Africa's exploding cities.

The UN-Habitat's World Urban Forum III which was held in Vancouver, Canada in June was perhaps the most significant global congregation so far of this new millennium. The theme was 'Sustainable cities'. The first ever UN Conference on Human Settlements was held 30 years ago, also in Vancouver. At that time, one third of the world's population lived in urban areas; today, 50% of the human population is urbanized and the trend is growing rapidly, especially in the developing world. Africa has the world's fastest rate of urbanization.

The task of the conference was to gaze into the crystal ball and work out policies and processes to make the cities of the future pleasant, healthy and profitable places to live in. But first, the growth of slums, which are expanding at an alarming rate in the developing world, has to be checked and the phenomenon of rural poverty has to be tackled.

The World Urban Forum was also a tribute to the relentless determination of Anna Tibaijuka, the Under-Secretary General of the UN and Executive Director of UN-Habitat, to place the issue of urbanization at the top of the global agenda. On the following pages, we begin our coverage with an exclusive interview with Ms Tibaijuka, who, as an African, brings an insider's eye to Africa's urban crisis.

Anna Tibaijuka

The future for Africa is urban

Mrs. Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka. Executive Director of UN-Habitat and UN Under-Secretary General, is the highest ranking African woman in the UN system. A Tanzanian national, she joined UN-Habitat as Executive Director in 2000. During her first two years in office, Mrs. Tibaijuka oversaw major reforms that led the UN General Assembly to upgrade the UN Centre for Human Settlement to a fully-fledged UN programme, now called UN-Habitat. Mrs. Tibaijuka has substantially strengthened UN-Habitat policitically, financially and operationally, greatly increasing its visibility and impact. In 2004, British Prime Minister Tony Blair invited Mrs. Tibaijuka to be a member of the Commission for Africa.

A record 9,000 people attended the World Urban Forum III held in Vancouver, Canada in June.

The Forum, regarded as the best ever, was a tribute to the hard work of Mrs. Tibaijuka and her team.

African Business editor Anver Versi, who participated in the Forum as a Dialogue Moderator, interviewed Mrs. Tibaijuka.

Anver Versi: The world will be entering uncharted waters in the very near future; for the first time in human history, the number of people living in urban areas will exceed those in the rural areas. What are the broad implications of this massive change for Africa?

Anna Tibaijuka: The implications are enormous. Whereas the proportion of people living in cities and towns in Europe and the Americas has stabilised at about 75%, in Africa and Asia, only 39.7% of Africans and 39.9% of Asians currently live in cities. However, Africa and Asia are in for a major demographic shift. Already, with urban growth rates as high as 4.58%, Africa is urbanising faster than any other continent, and by 2030 Africa will cease to be a rural continent. In fact, with 748m urban residents, the African urban population will be larger than the projected total European population of 685m.

The fact that Africa is on the move means that many urban centers are doubling their populations every 10 to 15 years. The result is that local authorities have to cope with accommodating the rapidly increasing population not only in terms of their shelter and service needs but also in providing means of livelihood and in ensuring inclusiveness and participatory governance.

We estimate that already about 72% of the urban population in Africa lives in slums. The proliferation of slum settlements and the increasing urbanisation of poverty does not augur well for Africa.

Urgent action is needed. Policy makers and planners need to understand that the future of Africa is urban and that this massive change will alter the pattern of politics, nature of conflicts and the overall sustainability of the continent's economic development.

AV: The last two decades have seen an unprecedented growth of cities worldwide. This has brought undreamt wealth to some parts of the world but dire poverty to others. Can you explain this dichotomy?

AT: The spectacular increase in wealth in the cities of the world is part of the process of globalisation. However, it is also clear that the real winners have been cities with a long history of urban development. The process of urbanisation in Europe and America, in the 19th century, was accompanied by industrialisation that created a massive infrastructure that could be used by their cities to attract international capital.

Today, in the global bidding war for capital and finance, many cities in Africa and Asia are seriously hampered by their lack of decent infrastructure. In fact, as UN-Habitat's research shows, in many developing countries globalisation has led both to increasing disparities between cities and within cities. This is because local authorities have been forced to invest in high-end infrastructure to attract foreign companies rather than in providing for the urban poor.

Clearly, as Africa and Asia industrialise and urbanise, it remains to be seen how their cities develop. For example, in 1950, with a population of over 10m, New York was the only mega-city in the world. Today there are 19 such cities and many of them are in the developing world. In fact by 2040, all but four of the world's mega-cities will be in the developing world. Sub-Saharan Africa already has one mega-city, Lagos. Currently the sixth largest city in the world, it is expected to become the third largest city with a population of over 20m by 2030.

