Abstract

If executives managing civil societies or even some government agencies in Third World countries that are involved in road safety agenda were asked to list one of their key challenges, the problem of shortage of funding to carry out their activities will certainly be in their top ten list. The challenge of funding is so real and at times appears to be one of the stumbling blocks towards achieving goals and targets these countries have made when making commitments to reduce road accidents through the Decade of Action for Road Safety and the Sustainable Development Goals. At best these commitments appear to be on papers and are not reflected in the budget documents. This in in turn invites the conclusion that road safety agenda in many (if not majority) of these countries largely depend on the good will and programmes generated and planned by international organisations and foreign donating agencies. Realising these challenges and as a result of being a small organisation incapable of attracting any substantial foreign donation, one local organisation in Tanzania, entitled the Road Safety Ambassadors of Tanzania (RSA) used somewhat a different route to attract funding for its activities through crowd funding. Through crowd funding, RSA was able to marshal sufficient funding from locals and well-wishers which was used to launch road safety campaigns in both offline and digital platforms. Through crowd funding strategies targeting well-wishers who were afflicted or affected by road accidents and their associated challenges, RSA was able not only to obtain funding but also to solicit active participation from those donors leading to a substantial growth of their membership base from 20 in 2015 when it was established to 60 000 in December, 2017. From this experience by RSA, one will realise that this model can easily be replicated in other countries. By encouraging crowd funding, road safety agenda was easily made part of the local agenda and is fast becoming an issue of discussion around the table of policy makers. Conclusively, from RSA experience, it can be argued that road safety agenda can easily be made a local agenda and can partly be financed through local resources.