A multi agency road safety clinics within Nairobi City. Photo: NTSA/Twitter.

The government has rolled out a nationwide traffic crackdown as part of enhanced security measures during the festive season, aimed at reducing road accidents and curbing corruption on major highways.

Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen says the National Transport and Safety Authority, working with the Traffic Police Department, has launched a coordinated operation targeting high-risk road corridors and major urban routes.

The operation is being implemented in line with resolutions of the National Council on the Administration of Justice and includes the deployment of officers from the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to monitor enforcement and deter bribery.

Murkomen says the measures will involve joint multi-agency enforcement, increased police visibility and the use of both physical and electronic deterrence tools, with mobile courts to be deployed where necessary to ensure instant prosecution of offenders.

Motorists have been advised to plan their journeys in advance, adjust travel schedules and use alternative routes to ease congestion, particularly for travellers heading to Western and Nyanza regions.

Those travelling from Nairobi to Western Kenya and Nyanza have been encouraged to use the Nairobi–Suswa–Narok route as an alternative to the Mai Mahiu escarpment, while motorists heading through the Central region have been advised to consider the Nairobi–Nyeri–Nyahururu–Nakuru route.

The crackdown also comes amid a wider festive season operation that includes a parallel campaign by the National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse against illicit brews and drugs, which authorities say contribute to road crashes and insecurity.

At the same time, the EACC has warned motorists against offering bribes to evade traffic laws, cautioning that the practice endangers lives.

Speaking in Makueni County, EACC regional director for Western Kenya Eric Ngumbi said drivers must stop endangering passengers by bribing enforcement officers to overlook traffic offences.

“Drivers must take responsibility for the passengers they carry. There is no need to overload vehicles, break traffic rules and then offer bribes to evade the law, only to end up killing people. This habit of driving people to their deaths must stop,” Ngumbi said.

Ngumbi revealed that the commission will conduct surveillance on major roads countrywide to arrest both motorists and traffic officers found engaging in bribery.

He also called on the public to play an active role in promoting road safety by speaking out against reckless driving.

“Even as agencies work to reduce accidents, members of the public have a critical role to play. Do not allow a driver who is driving dangerously to continue with the journey,” he added.

The warning by the Commission comes after Chief Justice Martha Koome announced that the Judiciary will deploy mobile courts on major highways, working alongside the National Police Service, NTSA and EACC to enforce traffic laws through arrests and instant prosecution during the holiday season.

Authorities say the combined measures are aimed at stemming the rising number of road accidents, which have in recent months claimed thousands of lives across the country. By Joseph Muia, Citizen Digital 

University of the Witwatersrand - Edson Mwebesa, Fellow at the Wits-based Sub-Saharan Africa Advanced Consortium for Biostatistics (SSACAB), knows children who died from late-diagnosed malaria. His research has also revealed that malaria is more prevalent in pregnant Ugandan women than in any other population. Malaria is also endemic across Africa, impacting all aspects of social and economic life.

Mwebesa, a biostatistician, wanted to dive deeper into what made people choose methods to help prevent malaria. He focused on social and behavioral change messaging, an essential part of encouraging people to use insecticide-treated nets (ITNs). While messaging campaigns have been implemented in the media, hospitals, and schools, the question of whether these messages actually change behavior remains uncertain. Robust biostatistics methods used by African experts are set to change this 

Mwebesa applied a quasi-experimental causal inference method, known as Propensity Score Matching, to investigate this phenomenon. This approach can measure, with precision, whether messaging actually changes behavior.

Traditionally, measuring messaging impact relied on simple correlations and on counting how many people heard a message and whether they used a mosquito bed net. But correlation cannot reveal whether the messages caused the behavior, which in this case is using the mosquito net. Those who heard or saw the messages might differ from those who did not, and thus, the use of mosquito nets might not be comparable between these groups.

Those who hear malaria messages are often wealthier, more educated, or better connected, and these factors independently increase bed net use. This has made it difficult for policymakers to know whether expensive behavior-change campaigns genuinely deliver impact.