We can only hope that the expansion of the urban sector in Africa will lead to increased investment and industrialisation so that Africans can also play their part in the process of globalization.

AV: Some cities are centres of creativity, economic dynamism and provide the most pleasant places to live in; others are chaotic, dangerous and unpleasant. Why is this so?

AT: Let us not forget that the cities of Europe and America were once chaotic centers of economic growth. In the 19th century all the cities that we now look up to as models of efficiency and elegance were once surrounded by slums and squatter settlements. Dickens described the slums in London; Jacob Riis photographed the tenements of New York, which included squatter settlements in Central Park.

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It is now the turn of African and Asian cities. They are growing at such a rapid rate that it will clearly take time for local authorities to manage the process of urbanisation.

Having said that, it should be understood that the development of such cities is closely linked to the overall economic development of the third world. Cities in Africa and Asia will not be able to exercise their full potential until and unless the larger world economy works in their favour.

This point was made quite succinctly in the Commission for Africa report Our Common Interest, which emphasized that chaotic urbanisation is the second greatest challenge, after HIV/Aids, confronting the continent. The report concludes by calling for greater investment in urban infrastructure.

AV: Most African cities have relatively short histories, going back at most to 200 years. What are the characteristics of cities in sub-Saharan Africa?

AT: At UN-Habitat, we are increasingly aware of the fact that the colonial context greatly influenced the development of most African cities. After all, colonial authorities rarely developed inclusive cities; rather they wanted to, and in fact did, exclude the African majority from exercising their right to the city.

This is why even today we have out of date, unrealistic by-laws and specifications that are aimed at providing for an exclusive elite. This colonial legacy affected not only housing standards but the way local authorities worked.

Today, one of our major tasks is to get local authorities to understand that they should be inclusive. In fact, UN-Habitat's Campaign on Good Governance is working with many local authorities in Africa to encourage them to use new methods of participatory planning.

The aim is to get local authority officials to incorporate the wishes and insights of all citizens into the planning process. Creative partnerships with the private sector, non-governmental organizations and especially the urban poor are the best way to improve the living environment in our cities and towns.

AV: You have been spearheading one of UN-Habitat's main objectives of improving the lives of slum dwellers. I have two questions: one, how do slums come about; and what can be done about slums in Africa? Secondly what is the difference between slums in Africa and Asia?

AT: I have already established that Africa is urbanising faster than any other continent. This is partly due to a failure of agricultural policies but also because of the numbers of regional conflicts that are driving people into the safety of cities. Cities like Luanda and Kinsasha have doubled even tripled their populations in a very short period of time. This has led to a complete breakdown in services and in the provision of housing for the poor.

It should be noted that though Africa has fewer slum dwellers than Asia in absolute numbers, proportionally the figure is much higher. Very briefly, 72% of the urban population in Africa are slum dwellers, while in Asian cities it is about 50%.

Clearly, there is no quick fix to the problem of slum formation but at UN-Habitat we are working at a number of levels. First and foremost, we need to make African leaders and policy makers understand the nature of the urban crisis. And I am pleased to say that the African Union has taken the issue seriously--for example at the Maputo Summit, President Chisano personally raised the alarm and emphasised the need for well managed cities.

Secondly, we need to help countries work holistically to develop integrated rural and urban development strategies that encourage the growth of smaller cities and growth nodes. This is one of the best ways to ensure that not everyone migrates to the capital city.

Finally, we need to help local authorities to become more inclusive. They need to integrate the shelter needs of the urban poor and to work with them on in-situ slum upgrading projects. This includes encouraging a bundle of polices, from providing security of tenure for the urban poor, through to establishing pro-poor mortgage mechanisms.

AV: Cities in South Africa, for several historical reasons, are the exception to the general rule in Africa but as more people move into these cities and as patterns of economic activity change, do you think South African cities will be able to cope?

AT: Definitely, they should be able to cope, in fact, remarkable efforts are being made by the government of South Africa to address the challenge of urban development at all levels. UN-Habitat has been working closely with the government of South Africa to strategise the optimum way to provide housing for the urban poor.

The strategy includes providing the urban poor with some form of security of tenure and access to land; this is then linked to savings schemes and micro-credit facilities followed by capacity building of whole communities so that they could build the houses themselves.

The result is that since the first democratic elections in 1994, the government in collaboration with a wide range of civil society actors has provided subsidies to more than 1,334,200 households targeted at the poorest of the poor. By 2001, a total of 1,155,300 homes had been constructed housing as many as 5,776,300 people.

