Smart Mobility, Just Cities and Road Safety: An AI-Enabled Road Safety Academy in Gauteng South Africa

Rapid urbanisation, fragmented transport systems, and persistently high road-traffic fatalities have placed mobility at the centre of Africa’s development and justice agenda. While smart mobility initiatives are frequently framed as technological efficiency projects, African cities require approaches that simultaneously advance equity, safety, and behavioural change. This article repositions smart mobility as a foundational pillar of road safety and advances the case for institutionalising an AI-enabled Smart Road Safety Academy, using Gauteng Province, South Africa, as an analytic-conceptual case study. The study adopts a qualitative analytic-conceptual methodology grounded in policy analysis and thematic synthesis of secondary literature, supported by African case examples and normative legal and governance frameworks. The analysis demonstrates that mobility in African cities functions simultaneously as a socio-economic right and a behavioural risk environment, shaped by informality, weak enforcement, fragmented governance, and limited hazard-perception assessment mechanisms. The article argues that AI-enabled telematics, immersive simulation, and hazard-perception testing when embedded within just governance frameworks such as the National Transport Master Plan 2050 (NATMAP 2050) and the National Road Safety Strategy can meaningfully reduce risk while advancing inclusion, institutional capability, and climate resilience. It proposes an AI Smart Road Safety Academy as a scalable institutional mechanism linking smart mobility, behavioural rehabilitation, skills development, and the future of work in transport. Directions for further empirical research and pilot implementation across African urban contexts are identified.