Mwebesa measured the impact of messaging aimed at women in Uganda. In that country, about one in four children under five years old tested positive for malaria. In some districts, incidence rates over six-month periods have exceeded 500 cases per 1000 people, demonstrating how quickly the disease can spread in high-transmission settings. Malaria causes fever, chills, weakness, anaemia, and in some cases, complications involving the brain, lungs and other organs. Beyond the clinical burden, malaria disrupts schooling, reduces productivity and places immense strain on household finances, particularly among poorer families.

Understanding how to drive preventive behavior in this context is both a scientific and operational priority. Historically, however, researchers lacked the tools and data required to measure the impact of health communication. In 2001, economists John Luke Gallup and Jeffrey Sachs, writing in The Intolerable Burden of Malaria, explained that reliable data on malaria incidence were lacking for many of the most severely affected countries.

They constructed an indirect malaria index using historical risk maps, estimates of the proportion of falciparum malaria and population distribution data. Their work was pioneering but constrained by limited information, underscoring how weak data systems restricted the ability to study malaria's economic and social effects. They could not measure behavior or the effectiveness of prevention campaigns. They could only infer risk.

We're in a different position now. We have conducted repeated Malaria Indicator Surveys, geocoded demographic data, collected extensive health record data, and improved surveillance systems. What's most exciting, though, is how we are growing the capacity to analyse data using modern causal methods." 

Edson Mwebesa, Fellow at the Wits-based Sub-Saharan Africa Advanced Consortium for Biostatistics

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Institutions such as SSACAB have trained a new generation of African biostatisticians who can use advanced techniques to answer complex policy questions that were previously out of reach.

Mwebesa used nationally representative data from the 2018–19 Malaria Indicator Survey and examined whether exposure to malaria messages increases the use of insecticide-treated nets among women of reproductive age and children under five in Uganda. The descriptive findings show that 37.6 per cent of women aged 15–49 and 37.9 per cent of caregivers of young children had been exposed to malaria prevention messages in the six months preceding the survey. Net use was higher but not universal: 69.3 per cent of women reported sleeping under an insecticide-treated net the night before the survey, as did 71.8 per cent of children under five.

Mwebesa's use of propensity score matching paired each woman who was exposed to malaria messages with another woman who was not, but who shared similar characteristics, such as age, education level, wealth, household size, region, and urban or rural residence. By ensuring that the two groups are comparable, the method isolates the effect of the messaging itself.

"For years, people assumed that malaria messages influenced behaviour, but this analysis shows, with causal evidence, exactly how much they matter. Our findings demonstrate that communication increases net use. We can now quantify this," he said.

After matching, women who were exposed to malaria messages were 5.1 percent more likely to sleep under an insecticide-treated net than similar women who were not exposed. Among children, caregivers' exposure to messages increased ITN use by 4.3 percent.

These differences, when applied nationally, translate into tens of thousands of additional protected households and reduced malaria direct and indirect costs. The study also identified which communication channels were major sources of malaria messages. Radio emerged as the dominant messaging channel, reaching roughly two-thirds of women and caregivers. Community health workers and interpersonal communication were also influential. Digital platforms were used far less frequently, suggesting an untapped potential.

Professor Tobias Chirwa, Principal Investigator for SSACAB and Head of the Wits School of Public Health, explains why this type of work matters for Africa's statistical future. "This study shows what becomes possible when we combine strong African data with strong African statistical capacity. We move from describing problems to measuring impact. That is the essence of statistical innovation. African biostatisticians are leading analyses that were impossible twenty years ago."

In light of African Statistics Day, this work reflects an important shift in statistical justice and evidence sovereignty. Africa is no longer dependent on global assumptions or incomplete models. It can produce high-quality causal evidence that speaks to households' lived realities and informs local policy with accuracy and confidence. This, in turn, supports more efficient investments in communication campaigns, builds equity by identifying which groups are least reached and strengthens the effectiveness of malaria prevention efforts across the continent.

African Statistics Day 2025 highlights the theme of leveraging innovations in data and statistics to promote a just, peaceful, inclusive and prosperous society for Africans. In the field of malaria prevention, this theme is particularly resonant. Source: News Medical Life Sciences