AV: How seriously do our African governments take this urban growth? I was very disappointed to see hardly any African head of state at the Vancouver WUF. I would have imagined the urban issue would have been on top of their development agenda.

AT: I do not share your disappointment! Even if we take the recently concluded World Urban Forum that you have referred to, the participation of African governments was outstanding. Notwithstanding, the distance from Africa to Canada, almost every African government was represented, many at Ministerial levels. I personally had communication of some Heads of State who conveyed their commitment to the agenda and best wishes for the conference.

If you were in Vancouver, you will recall that the Tanzanian Vice-President attended on behalf of the Head of State and delivered a keynote address. Similarly, the African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development (AMCHUD) which is the standing organ that brings together all government ministers holding those portfolios actively participated at the Forum and convened some of its operational meetings in Vancouver.

Their participation was the end result of a long process that goes back to 2003, when the AU's Assembly of Heads of State and Government adopted at their meeting in Maputo, Mozambique, Decision 29, to promote the development of sustainable cities and towns in Africa. Among other things, this decision underscored a determination to reap the potential benefits of cities and towns as centres of economic growth and places of opportunity and prosperity for all.

AV: During the WUF there was considerable emphasis on how to raise and spend municipal finance. Comparative figures are quite staggering: Sheffield County Council in the UK spends $3,043 per person; Lushoto in Tanzania, (your home country) spends only $2.32 per person! How can African cities break out of this financial bottleneck?

AT: The issue of financing urban development and improving the capacity of local authorities in Africa is indeed paramount. The Commission for Africa emphasised this as indeed has the AU. Without properly functioning urban centers, even rural development will not be possible. Though there are no silver bullets to the problem, what is urgently needed is a recognition that, in the past, the international community has prioritized rural development and failed to invest in urban infrastructure and human settlements.

The gravity of this situation was underscored by Heads of State and government at the World Summit in 2005 where in paragraph 56(m) of the Summit outcome, they recognised the urgent need for the provision of increased resources for affordable housing and housing-related infrastructure, prioritizing slum prevention and slum upgrading and to encourage support for the UN-Habitat and Human Settlement Foundation and its Slum Upgrading Facility, something which is also emphasised in the Commission for Africa report.

At the same time what is needed is a package of policies that allows local authorities to create innovative partnerships to raise municipal finance. First, there is a need for sound legal frameworks to allow fiscal decentralisation that matches resources with functional responsibilities of cities. This should include sound municipal borrowing legislation and more predictable inter-governmental transfers from central and provincial governments.

Second, we should keep in mind that sustainable domestic capital is the key financial mechanism for sustainable urbanisation. International donors can play a catalytic role through capacity building support, credit enhancement support and financial guarantees. Third, cities should be made credit worthy through strengthening their capacity to manage budgets transparently and reduce leakages. In this regard, measures such as participatory budgeting can help in creating trust between municipalities and taxpayers. Finally, all lenders need to be "part of the solution" through promotion of sound governance frameworks and measures such as credit ratings and relevant certifications. However, many cities, particularly in Africa, will still need transition phase funding while they gain capacity to borrow in local markets in a sustainable way.

AV: In the majority of African cities, roads are in disrepair, rubbish remains uncollected and there are fetid pools of stagnant water. Why can't local authorities do what they are paid to do? Is it corruption, indifference or incompetence? How can we, the civil society, demand and get better cities?

AT: Apart from some of the issues I have already raised about financing, governance and capacity, sometimes it is as simple as not knowing what can and should be done, what simple measures have succeeded in other countries.

At UN-Habitat we have been trying to work with a number of local authorities to encourage them to 'break out of the box' so to speak and to find innovative solutions within their means, and there are many success stories.

For example, over a decade ago, under the Sustainable Cities Project, UN-Habitat placed a Human Settlements Officer in the city council offices of Dar es Salaam. Together a strategy was designed that prioritised the collection of garbage by getting the private sector to partner with non-governmental organisations and local communities. Though the project took time to put into place the end result was a much cleaner city. So much so that there are now over 18 municipalities in Tanzania that are replicating the sustainable cities model.

AV: It is clear that city infrastructure in most of Africa is inadequate to cater for the urban boom but governments seem reluctant to invest sufficiently or plan for the future. Can the private sector have a role to play here?

AT: There is no question that there is an urgent need for the private sector to become key players in urban development. In the past, the private sector has been successfully integrated into providing services for the comparatively well off. However, the real problem is that the private sector does not want to risk getting involved with providing housing and services for the urban poor.

