Transportation and the Sharing Economy: Shared Mobility, Platforms, Electric Transition in Ghana Africa

Two forces make this an urgent subject for African transport. The first is the platform itself. Ride-hailing reached Ghana in the mid-2010s and spread faster than the rules meant to contain it. As de Souza Silva, de Andrade, and Alves Maia show in their study of how ride-hailing demand reshapes transport regulation, the platform does not simply add a service; it changes the bargaining position of every actor it touches, from the licensed taxi driver to the city authority writing the bylaws. The second force is electrification. In November 2023 Ghana published its National Electric Vehicle Policy, built on the finding that the country's vehicles run almost entirely on petrol, diesel, and liquefied petroleum gas, and that transport is a large and fast-growing source of the emissions and air pollution behind millions of premature deaths worldwide. Bankole and colleagues, writing on electrifying paratransit in sub-Saharan Africa, make the point that the continent cannot simply copy a European charging model onto a trotro economy. These two forces, the platform and the battery, are arriving together, and the manager who understands only one of them is working with half a map. In effect, the aim of the book is to give readers a rounded, practical command of the sharing economy in transportation: what drives it worldwide, how it is perceived and adopted in developing countries, what stands in its way, and what can be done to make it work for cities, workers, and firms rather than against them.

Pagina's: 202, Paperback, Independently published