#JoeWalker clocks 4,000km!
By Joe Walker 20 months ago, I was grappling with the doctor’s instructions to try walking to relieve a stubborn pain in the shoulder blade. The doctor recommended a 30 minute-walk thrice a week. On the first day I walked for an hour, 5 months down the road I was setting out for a 342km road safety walk to Bushenyi and since then I have walked for 4,000km. And, I am still walking. Four lessons over the thousands of kilometers Plan: Taking long effective walks takes a lot of patience, you can’t rush the process. It’s one step at a time. So proper planning and...
Kampala Hill to Hill Walk: A tale of road safety awareness, physical and mental triumph
By David Mujuni The distance was 45km. The time to depart was 6am on Saturday June 17, 2023. The route would see the team walking from the starting point at Sheraton Hotel Parking, through the town, onto Bugolobi, then to Makindye, over to Namirembe, then to Wandegeya and back to the hotel parking. This was yet another activity that Mr Joseph Beyanga commonly known as Joe Walker was going to do as part of his efforts to raise awareness about the increasing road crashes in Uganda. The Kampala Hill-to-Hill walk presented another opportunity for the walkers to spread the road safety...
Joe Walker, partners visit accident victims at Mulago Hospital
By David Mujuni Road safety activist Joseph Beyanga commonly known as Joe Walker and friends on Wednesday visited and commiserated with accident victims admitted at Mulago National Referral Hospital. The visit is part of their activities as they prepare for the Kampala 45-kilometre walk slated for Saturday, June 17, 2023. The group delivered assorted items including sugar, bread, soap and others to the patients, and encouraged them, saying they are in the right hands, at Mulago Hospital. The team was hosted by Dr. Rose Byanyima, the hospital’s Executive Director. Addressing journalists on Wednesday, Beyanga noted that many people would not be driving if...
Joe Walker set for Kampala road safety drive
By David Mujuni Road safety advocate Mr Joseph Beyanga commonly known as Joe Walker is set to walk again in another road safety awareness drive. Mr Beyanga has announced that he will be hitting the road for a 45km road safety awareness walk come June 17, 2023, in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. He made the revelation during a road safety awareness Twitter space hosted by Hovita on Tuesday evening. “We are doing Kampala walk on 17th June, Hill to Hill 45 kilometres. We are doing all this for road safety. We have activities like painting zebra crossings, visiting the victims of road crashes, and...
REPORT: Kampala to Mbale road safety walk 2023
More than 12 people are killed per day in road traffic crashes in Uganda, translating to more than 4,534 deaths annually. The majority of the victims are pedestrians and bodaboda riders. Traffic officers attribute many of these deaths and injuries to the careless road behaviour of riders, cyclists and drivers. These fatalities and injuries can be reduced greatly if awareness is constantly created and if the state of the roads are improved. This is why Joseph Beyanga aka Joe Walker, has been on a mission since 2018 to get the stakeholders involved, to play their part, using the Joe Walker and...
Joe Walker, Minister Kabuye headline Car-free Day
By David Mujuni In a bid to reduce air pollution, road safety champion, Joseph Beyanga commonly known as Joe Walker alongside State Minister for Kampala and Metropolitan affairs, Mr. Kabuye Kyofatogabye led a group of walkers as Uganda held a car-free day in Kampala on Sunday March 26, 2023 under the theme "road safety and air quality." Minister Kyofatogabye who was among those who preferred riding to walking highlighted the need for encouraging non-motorized corridors. “Can you imagine without police people managed to organize themselves?” Kyofatogabye said, adding that if the use of non-motorised corridors was encouraged and people observed the cycling...
Joe Walker commended by Jubilee Allianz
Joe Walker and friends were on Thursday, March 9th, commended and appreciated for the walk to Mbale, by Jubilee Allianz at the Railway Grounds in Kampala, where the company was participating in the Annual Insurance Week. In a campaign dubbed #TooYoungtoDie, Joseph Beyanga (commonly known as Joe Walker), with his friends and colleagues walked over 240km to Mbale to raise awareness about road safety. Jubilee Allianz was one of the sponsors of the walk and provided the team with Shs5 million to cater for logistics and educational materials, something that Joe Walker said was a big boost to the campaign. “Thank you...
AUDIO: Report on Kampala-Mbale walk
By Benjamin Jumbe Joseph Beyanga better known as Joe Walker has just concluded yet another long walk as part of his road safety campaign. The walk, which was held under the theme "Too Young to Die", saw him together with friends trek miles to Mbale City in the eastern part of Uganda and took six days. In this report, Joe shares his experience, and plans for future campaigns to keep road safety at the top of people's minds. Listen to the report below; ...
Kampala to Mbale walk: What we saw, heard and how to make our roads safer
The #JoeWalker Kampala to Mbale trek was a different challenge from what we had done earlier. It was a shorter route, but a rough road for half the journey, and had more reckless drivers and harsher weather conditions. It also had however, rich and insightful engagements. Pedestrians As we streamed out of Nakawa eastwards, we were embarking on a rough unfriendly road that would be our cup of tea for the next 125km till we got to Tirinyi Road. With more people walking than cars on the road, the experience of a pedestrian on most of our roads is still a nightmare....
Reliving walk from Kampala to Mbale
By Andrew Mwanguhya “I’m doing this. All in,” I declared on the Daily Monitor sports WhatsApp group on the morning of January 6, exactly a month before the long walk to Mbale, some 240 kilometres from the starting point in Kampala. My declaration came with a link to a tweet by Nation Media Group Uganda’s head of Radio, Joseph Beyanga, where he was drumming up his upcoming walk to Mbale from Kampala in a road safety awareness drive. Many colleagues applauded my resolve to join Beyanga, who - for the second year running - is walking under the Joe Walker moniker. Safe Roads Save Lives and...