Far too often the private sector thinks of slum upgrading as high risk and does not know how to proceed. Yet we know from our research that the urban poor proportionally pay more for their shelter and services. The poor are actually quite capable of saving and contributing to the upgrading of their shelter conditions.

Despite this there are few if any pro-poor mortgage mechanisms in Africa. This is why at UN-Habitat we have established the slum upgrading facility. Briefly the aim is to use international funding to create guarantee mechanisms to help mobilise domestic capital. The idea is to create a partnership between the government, local authorities, non-governmental organisations, the community and the banks in order to make slum upgrading genuinely bankable and profitable.

AV: What can we do about it? In Charles Dickens time, London had worse slum than Nairobi or Cairo but they managed to clean them out over a relatively short period. What did they do then that we can do now?

AT: I am pleased to hear you mention Charles Dickens. People like him, Zola, Jacob Riis and other journalists were instrumental in highlighting the problems of the urban poor. Their work led to major policy changes and improvements in housing policies for the urban poor. This is why I am so pleased that you and your magazine were able to attend the World Urban Forum.

The media is a powerful agent of change and can sensitise Africans and the international community to the rapid changes taking place on the continent. You can help people understand the urgent need to take urbanisation in Africa seriously. We need to understand that the continent is going through the urbanisation of poverty. The successful development of Africa is closely linked to the future of its cities.

UGANDA

People to people connection

The link between Daventry District Council (UK) and Africa was established in February 1995. Situated almost on the Equator, the Ugandan town of Iganga is an eight hour flight from England and is only 25 km from Lake Victoria and the source of one of the world's great rivers, the White Nile.

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Iganga, a lively market town, is home to over 35,000 people of whom 85% live off the land. Situated on the main highway to Kenya, Iganga is the main town in a rural area of over 1m people. With few people being able to afford cars, most people walk or cycle into town. In Uganda bicycles are used as taxis (boda-boda) and for carrying everything from bananas to wardrobes.

With most people having no refrigerator at home for storing food, they buy goods from the local shops and market as they need them. This attracts many thousands of people into the town each day to do their shopping--with plenty of choice available in over 200 stalls in the market and 600 other shops in the town.

Most people lack modern conveniences as they live in poor quality housing with dirt (murram) roads, no mains water supply or piped sewage disposal. Few have electricity in their homes and so there is no television, computer or hi-fi. But for all the material drawbacks, Iganga has its very own special qualities. Family ties and community links are strong and local people always make visitors very welcome..

Early in 1995, Daventry District Council established its first linkages with Iganga Town Council. Within that very first year, the District Council and the County's Youth Service sent a second-hand minibus to the town. Since then, the link has gone from strength to strength with the help of European Union and Commonwealth Forum funding. Exchange visits have led to improvements in local government services in Iganga, all of which have contributed towards a better quality of life for residents.

Joint projects have concentrated on public health including refuse collection, health education, drainage and water supply. In 1998, a second-hand refuse vehicle was sent to Iganga to improve refuse collection. As a result, the eyesore and health hazard of rubbish lying in town centre streets has been removed as local people have given their full support to the new collection service.

Town Council financial systems have also been improved and computers introduced. A VSO town planner is now working in the town and a two-year project is underway to improve surface water drainage in Iganga's town centre. The drainage project will help water flow away more quickly after heavy rain, getting rid of stagnant water that is a breeding ground for disease, including mosquitoes carrying malaria. All these projects will help to improve the quality of life for local residents.

The link between Daventry and Iganga provides opportunities to learn directly from ordinary people about their everyday life, to get behind the stories in the newspapers or seen on the television.

People in Iganga learn as much as those of Daventry and community ties are strong involving voluntary groups, schools, and individuals young and old alike. Over 50 individuals and schools in Daventry are involved with their counterparts in Iganga.

How the death of a little girl sparked off a housing revolution

Gordon Feller tells the inspiring story of how the death of a little girl in a South African township sparked off a self-help housing initiative which has now grown into one of the most successful such schemes in the world.

How does the process of change work in African slums? The empowerment of one particular South African community began with the death of a small girl. In 1999, a flash flood swept through a community in Ivory Park Township, located in a river valley between Pretoria and Johannesburg. The river that ran through the community spilled over its banks and flushed hundreds of shacks off their moorings of stones and tires. The flood scattered walls and roofs made of scrap cardboard and polyethylene and rusted corrugated metal wherever it chose to dump them. And it swept the three year old girl to her death.

