While socially cohesive and environmentally low-impact modes of transport, such as walking, cycling and public transit have historically received limited government support in sub-Saharan Africa, the tide appears to be changing. Increasingly, there are visible niche experiments being conducted across the continent and steered by urban mobility policymakers. According to the extant findings in the sustainability transitions literature, such transformations are perplexing, in that they should be unlikely if not impossible in the absence of a coherent group who shares expectations, beliefs, norms and practices about an innovation (as is presumed to be the case in the global South).

The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of, rationales for, and processes in institutional transformation for sustainable urban mobilities in the global South. It does so through a case study analysis of dynamics in Addis Ababa and Kampala where policies, infrastructures and programmes for walking, cycling and public transport have recently been introduced. The study will generate new conceptual insights that will enrich the sustainability transitions’ literature. In doing so, the study will nurture and propel a new generation of early career scholars working at the intersection between urban governance and urban mobilities in sub-Saharan Africa. It will also generate policy-relevant knowledge that can help accelerate sustainable urban transport in sub-Saharan Africa.