Urban congestion costs Africa around $314 billion a year and is expected to rise to $488 billion by 2030, according to rail manufacturer Alstom.
While artificial intelligence (AI) is often used as a productivity assistant, website builder, and information synthesiser, the Yango group is utilising it as a concrete economic infrastructure to cut down on traffic congestion costs.
In 2025, Yango Ride’s intelligent routing technologies returned nearly 2 million hours to African city dwellers—a measurable productivity gain in cities where traffic congestion costs up to 5% of GDP.
In its latest white paper, the company shared how, through its intelligence systems, it saved users a total of 5 million hours through its intelligent routing systems, for all its users living in major cities. To illustrate, this would translate to 600 years.
In a video shared by the Yango group, Yango’s Chief Business Officer, Adeniyi Adebayo, shared that behind every trip is a routing system that combines traffic data, machine learning, and historical patterns in real time to arrive at the most efficient route in milliseconds.
At the beginning of every trip, the Yango system analyses intersections, traffic lights, expected road types, and expected congestion to optimise for both total travel time and distance.
For example, the Yango AI-powered routing system discovered that left turns take longer than right turns, and sharp U-turns add a few minutes to the trip. The system makes these layered calculations across many routes and chooses the routes with the least travel time. By the time the trip ends, Yango Ride’s system compares the actual travel time to the predicted travel time to improve internal system data.
Image source: Yango Group white paper
The system is tailored to the nuances of each African city. In Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, and Dakar, it saved riders 815,000 hours and 170,000 hours, respectively—time that would otherwise have been lost in traffic. In Kinshasa, riders experienced an average 6% reduction in travel time per trip.
As a travel partner, the Yango AI-powered routing system is designed to help users win back years of their lives that might otherwise be spent in congested traffic lanes or on longer routes. Yango’s routing system benefits both riders and businesses—economically, through reduced fuel costs; environmentally, through lower emissions; and socially, through improved quality of life. The system is powered by data aggregated from millions of trips analysed across 28 cities on four continents.
To find out more about Yango, head over to www.yango.com