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That was enough for Anna Mofokeng. A mother of two boys, she had lived in the Ivory Park township for eight years. Mofokeng had gone to the funeral for the drowned child, heard the politicians and administrators bemoan the little girl's fate, and knew in her heart that if change was going to come, the community would have to be involved.

Previously, the apartheid-era authorities had caused the inhabitants of Ivory Park more problems than they had ever solved, raiding the settlement to try to demolish it over and over again. The residents showed plenty of innovation in response, building their homes in such a way that they could easily be taken down and set up again whenever the government tried to clear them away. But it was a zero-sum game. Anna Mofokeng decided that this innovative spirit could be harnessed in the new South Africa and turned into something that would last. She challenged neighbouring women to put aside R20 ($2.77) a week--equivalent to the cost of a loaf of bread a day. They would start a savings society and, one-by-one, homes, starting with the poorest, would be replaced by modest, permanent dwellings that would not wash away.

Positive Action

The money raised would be used to buy the building materials. The total collected would be awarded to a different woman each week, the recipient being the one living in the poorest shack. Members would pitch in to build each modest house, virtually eliminating labour costs.

Only six people joined the first week. Initially, there was a sense that it was ridiculous to believe that houses could be created out of a loaf of bread a day--bread that was needed to feed hungry children. Mofokeng was even accused of trying to set up a pyramid scheme. Such was the inauspicious birth of the Masisizane Women's Housing Cooperative (masisizane means 'help one another' in Zulu).

The first house the women built had to be knocked down and started again. A government inspector said it would crack and fall down. "It looked fine to us. But the man showed us what we had done wrong," Mofokeng later told a reporter. "We were so angry ... we had to destroy the building and start over. But, I'll tell you what, we never made those mistakes again."

By 2001, the Women's Co-op had built 18 homes without any government assistance. An article in the Christian Science Monitor newspaper described the process: "Singing as they work, the women--without much in the way of tools or training--do everything from laying a foundation to putting on the roof. They hire sympathetic local men at reduced rates for the more technical plumbing work and plastering, bringing the cost of a new home down to between $1,000 and $2,000."

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Up to that point, the new South African government had little engagement with community self-help groups, but that thinking was beginning to change. Attempts to eradicate informal communities, sometimes termed 'squatters' were abandoned. Consideration was even being given to subsidising self- help groups that could prove they were effective.

There were between 2-3m homeless people in South Africa, and the government finally recognised that it did not have the resources to solve the problem on its own.

Launching "Project Hope"--designed to develop a spirit of volunteerism among South Africans--former president Nelson Mandela declared in the fall of 2001: "We do need a vibrant network and range of civil society activities and organs if we are to permanently cement the foundations of our democracy."

Following the Christian Science Monitor's article, the South African government worked with Mofokeng to start similar self-help groups throughout Johannesburg's many townships. By the time of her death in 2003, she had helped to found many groups operating on the Masisizane model and was still adamant that she could convert South Africa's acres of tin shacks into proud neighbourhoods.

Rooftops Canada, an NGO with experience in co-operative housing, had become involved the year before, with funding from the Canadian government's International Development Agency (CIDA). Rooftops Canada involvement was triggered by a request for assistance from Masisizane to access the new subsidies that the South African government was offering for self-help housing.

The Canadian NGO came onto the scene at the right time, because after the death of the charismatic Mofokeng, there was a void that threatened the project's future. While Rooftops Canada could not fill that void, it did offer good advice, suggesting that the co-operative go beyond thinking about mere survival and thinking instead about expanding its horizons. Andrew Moore, a technical advisor with Rooftops Canada, recalls Mofokeng being very pleased to have pulled off getting major funding and going in a new direction. By this time the Masisizane co-operative had swollen to 4,800 members and had built more than 400 houses.

With technical support from Rooftops Canada and government training subsidies for local construction workers made available, the cooperative moved beyond self-help housing and started building houses for clients outside the cooperative. These provided desperately needed jobs. It also became involved in trying to improve nutrition--the cooperative now has its own garden.

Like any development project, the Masisizane Women's Housing Cooperative has had to overcome many challenges over its brief lifetime. But the South African government now points to the co-operative as a shining example of what can be done if people join hands to create progress.

Organisers of the World Housing Congress in 2005 summed up the story of the Masisizane Women's Housing Cooperative in this way: "A group of women from an informal settlement without any formal training or education initiate and learn how to run a multimillion-rand building enterprise for their community."

A little girl's death. A determined woman. A community willing to act as a team. An imaginative NGO with enough good sense to offer advice without trying to take over. Projects like these have stumbled and failed. Not this time, in this proud place.

