, including physical upgrading of the infrastructure safety.

As part of the pilot phase testing of the Star Rating for Schools tool, iRAP conducted an assessment of the Bophirima Primary School in partnership with Amend. The assessment was carried out near the school, which is located in the city of Gaborone, Botswana. Prior to the interventions, there were limited pedestrian facilities for the students, leading to a very unsafe route to school.

A summary report has been released outlining this specific project in Botswana, which outlines the assessment and results of the interventions implemented by Amend. Click here to access this report.

Outcomes from the project, which highlight the immediate improvements include:

Infrastructure treatments that were implemented by Amend near the school have significantly improved the level of safety of child pedestrians.
Improvement at the entrance of the school is a significant achievement and now provides a 5-star welcome to the school.
Surrounding locations where pedestrian facilities were implement, resulted in a Star Rating increased to 4-stars (from 2- and 3- stars).
Further crossing facilities and speed management is recommended in other areas around the school to help make the children’s journeys safer at every access point to the school.

The table below demonstrates how a location point is coded in the SR4S app before and after the infrastructure treatments were made.

Table 1: Interventions at Moremosetlha/ Mogotlhwana corner

Before and after images:

Star Rating for Schools is a valuable resource to assess improvements in surrounding school areas. The results website offers a simulation tool demonstrating the benefits of different road changes and can support new projects in these locations as well.

Photo Credit: Julio Urzua