Prof Christo Venter, professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, delivered his virtual inaugural address titled Transformative transport in African cities—progress and prospects for success, on 2 November 2021. Prof Jan Eloff, Acting Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology (EBIT), welcomed the guests and invited Prof Norman Duncan, Vice-Principal: Academic, to introduce Prof Venter and summarise his career path to date.

Prof Duncan reminded the audience that an inaugural lecture is one of the most important milestones in the careers of academics, as it provides them with the opportunity to inform the University community and academia more broadly about their academic journeys. More specifically, it provides an opportunity for newly appointed or promoted professors to share their research to date and indicate the direction in which they hope to steer their future research. Above all, an inaugural lecture provides the University of Pretoria with an opportunity to showcase and celebrate the academic achievements of the professor presenting the inaugural lecture.

Professor Christo Venter, a registered professional engineer and an NRF-rated researcher, joined the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Pretoria as an associate professor in 2003, and in 2019 he was promoted to the professoriate. His field of specialisation is transportation engineering and planning, a field that focuses on movement that is measured in metres or kilometres, rather than in microns or millimetres, as in other fields of civil engineering.

He started his academic journey at the University of Stellenbosch, where he obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering. Given his interest in the study of the human interface of transportation, he decided to pursue a doctoral degree in transportation engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. The focus of his PhD studies was transportation planning, with economics and urban planning as minor focus areas. He obtained his PhD in Civil Engineering in 1998. As a graduate research assistant, he spent many hours travelling in taxis to study the impact of advanced scheduling technologies on paratransit operations. In the process he did of course discover what interesting conversations can be had with taxi drivers!

After returning to South Africa from the US, Prof Venter joined the Division of Transport Technology at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), where he participated in projects related to travel demand management, public transport planning, technology foresight, and accessible transport for disabled people in South Africa and several other African countries. In pursuit of his desire to return to academia, he joined the University of Pretoria in 2003. His research interests span all the abovementioned fields, with a specific focus on the sociotechnical aspects of public transport provision in cities in the global South.

Much of Professor Venter’s research has been undertaken under the auspices of the Centre for Transport Development, a cross-disciplinary research unit at the University of Pretoria that focuses on mobility-related consulting and research. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the South African Institute of Civil Engineers and the Journal of Transport and Land Use.

According to Prof Venter, transport is a key lever in the project to transform cities into more efficient, equitable and environmentally sustainable places, and mobility is at the heart of achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals 3, 9 and 11. The need for transformation is especially urgent in African cities, given their low infrastructure bases and massive projected increases in population. In his lecture, he considered the role of the transportation planning profession in enabling such transformation and identified key research priorities for academia. Transportation planning is evolving from being highway oriented to embracing the full range of urban mobility problems in their political, social and economic context. Recent efforts to describe and analyse transport upgrading investments in African cities (including those in South Africa) were reviewed from various perspectives and he highlighted how the transformative impacts of several projects were limited by an over-reliance on narrow technical analysis. In particular, he focused on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects that have been introduced or are being planned in several African cities. Prof Venter explained that in many cases, project implementers under-estimated the importance of engaging with stakeholders, especially the incumbent informal transport industry, and also the complexity of implementing such radical interventions in public spaces. He highlighted how their research at the BRT+ Centre of Excellence has contributed to a better understanding of these problems, and concluded his lecture with thoughts on how research and tertiary education can grow to better equip African planning professionals to meet the challenges of creating transformative transport in cities.

Prof Jan Eloff, the Acting Dean of EBIT, thanked Prof Venter for a very informative lecture and added that his research focus aligns with the research focus areas of the Faculty, specifically Smart Cities and Transportation. Furthermore, there is also a strong alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, with specific reference to SDG 11, which places the focus on making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. African cities, especially those in SSA, create many challenges—such as land-use patterns—for optimised transport systems, but also offer opportunities for creating more vibrant and inclusive places. As indicated by Prof Venter in his lecture, many African cities are in the process of upgrading transportation infrastructures with various degrees of success due to the complexity of transportation systems. Prof Eloff stated that many who attended the lecture benefitted from the insights presented with regard to the Bus Rapid Transit systems (BRT), and that the research conducted could create flexible design approaches that could result in making the BRT system accessible to the poor.

Prof Eloff explained that responding to the diversity of spatial, demand and economic conditions in our cities requires public transport planners to consider a wider, more flexible range of interventions, which could involve innovative infrastructure and regulatory approaches. It was clearly highlighted that we do not need only technological innovation, but also good governance and regulatory frameworks. For the transportation planning profession in general, future directions for growth lie in engaging more effectively with human behaviour and change processes, and engaging in transdisciplinary research. The advances made in data science and big data should be leveraged in any endeavour to transform the transportation industry in African cities. The importance of transforming the transportation industry in SSA is of vital importance for both economic development and human well-being in general. It is in this context that the contribution made by transportation engineers is of immense importance. Prof Eloff concluded by saying that in his lecture, Prof Venter clearly demonstrated that he has the technical insight required, and also a passion for transforming transport on the African continent.

We sincerely congratulate Prof Venter on his well-deserved success and this milestone achievement.

For Prof Venter’s full inaugural address, please visit the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxaO967bElk