Urban agriculture is here to stay; management is the issue

Most African cities are characterized by the presence of livestock and small scale agricultural activities. Urban agriculture has often attracted the wrath of municipal authorities but its is now beyond debate that it is a vital source of food and employment in urban centres. Gordon Feller describes how Dar es Salaam came to terms with its urban agriculturists.

Seen on a map, the four arterial roads that connect Dar es Salaam's city centre to the urban fringe and the hinterland beyond resemble a giant spider's web. The vast majority of the city's inhabitants--seven out of every 10 residents--live in a warren of unplanned settlements that are scattered between the principal byways outside the downtown core.

The steady creep of these chaotic collections of wood, metal, and mud brick across the urban landscape has overwhelmed city infrastructure--less than 5% of urban residents, for example, are serviced by the city's waste disposal. In the absence of adequate services, such as water and sanitation, residents have become masters of 'making do' and improvising.

Dar es Salaam has become, by necessity, a city of entrepreneurs. Tanzania's economic reforms have yet to translate into sustained job growth--and to find employment many residents look to the country's booming informal economy. In the downtown core, hawkers ply their trade in everything from avocados to Zippo lighters.

Along the arterial roads, brick makers and timber brokers compete for space with charcoal sellers, flower vendors, and a multitude of other small traders. In backyards and vacant lots anywhere people can find a patch of land--city farmers grow crops and raise livestock. Dar es Salaam's urban producers supply an estimated 95,000 litres of milk, 6,000 trays of eggs, and 11,000kg of poultry to city residents every day. Each year, they grow some 100,000t of crops, including staples like maize and cassava.

Numbers like these are hard to ignore. But according to Camillus Sawio, a pioneer in urban agriculture (UA) research in Tanzania, "there is still a general understanding that agriculture should take place in rural areas, despite the fact that people can see agricultural production across the city."

Urban agriculture vital

Urban farmers and their supporters have fought an uphill battle with governments at all levels. At various times, authorities have banned, ignored, tolerated, and even promoted UA, if only temporarily. Now, thanks in large part to compelling research data, they are beginning to recognise the critical role UA plays in supplying food, creating employment, and generating income for local people.

Ben Kasege, manager of Tanzania's Local Government Reform Program and long-time supporter of Urban Agriculture(UA), points to the 1978 review of the city's Master Plan as the beginning of a "silent revolution" that is slowly changing official attitudes toward farming in Dar es Salaam.

"We were still going through the old fashioned system of urban planning, where planners closeted themselves away somewhere trying to visualise what the city would look like in 20 years. It was not very participatory, but we were able to influence the preparation of the 1978 plan."

The Master Plan's expatriate authors included agriculture in their land use zoning. Areas for growing food and raising livestock were set aside in the suburbs and in areas of the inner city that were unsuitable for residential use, such as valleys. Ultimately, however, the comprehensive plan proved impractical for the cash-strapped state. In rural areas, development strategies missed their targets and impoverished villagers abandoned their shambas (small farms) for the city.

By the 1990s, Dar es Salaam's Master Plan had fallen off the rails, a victim of overly optimistic planning and a lack of investment in infrastructure and human resources during the previous decade. When the new millennium dawned, some 3m people called Dar es Salaam home--a doubling of the population in just 12 years.

Rapid changes to the urban environment triggered a growing interest in urban agriculture. Researchers with the Sokoine University of Agriculture and the University of Dar es Salaam began building a case for a new vision of urban development--one, that in the words of Ben Kasege, "was inclusive of all human activities, including agriculture."

In a project supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Camillus Sawio painted one of the first comprehensive portraits of urban farmers in Dar es Salaam. "At the time, there was little understanding of how UA takes place and what it contributes to the economy," says the soft-spoken researcher and priest.

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Sawio's research debunked some persistent myths. Farming, he found, cuts across socioeconomic boundaries and is not the domain of the unschooled and illiterate as commonly believed. Four out of every 10 urban farmers, he noted, were secondary school graduates, business owners, or professionals like doctors. Today, Dar es Salaam's thriving livestock trade is largely controlled by the well-to-do, who have the land and the income to invest in this lucrative market.

The research also revealed that the majority of urban farmers were well-established residents who grow food to reduce household expenditures and generate income. They are not, as was often surmised, recent migrants relying on old rural skills to make a living.

"The reality is that UA contributes substantially to food security. It also generates employment especially for youth, women, and the elderly," says Sawio. Farming, his research showed, is an integral part of the urban ecological, social, and economic system.

