When drivers don’t observe – or know! – traffic laws, people can get hurt. A quirky idea expanding through Africa is making streets safer by educating motor users about courteous driving. It’s called the Kids’ Court, and as the name suggests, it’s putting the power into the hands of some of our cities’ most vulnerable residents.
In the Tanzanian city of Tanga, a driver is led by a traffic police officer into a courtroom. They were stopped for speeding in a school zone and justice is swiftly being dealt.
Only, this is no ordinary court: it’s held in a classroom and presided over by children – the very people whose lives are endangered by those who flout the rules of the road outside.
As the school setting would suggest, this is an attempt to educate, rather than punish, citizens guilty of driving offenses, which include not wearing a seatbelt, failing to stop at a pedestrian crossing, using a mobile telephone while at the wheel, speeding, or overtaking unsafely
It’s an unconventional idea, but one that is reducing the rate of misdemeanours.
How to Amend a City
The aptly named Kids’ Court is based on an idea originating from the UK. It can now be found in a handful of African cities thanks to Amend, an international road safety NGO that got started back in 2006.
The organisation’s Tanzania Country Manager Simon Kalolo explains that Amend collaborates with local government authorities and road agencies on its projects to improve opportunities around schools and for “vulnerable groups, including children, particularly, and people with disabilities”.
It’s very important for us to collaborate, especially with government agencies because they’re the ones who own the agenda; they have the power to influence things positively.
Simon Kalolo
Simon is based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, but the NGO also has permanent offices in what he calls the equally “chaotic” megacities of Maputo, Mozambique, and Accra, Ghana.
The project doesn’t only focus on major “chaotic” cities, but also on secondary cities like Tanga, where there’s a chance to influence infrastructure as it develops.
Why We Need Kids’ Courts
Kids’ Courts tackle a very serious problem in these growing cities. Although car ownership remains relatively low, the number of vehicles is increasing – especially among enterprising young people setting up as motor taxi drivers. Simon explains that this can have a knock-on impact for road safety.
“We know statistically that Africa is bearing the biggest burden when it comes to road safety in terms of fatalities, particularly in the age group of five to 29 years old.”
Schools selected for the Kids’ Court project are always in high-risk areas, defined by having a busy road nearby. They’re also located in low-income neighbourhoods, where the majority of students or more walk to and from school, Simon informs us. The court is usually held during the morning and afternoon rush hour for up to three days over a single week, when traffic is heaviest. And it’s important that it’s not only the drivers that learn a thing or two.
“The idea was to provide awareness and train young students to have the knowledge of road safety, but to use that knowledge to sensitise drivers in the communities where these schools are located.”
In other words, Kids’ Court is educating pedestrians, cyclists, and the drivers of today and tomorrow.

How a Kids’ Court Works
The basic idea is fairly simple: it’s a cooperation with local traffic police, who are granted the authority to stop drivers that fail to observe the rules of the road.
Usually that results in a fine. In this case, the drivers are given a choice: pay the fine or go to court. It’s only when directed into a classroom a few minutes later that “drivers find themselves in this room with very serious young men and women, well prepared to bombard them with a number of questions about why they did exactly what they did”.
For most drivers, as we have seen, it becomes very emotional. You see them really trying to comprehend the situation and listen to what they are told to do.
Simon Kalolo
Up to five boys and girls – always a mix – pose questions designed with Simon’s team to be direct and emotive, such as: “Why did you use your mobile phone while you are driving? Do you know that you can hit a child like me and completely shatter their dreams?”
In a video made to showcase Tanga’s sister project in Mozambique, some drivers seem shellshocked by the whole experience. However, Simon says that many speak favourably about the children’s ability to remind them of the importance of being a responsible driver. Most tend to admit that they could have “caused an incident, hit a child or pedestrian, and then either killed or caused permanent injuries”, Simon observes.
At the end, drivers are asked to sign a declaration of guilt and to promise that they will not offend again. If the judges are satisfied, no official charge is raised, but the point has been made.

