Sustainable transportation in Africa: A bibliometric, visualisation and thematic analysis

Abstract

Sustainable transportation plays a crucial role in achieving development objectives at the local, national and global levels. Numerous studies have focused on sustainable transportation, but there is a limited effort to review these studies to influence future research direction, particularly in the African context. Thus, the purpose of this study is to review research on sustainable transportation in Africa to understand the predominant research topics, knowledge gaps, and directions for future research. The study employed PRISMA protocol for the data collection and a total of 238 articles were retrieved from the SCOPUS database. The study used bibliometrix software and VOSviewer to generate the results and qualitative analysis to identify the knowledge gap and directions for future studies. Five research topics and four knowledge gaps were identified. The proposed areas for further research centres on the social dimension of transport sustainability, information and communication technology (ICT) and transportation, non-motorised transport with an emphasis on walking, as well as transport and disaster risk. The study included only English journal articles from the SCOPUS database, potentially excluding other significant studies. However, this study provides a valuable overview of sustainable transportation research in Africa, beneficial for both academics and non-academics involved in transport planning and policy-making.