The large and mostly impoverished populations of African cities are dependant on public transport. In most African cities, private vehicle ownership and traffic is increasing rapidly, scheduled or formal public transport systems are declining or have disappeared altogether and the unscheduled or informal paratransit systems that have replaced them are unsafe and offer a low quality service. A problem with public transport planning in many African cities is that public transport is either poorly planned or not planned at all. This is due to the fact that there is a lack of adequate information and planning framework to guide decision makers and that they either select inappropriate systems based on those used in developed countries or allow private operators to decide. It is the responsibility of government to ensure that public transport systems meet the needs of the communities they serve and political decision-makers need to make the right decisions for the development of public transport. Precise and relevant performance indicators and statistics may give a clear overview of the public transport systems of cities and will help to monitor the benefits of implementing efficient systems. Therefore a need exits to develop a methodology to assess public transport systems in African cities. The aim of this paper is to set out a methodology to describe, discuss, and compare public transport systems in African cities. The paper will only discuss the assessment methodology, and the application of the methodology will be discussed in a future paper.