Road Rules, the Zimbabwean provisional drivers’ tests startup closed off 2016 on a high note after entering into a content partnership with the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe (TSCZ).
Through a memorandum of understanding signed in Harare, TSCZ has pledged to provide the Road Rules mobile app with approved content on Zimbabwe traffic regulation which will be used by applicants vying for a drivers’ learners’ licence.
In the past, Road Rules has had to curate content for its application on its own through collaborations with local driving schools and from the State approved Highway Code.
This deal means that Road Rules, through its mobile app which has registered over 25,000 users to date, becomes a complementary learning tool for the Provisional Learners’ Licence and general traffic rules for Zimbabwe, albeit with State approved content.
In return, Road Rules will provide TSCZ with a digital platform for the distribution of its content and help it participate in some form of digitisation of the Highway Code.
Since access to the Road Rules app is provided at a premium TSCZ also stands to benefit from some of the profit generated through the online distribution of its content.
You can download the Road Rules App for Android by following this link here
The new agreement with the TSCZ ensures that Road Rules passes on the responsibility of content verification and alignment with the latest traffic regulations to the national traffic authority.
According to Road Rules founder and CEO Tawanda Chikosi, their team will now focus on User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) improvement and with the help of TSCZ work on expanding the app’s presence in other countries in Southern Africa with standardised regional traffic regulations.
Road Rules will become the first digital drivers’ education application to have State approved learning content giving it an edge in a race that is also being run by a handful of other provisional licence apps and the more popular offline methods of learners’ booklets that are widely distributed through streetside vendors.
Some of these sources have often been highlighted as pools of misinformation by unsuccessful students who end up taking the learners’ licence test repeatedly.
Hopefully, the Road Rules/TSCZ partnership will provide a good working example of how the government, through its various arms, can work together with Zimbabwe’s startup community to use technology for the delivery of solutions that can improve people’s lives.
- Techzim