Quick Guides for Policy Makers, Housing the poor in African cities 1, Building with untapped Potential, UN Habitat, 2011 A) Context, presentation of the author and general note on the book a. Context The Quick guide for Policy makers series comprises 8 different guides which are all dealing with housing related issues in African cities, ranging from low-incoming housing, rental issues, evictions as well as addressing challenges by the local government in participatory ways. The guides were inspired by a similar series on Housing the Poor in Asian Cities. This series was published in 2009. Two years later, an adapted version to the African context and realities was made available in English, French and Portuguese. These guides are responding to the needs of local governments and policy makers in the sub-Saharan Africa region to have policy instrument to protect housing rights of the urban poor and with the hope to contribute to their daily work in the quest to improve housing and access to land for the urban poor. Furthermore, the guides also significantly contribute to attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) as well as raising awareness regarding the improvement of the lives in slums. The series was financed by UN-HABITAT and Cities Alliance. To understand the context, it is important to have a better understanding of the mission and the mandate of UN-HABITAT. UN-Habitat, the United Nations programme for human settlements, is the United Nations programme working towards a better urban future. Its mission is to promote socially and environmentally sustainable human settlements development and the achievement of adequate shelter for all. (UN-HABITAT at a Glance. Accessed 5 Mai 2015, http://unhabitat.org/un-habitat-at-a-glance/) UN-Habitat was mandated by the UN General Assembly in 1978 to address the issues of urban growth, it is a knowledgeable institution on urban development processes, and understands the aspirations of cities and their residents. UN-Habitat is now assuming a natural leadership and catalytic role in urban matters. On 1 January 2002, through General Assembly Resolution A/56/206, Habitat’s mandate was strengthened and its status elevated to a fully-fledged programme in the UN system, giving birth to UN-Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme. (The Mandate of UN-HABITAT, Accessed 5 Mai 2015, http://unhabitat.org/history-mandate-role-in-the-un-system/) b. Presentation of the author The lead author of the guides is Edgar Pieterse from The African Center for Cities (ACC). He was supported by a team of experts from the ACC, and received substantive contributions from Karen Press, Kecia Rust and Warren Smit. Furthermore, various members of the UN-HABITAT training and Capacity Building branch also contributed to these guides. c. General note on the book Unfortunately, leader and policy managers of many of Africa’s states, cities and towns have by large failed to come to terms with the reality and implications of rapid urbanizations. The guides states, that this is failure is manifested in slum living conditions and the high rate of slum growth. The guide offers a range of policy and action frameworks that can steer urban development in positive directions, using the considerable resources of knowledge, experience and skill that exist within urban poor communities across the sub-Saharan Africa region. It also refers to themes and strategies that are elaborated in more detail on the other seven Quick Guides for Africa. The following numbers show that it is crucial to address housing issues as soon as possible as African’s urban populations rose from 15% of its total population in 1960 to 35% in 2006, and is expected to be above 60% by 2030. (Foster V & Briceño-Garmendia C (eds) (2010) Africa’s Infrastructure: A Time for Transformation. Washington DC: World Bank, p. 127) Furthermore, urbanization is happening at a very fast rate in comparison with all regions of the world. These numbers also bring along a lots of different issues as urban live is profoundly different to rural life and people will be engaged in fundamentally different livelihood activities. As the trends are not reversible as a consequence of the population growth, the Quick Guide on “building with untapped potential” explores the most important reason: The failure of imagination on the part of all those involved in urban development with the aim is to see urbanisation as a resource with great potential to solve the recurrent issues. (Quick Guide 1: building with untapped potential, p. 4) Unfortunately, urbanisation is often seen as something bad. B) Four themes of the book a. Urbanisation is both understandable and manageable The daunting prospect that between 2000 and 2030, Africa’s urban population will increase from 294 million to 742 million is presented right at the beginning of the guide. It further elaborates that most African states are currently failing to deal with the needs of their existing urban population. Urbanization in Africa does not imply an explosion of megacities, meaning cities with a population of more than seven million people, as the vast majority of African urbanites reside, and will continue to reside, in urban settlements with populations of fewer than 0.5 million people. According to the guide, it is crucial that policies aim to deal with urbanization taking into account each settlement’s type and size as they vary. The guide then offers the new urban settlement system, which was introduced by the “State of the World’s Cities report” which offers three types: mega-regions, urban corridors and city regions. The need for a national urbanization policy as well as specific urban policies is elaborated. It stresses on the fact that once African states and other development actors have a clear and evidence-based understanding of the national urban system, and the function of diverse settlements within that system, it is important to develop a perspective on the key drivers of urbanization. b. Drivers of Urbanisation