Promoting sustainable urban mobility in Lusaka: a comprehensive policy landscape analysis

• Analyses Lusaka’s transport policy: strong vision but major implementation gaps. • Identifies unregulated shared mobility and absent EV strategy as key barriers. • Advocates integrated land-use and transport planning to reduce congestion and inequity. • Demonstrates that policy analysis is crucial for sustainable mobility in low-resource cities. Urban mobility challenges in Sub-Saharan African cities are pressing yet underexplored from a policy analysis perspective. This study analyses Lusaka’s transport policy landscape to assess how current frameworks promote sustainable mobility amid rapid urbanisation, congestion, and social inequities. Using systematic document analysis of 14 legislative, policy, and strategic documents, it applies content analysis, policy mapping, and a mixed-method SWOT framework to evaluate provisions for public transport, non-motorised transport (NMT), electric vehicles (EVs), and shared mobility services. Findings reveal partial policy support for sustainable transport, with strengths in NMT and public transport strategies. However, major gaps remain, including the absence of EV incentives and charging infrastructure, unregulated shared mobility, weak enforcement, and poor integration of land-use and transport planning. Comparisons with other African cities highlight similar implementation barriers, underscoring Lusaka’s wider relevance to sustainable mobility debates in resource-limited settings. The research contributes a replicable policy analysis framework for developing cities and offers actionable recommendations: legislative revisions with measurable targets, stronger institutional capacity, and investments in modern public transport, NMT infrastructure, and regulated shared services. This study establishes an evidence-based foundation for transport policy reform in Lusaka and provides lessons for advancing sustainable mobility across Sub-Saharan Africa.