Journal of Scientific Research and Reports

Road traffic accidents (RTAs) rank among the most severe, and most persistently overlooked, public health problems facing Africa today. The continent records the world's highest road traffic fatality rate despite holding only a modest share of the world's registered vehicles, a paradox that is especially pronounced in rapidly motorising countries such as Ghana. This critical narrative review draws together the epidemiological, clinical, and policy dimensions of RTAs across Africa, with particular attention to Ghana. The evidence is drawn from peer-reviewed literature published since 2010, supplemented by authoritative reports from the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and Ghana's National Road Safety Authority. The review traces Africa's rising absolute burden of road traffic deaths against the declines achieved in high-income countries, and shows that pedestrians, motorcyclists, and commercial vehicle occupants bear the brunt of this burden. In Ghana, RTAs are the leading cause of injury-related mortality and impose an economic cost conservatively put at 1.6 to 2.0 per cent of gross domestic product each year. Human behaviour—speeding above all, alongside impaired driving and unsafe overtaking—accounts for most fatal crashes, compounded by ageing vehicle fleets, poorly engineered roads, and pre-hospital care systems that remain severely under-resourced. Reforms have followed one another under successive national road safety frameworks, and Ghana has aligned its policy with the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021–2030, yet implementation gaps, weak surveillance, and resource constraints continue to hold back progress. The review concludes that meaningful reductions in Ghana's road traffic mortality will depend on a coordinated, multi-sectoral strategy that combines legislative enforcement, infrastructure upgrading, behaviour change, and functioning emergency medical services, underpinned by systematic improvements in data collection and monitoring.