To better understand the phenomenon of urbanisation, it is important to reflect on the primary drivers of urbanisation. The most important driver is economic development. This is reinforced by a number of so called push factors causing people to migrate. Some push factors are climate variability or the desire to access basic services like education or health centres. The drivers of urbanisation can also explained with the desire to improve the quality of life. The guide also makes a like between the growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and urbanisation. c. Mind shifts The guide elaborates on different mind shifts that are needed to see “urban” as “opportunity” and not as something bad as it has been elaborate above. First of all the guide elaborates on the need that economic policy accepts and supports urbanization and confirms that many policy failures of the past have been addressed but also confirms that there is still a lot to be done as many African leaders continue to see urbanisation in a negative light. Migration from rural areas to urbanisation has many reasons which need to be looked at more closely to deal with the consequences and realities of the urbanisation phenomenon. The following issues need to be studied: - the pushing and pulling forces of migration - the little chance of making a decent living in agriculture - migration to cities improves the prospect of finding better jobs - people know what cities have to offer them - Urban migration is often a survival strategy for rural households The guide further elaborates on two other mindshifts which are “the informality is the norm” as well as “working together to find solutions”. Whats most important to remember from these two mindshifts are: - Informality is one of the most important issues when talking about the different sectors related to urbanisation. For example, urban poor work is mostly in the informal sector. A very interesting figure is presented on page 16 of the guide illustrating the segmentation of informal employment by average earnings and sex. The table shows that the segmentation of informal employment comes with a correlation between the average earning and the segmentation by sex (in informality, the sector with predominantly women is a low income sector, the sector with predominantly men is a high income sector) - When addressing urbanisation, the implication of all affected actors is required, like governments, poor communities, NGOs, the private sector, etc. Furthermore, Partnerships are essential to ensure a good supply of land, low-income housing and associated infrastructures in the quantity and the variety that are needed. However, the guide insists that, partnership are only effective, if one works out who intervenes where, according to what each partner does best. d. Gearshift: From Prevention to Facilitation In this chapter, the guide elaborated gearshifts, focusing on both housing and land. First, the guide reminds, that we have seen, that that the urban poor are the most important actors involved in providing shelter in African cities and towns. Despite the absence of government support and investment, they proceed to provide for themselves. And because their houses are constructed without the supporting infrastructures to gain access to water, sanitation and energy, they are insufficient and inadequate to represent anything resembling the kind of housing that is implied by the universal right to adequate housing, as set out in Article 25(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is important to remember to take into account the housing varieties, infrastructure profiles, location dynamics as well as land tenure before the governments move to the phase of addressing low-cost housing in a sustainable way. The guide here makes reference to the Quick Guide 2. The Guide 2 discusses five options for low-cost housing which are also elaborated in Guide 1. The 5 options are: One-site upgrading; resettlement on suitable land; Government-led new public housing; Sites-and-services schemes and incremental land development; city-wide housing strategies. The guide then goes on to discuss issues regarding land. It refers to Quick guide 3, Quick guide 4 and Quick guide 7 for more detailed information. C) Conclusion and personal impression The above exposé has dealt with the mayor themes of the guide. First of all it was important to elaborate on how to understand urbanisation as well how to manage it. Furthermore, various drivers of urbanisation were identified as well as the push factors going along with it. An extensive part of this review was dedicated to the different mind shifts that are necessary to understand and efficiently as well as effectively deal with the phenomenon of urbanisation. In my opinion, if these mind shifts become reality, all involve actors will work more effectively and efficiently toward using the so called untapped potential of urbanisation. I find that the Quick Guide gives a good overview of the issues relating to the untapped potential. I also appreciate that the guide makes reference in different parts of the book, to the other quick guides from the same series. This allows the reader to gain a more profound understanding of the issue if interested. However, especially when it comes to the second part of the book (eg. The topic on the gearshifts), the Quick guide 1 did not only refer to the other guide but also copy-pasted a lot of information of the quick guide 2. I am of the opinion, that it would have been equally effective to refer to the Quick guide 2 and use the space to elaborate on the strategies to make land more accessible and how to effectively use the untapped potential. In additional, sometimes I would have appreciated a more critical approach to certain issues identified. Concluding, I can say that the Quick guide series as a whole gives a good idea of the mayor themes that affect the sub-Saharan Africa region and provide some instruments for policy makers on how to better tackle the issues.