Changing face of Dar

To keep colonial towns and cities "clean and healthy," Tanzania's British rulers outlawed farming in urban areas. With independence, urban farmers--and to a large extent urban development--was ignored as the newly minted government promoted rural development and self-sufficiency, especially in food production.

A series of crippling droughts in the 1970s saw policies like Kilimo cha Kufa na Kupona (agriculture for life and death) introduced to encourage urban residents to feed themselves. Several demonstration gardens were opened across Dar es Salaam to serve as pilot sites and to provide seeds and other inputs to locals.

In sharp contrast, a national program of 'villagisation' forcibly resettled 'surplus' urban inhabitants in rural village cooperatives during the 1980s. Driven more by ideology than practical concerns, it proved politically unpopular and ultimately unenforceable.

In 1993, IDRC and UN-Habitat joined forces to support the Sustainable Dar es Salaam Project (SDP). A series of city-wide consultations identified nine priority environmental issues, ranging from solid waste management to the urban economy and petty trading. At the insistence of the Minister of Urban Development, UA was added to the working group dealing with recreational areas, open spaces, hazardous lands, and green belts.

To feed the policy-making process, IDRC supported a team of six Tanzanian researchers led by Camillus Sawio. They surveyed nearly 2 000 urban farmers documenting the range of farming systems--aquaculture to agroforestry--in use across the city. Furthermore, the researchers looked at the interactions, both good and bad between UA and the urban environment, as well as the role UA is already playing in recycling the municipality's solid wastes. Most importantly, the researchers studied city by-laws and other forms of regulation that have an impact on UA.

When George Lulandala, the Regional Director of the Dutch nongovernmental organisation, Agriproject Foundation Department of sub-Saharan African, or STOAS International, first saw Dar es Salaam's horticultural gardens they were a 'mess'. Twenty some years of neglect had taken their toll. "Our job was to first revive the city gardens and then to negotiate for the sale of the gardens by the City Council to the garden's employees," he says.

In seven sites across the city, 30 to 35 women and youth were hired by STOAS to rebuild water systems, erect fences, plant trees, and grow crops.

The sites served as a market for fresh fruit and vegetables, a source of seedlings and seeds, and a resource for extension services. "It was quite a success. We had posters promoting nutrition and city greening. The people of Dar es Salaam really turned out in numbers to buy our fruits and vegetables and our trees," says Lulandala.

Plans to privatise the gardens by selling them to the employees never materialised. Lulandala sees this as a missed opportunity. "Some 40% of the food coming into Dar es Salaam comes from the suburban areas," he notes.

Urban agriculture, he states, is an ideal way to provide employment, especially to the city's youth. Lulandala owns 15 acres of land on the peri-urban fringe that he farms himself. He provides employment to 10 young people and a steady supply of fruit and vegetables to hotels across the city.

Though STOAS is no longer involved with the gardens, Lulandala has kept an eye on their progress. Four of the seven original sites are still in operation. Three new sites were created during the STOAS project. Of these, one remains, still owned and operated by the four young people who launched the operation.

GTZ helps roll back slums in Ethiopia

An excellent example of how international development agencies can team up with African governments to roll back slums is provided by the partnership between the German GTZ agency and the Ethiopian government. Gordon Feller reports.

An ingenious low-cost housing technology pioneered by the German development agency GTZ--and the Ethiopian government's determination to thoroughly reform its urban administration and roll back the growth of slums--is changing the face of the country's cityscape for the better.

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The low-cost housing (LCH) technology, which can cut construction costs by up to 50%, was developed by GTZ's Ruth Erlbeck and Ralf Trosse. It was introduced to the country's construction sector with dramatic results. Over the project's eight years time span, (it finishes this year), over 40,000 homes have been constructed, providing homes for over 200,000 people and creating jobs for 38,000 people. A critical part of Ethiopia's urban renewal master plan is The Addis Ababa Grand Housing Programme--an ambitious project that aims to construct 50,000 homes per year for six years.

Given the huge success of the LCH project and the immense savings that had been made, the Addis administration wanted Ms, Erlbeck to supervise the construction of the entire Grand Housing Programme. GTZ, which is a non-profit agency working on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) could not take up the offer. Instead, Addis Ababa local government commissioned GTZ's commercial arm, GTZ International Services (GTZ-IS) to undertake the supervision of 22,000 housing units to the end of this year and at the same time train locals to carry on the programme themselves later on. Over 8,000 apartments have already been completed and the rest are under construction at 19 building sites in the Ethiopian capital.