Cleaning Up Their Act
On average, the project stops between five and ten drivers each morning and afternoon session. Over three days that already makes a difference in a city where, prior to Amend’s interventions, 40% of the city’s primary schools recorded a road accident involving one child or more in a 12-month period.
Indirectly, though, the impact is even greater.
That’s because the local media helps spread the message: after leaving the courtroom, “the driver does an interview and expresses how they feel and how the exercise went”, Simon tells us.
Thanks to this coverage, word tends to get round, and people start driving more carefully.
That’s not mere speculation; Simon takes data-based evidence of the intervention very seriously.
“Monitoring and evaluation components are equally important. We really want to see the impact, the effectiveness, the evidence of the project that we implement.”
Project coordinator Ramadhani Nyanza – or Rama – oversees Amend’s local activities from a “small satellite office” in Tanga. His team conducts knowledge retention surveys with the children at the end of the project and again after three and six months.
It’s Rama, along with the teachers and traffic police, who helps to select “a few sharp students” to be judges and who coordinates two days of training for them, where the volunteers gain a solid understanding of road rules – such as where to walk, when cars should stop, etc. – and safety measures like looking both ways before crossing.
“In Maputo, we saw that the project was an effective way to supplement conventional road safety lessons,” Simon says. After half a year passed, the children who participated as judges still had a better understanding of road safety than their peers.
It’s about educating the drivers, but also it empowers eight- or nine-to-13-year-olds.
Simon Kalolo

Anecdotal Evidence
Rama acknowledges the support of Fondation Botnar, which was also a leading partner in the OurTanga project, which he worked on previously.
In both cases, Rama has seen first-hand the impacts these projects have on individual lives.
By a twist of fate, offending drivers are occasionally related to one of the judges, who then quiz them with the same intensity as in any other proceedings. Oddly enough, these adults give us some of the best anecdotal insights into the interpersonal benefits this project has for the children – particularly on their confidence.
“Later on, the parents would come to us and say that this is the first time they’ve ever seen this side of their son or daughter. The way she behaves, the way that he was asking me this question.”
Rama also talks of cases where the children are keen to tell their families what they learnt from their training. For the adults who were taught to drive by someone they know and picked up bad habits, they’re learning some of the laws of the road for the first time thanks to their young son or daughter.
We leave them as our road safety ambassadors – something that they cherish and enjoy, and which they feel privileged to do.
Ramadhani Nyanza
What It Means for the City
As Rama points out, these changes start at the school, but the advantages ripple through Tanga. Drivers take that awareness away with them, knowing “how to behave around sensitive areas” like slowing down outside hospitals and in public spaces.
Naturally, it doesn’t always go to plan, Simon tells us: “There are some cases where drivers refuse to go to the Kids’ Court, as you might expect.” The traffic police handle this situation conventionally – usually with a fine.
Enforcing the law makes the traffic police unpopular with drivers, but working with the Kids’ Court unexpectedly seems to be helping to “build a positive relationship between the government agency [of the traffic police] and the public” again. The presence of uniformed officers in the court also gives the kids a bit of a kick, “giving them the confidence” to behave like a judge towards their elders, Simon adds.
So far, 305 young people have received training and acted as judges.
Given all the outcomes, the project is a decent investment, Simon explains: “It’s a very cost-friendly, very cheap project to implement. You basically just need some refreshments for the kids. You don’t need a venue because you have a school. You don’t need any resources apart from staff time and then an allowance [to compensate] the traffic police, who are taking time out of their usual duties.”
For this very reason, Kids’ Court is seen as highly replicable, and has been rolled out across various cities already, such as in Accra, Ghana. With the project being so straightforward, it’s designed in a way that it can continue to thrive long after Amend’s involvement concludes, Simon tells us.
“It’s very important to scale these projects that have a very positive impact on the community, and which the community is happy to embrace and take over.”