Imperatives for a Holistic African Urbanisation Agenda

UN Habitat, ‘Take Off’ Conference,Nairobi, Dec 2013

Prof Susan ParnellUniversity of Cape Town (Geography and African Centre for Cities)

Competing Views on African Urbanisation

Urban bias Circular migration Urban growth

AnalysisCities get too much attention given that rural poverty is most extreme

Urbanisation without industrialisation is bad

AnalysisPoverty causes people to move between town and countryside vs split livelihoods causes poverty

AnalysisCities are where the majority liveCities offer the best possibilities for poverty mitigation, growth & sustainability

Policy responses:• Rural/agricultural development•Protect the peasantry•Equalize rural/urban service levels•Prevent urbanisation

Policy responses: •Facilitate movement and split liveihood strategies

•Don’t force the poor to hold 2 bases

Policy responses: •Improve urban planning and governance•Introduce urban welfare regimes/tax/incentives•End urban bias and influx controls•Build sustainable, resilient and equitable urban places

ASSUMPTION: CITIES HAVE TO DOMINATE THE NEW

DEVELOPMENT AGENDA

• Rural poverty will not disappear • Some (circular) migration is inevitable • Cities will grow and become even more important.

CITIES WHERE, INCREASINGLY, THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE LIVE, WORK and CONSUME HAVE BEEN UNDERREPRESENTED IN THE DEVELOPMENT AGENDA.

Urban growth and urbanisation will shape the development challenges of the 21st C

– Health– Infrastructure – Climate change – The economy– Social norms– Environmental risk

profile– Conflict patterns– Politics– Demographics– Good governance– Post conflict

reconstruction

Competing, overlapping and complimentary imperatives for an African urban agenda

• Demographic – Africa’s urban moment, a unique African urban trajectory?

• Environment – African cities especially vulnerable?• Economic –new middle class – the urban dividend?• Social – urban poverty and food insecurity• Physical– infrastructure & service needs & opportunities• Governance – anti-urbanism, weak sub national states &

complex governance

Reorienting a development agenda to accommodate the new

African realities and its urban future is not as simple as it seems

1. There is no single process of urbanisation

• Differences between Africa and elsewhere

• Differences within Africa

• Differences within regions of a particular African nations

Africa’s population is large (965 million in 2007) and growing fast (3.3%p.a)Urbanization is the key overall trend

Consensus – the data is poor and extreme caution is necessary

Rapid growth of small and medium cities as well as the emergence of mega city regions requires

policy flexibilityAnnual growth rate of the world's cities by region and size

(1990 - 2000 around)

2.49%

1.81%

2.49%2.40%

3.00%

0.0%

1.0%

2.0%

3.0%

4.0%

5.0%

Small cities Intermediate cities Big cities Large cities Total

Africa LAC Asia (China) (India) Developing regions Developed regions World total

Figures shown in the graph are developing regions average.

Note: cities w ith more than 100,000 inhabitantsSource: UN Statistics Division, Demographic Yearbook, UN Population Division, World Urbanization

Africa

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Urb

an

gro

wth

ra

tes

(%

)

Growth in urbanpopulation share

Natural populationgrowth

Latin America and the Caribbean

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

1950-1955

1955-1960

1960-1965

1965-1970

1970-1975

1975-1980

1980-1985

1985-1990

1990-1995

1995-2000

2000-2005

2005-2010

2010-2015

2015-2020

2020-2025

2025-2030

2030-2035

2035-2040

2040-2045

2045-2050

Growth in urbanpopulation share

Natural populationgrowth

Asia

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Growth in urbanpopulation share

Natural populationgrowth

The assumption that urbanisation will reduce population growth may or may not not hold across Africa:The nature of the demographic transition varies across regions, with natural population growth a much more important variable in Africa ….does this matter??

African fertility rates are high because …

Lack of access to affordable health care

Lack of education among women

No urban jobs, social safety nets or security

PatriarchyThe widespread

commoditization of sex

Urban agendas are sensitive to absolute increases in the number of urban residents & changes in household size

2. Environment: Cities are an integral part of our FUTURE EARTH

Future Earth:Cities are a hot spot of the interface between climate, demography, the economy, human consumption of ecosystem service and the built environment - complexity of complexity

Migration

Climatechange

Demography

Every African city depends on its’ ecosystem services

Natural growth of urban populations is a more significant driver of vulnerability in Africa than migration The impacts of GEC African migration will be felt in

African not globally The impacts of GEC migration will be felt in cities not

just the countryside GEC challenges cities face are not simply migration

induced

Global Environmental Change … key driver of the new African urban agenda

Global Environmental Change raises fundamental questions about the African settlement system

• Rural focus of climate adaptation work is outmoded

• Given where growth is focused, the national urban system needs attenton

• Coastal City vulnerabiity• The protective/adaptive role

of urban planning • The importance of upholding

urban resource integrity

3. Cities drive economic growth

The global urban profile is shifting fast. What is the future of urban welfare, given population and economic growth in cities of the global south?

Africa has growing inequality, driven by increasing wealth and poverty:

Gini coefficient for selected African cities

trends

4. Urban Poverty Rates - SADC

Country Urban growth Rate (%)

Urban Poverty (%)

Botswana 6.0 9.0

Lesotho 3.5 46.0

Malawi 6.0 54.0

Mozambique 6.3 62.0

Namibia 4.2 40.0

South Africa (JHB)

4.1 40.0

Swaziland 5.5 66.0

Zambia 3.6 52.0

Zimbabwe 5.0 70.0

The growth of the URBAN poor shifts the locus of food (in)security

• World Food Summits in 1996 and 2002 (and MDG No 1) made commitment to reducing no of undernourished people (800 million) by 50% by 2015.

• 2006 Mid-Term Review of Committee on World Food Security found “progress has been negligible.”

• 2009, following global food price hikes and world economic crisis, FAO estimates number of food insecure exceeds 1 billion.

Windhoek

Gaborone

Maseru

Manzini

Maputo

Blantyre

Lusa

ka

Harare

Cape Town

Msunduzi

Johannesburg

Total0

102030405060708090

100

Household Food Security Status for 11 Cities

Food secure

Food insecure

77%

77% chronically food insecure

Health implications of an urban lifestyle among Africa’s poor?

• Massive shift in the burden of disease• Urbanisation the burden of disease

become more complex– What people eat, how they exercise

what work they do, what pollutants they are exposed to (water, sanitation but also air)

– Age cohorts shift– Exposure to different risks

• Urbanisation alters what the environmental determinants of health are – Crime, traffic, pollution etc

• Urbanisation shifts the nature of the health care response and organisation

• Urbanisation creates new opportunities for health education

5. Infrastructure & services; urban crisis or dividend?

African cities need effective public infrastructure: streets

Infrastructure demand US$bn in African cities (Pieterse and Smit, 2014)

5. Governance

African Cities have multiple actors governing & exercising power

Key issues:

No comprehensive urban tax base

Dual/overlapping land tenure, zoning, land use regulation & enforcement

Lack of transparency and corruption

CONCLUSION

Establishing anurban agenda For Africais imperative, But competingpressures meansit will not be easy and will need considerable politicalcommitment