The simple, low-cost technology pioneered by GTZ has proved so popular that the government wants it applied to all public buildings throughout the country. It has commissioned GTZ-IS to supervise the construction of 13 universities nationwide. The Great Ethiopian Housing Programme, a country-wide project to construct 100,000 apartments per year in various parts of the country takes off this year and will use the GTZ inspired technology to keep costs down and make the new apartments affordable to those in most need of housing.

GTZ-Is is handling the technical and financial side of the construction projects. The main goal is to solve the extreme shortage of housing, improve construction quality and at the same time create jobs.

"Low cost housing technology is all about cheap, good quality and sustainable construction," says Ralph Trosse, technical consultant on the LCH-project. He explains the system: "Anybody who wants to move in must buy the home and make a down payment of 30% of the construction costs." The rest is financed through housing loans with a term of 15 years. The municipal administration provides pre-financing. Erlbeck says: "We are trying in this way to promote self-responsibility and ownership among the occupants. Both have a positive impact on repairs, maintenance and caring for the installations."

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The GTZ LCH development model has a number of important benefits. Primarily, it creates new homes in a city where GTZ estimates as many as 300,000 additional housing units are required. Exacerbating the situation, GTZ points out, is the country's annual population growth of 6-8% and urban drift. A major rural exodus into Addis Ababa has increased the city's population by nearly 20% over the past decade--a development that has strained infrastructure to breaking point. It is estimated that as many as 85% of existing dwellings have serious defects.

While GTZ LCH helps address this huge problem, it also tackles some others by providing jobs for tens of thousands of unemployed people and supporting the use of indigenous small and medium-sized construction companies. Furthermore, in order to facilitate orderly urban development, the GTZ project has helped draft urban planning legislation and building codes for the approval of Ethiopia's parliament. The Ethiopian constitution, adopted in 1996, requires that not only the nine federal regions but also local authorities be given local self-administration on a scale previously unknown by this country of over 70m inhabitants.

Formulating city charter

GTZ advisers are helping formulate the city charter and draw up local authority constitutions in the four largest states in Ethiopia. The city charter gives Addis Ababa the status of a self-administered federal city for the first time. The status of the capital with around 3.5m inhabitants is comparable to that of a federal state. The Ethiopian parliament has since adopted the charter. The local authority constitutions have been adopted by the individual state parliaments.

This decentralisation is intended to make urban services more efficient and bring them closer to the inhabitants. Gerhard Mai says: "One stop shops enable inhabitants to deal with all the administrative business in their own city district, without having to travel to the city centre."

Addis, the uncontested political, economic and cultural centre of the country, is clearly the core of the reform. With around 3.5m inhabitants from 78 ethnic groups, the capital reflects the whole nation. Urban and rural forms of housing are located closer to each other in Addis Ababa than in other African cities. The skyscrapers of the modern city and the traditional craft settlements with their unpaved streets which turn to mud in the rainy season are just a stone's throw apart.

In this city of 3.5m, every other water pipe leaks, and power cuts and telephone service breakdowns are part of daily life. Addis Ababa struggles to resolve the resulting problems.

In a city where the problems are so severe, what simple approaches have proven themselves to be effective?

One has been the implementation, with GTZ's help, of a comprehensive new address system to pave the way for modern urban management and developing a functional infrastructure the city where only one street in 10 is paved and most have neither names nor house numbers. Orientation within the metropolis is only possible by reference to major buildings or large squares.

Architect Michael Maiwald with four engineers and nearly 30 surveyors are working on this cartography project. Their task is to classify and allocate numbers to some 200,000 properties on 3,000 streets throughout the city. In order to do so, existing but outdated land tax registers must be carefully compared with the actual situation and corrected as needed. Many of the city's countless alleys, nooks and crannies, and footpaths have never been mapped.

In the long term, the plan is to standardise the diversity of randomly applied planning software, to set up a central information office in which data can be kept up-to-date and organised, and to draft a city map of the Ethiopian capital--the first of its kind. Three experts are working with the Addis Ababa municipal administration in addition to Maiwald and a city planner in the Makelle region.

Fifty-two streets in the capital have been named so far--for the member states of the African Union. Another 500 street signs bearing the names of famous historical figures will soon be dedicated with due ceremony.

The new and comprehensive address system will mean that from now on a mere click of the mouse will easily accomplish, right on screen, what used to involve painstaking questioning and time-consuming searches: the simple finding of particular addresses or plots of land. This means that letters and packages can be delivered directly to their destinations instead of to a post-office box. City offices and businesses will be more easily located within the maze of streets.