Day two (05 Sep 2024) of the first-ever Africa Urban Forum (AUF) saw participants drilling down into the forum’s theme of “Sustainable Urbanisation for Africa’s Transformation”, examining in more detail how African cities will provide the needed infrastructure for existing populations as well as the influx of those sure to come.

In her opening remarks for the session, ‘Regional financial institutions and the private sector in inclusive urbanisation’, UN-Habitat’s Executive Director Anacláudia Rossbach acknowledged that we are already “living in a global housing crisis”, invoking the continent’s existing housing deficit—evident in the informal settlements that so vividly characterise African cities—and the million-dollar question of how to stem the tide.

Speaking to the challenges of financing affordable housing, panellists from Ivory Coast, Senegal and Djibouti shared the importance of national and sub-national government collaboration. “It’s not an option: it’s an obligation,” asserted Ivory Coast Minister of Construction, Housing and Urbanism, Bruno Nabagne Kone of the state’s responsibility to work with and transfer powers to municipalities. However, transfer of fiscal and administrative responsibilities does not imply absence. For example, while local government’s ability to raise its own revenue has come up frequently in many AUF sessions, the session’s Francophone ministers pointed to the national government’s vital support—whether as a guarantor for municipalities seeking loans, capacity and credibility builder, and/or co-creator of viable projects.

“It’s so important that we understand that the innovative finance spectrum goes all the way from institutional investors to grassroots, and you can have scale and impact at all levels.” – Edgar Pieterse, ACC Director

Indeed, viability thrives in partnership. Amina Abdi Aden of Djibouti’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning spoke of a blended approach where government-subsidised social housing is mixed with standard housing built by the private sector, with the latter helping to finance infrastructure for both. Shelter Afrique Development Bank’s Thierno-Habib Hann offered several ways of making affordable housing projects viable for financiers: from cities providing land so the bank can mobilise funding, to creating an institution to co-finance mortgages with local banks that wouldn’t otherwise loan in the low cost housing space.

“It’s so important that we understand that the innovative finance spectrum goes all the way from institutional investors to grassroots, and you can have scale and impact at all levels,” noted Edgar Pieterse of the African Centre for Cities (ACC), in the session, ‘Sustainable infrastructure and innovative approaches to service delivery in African cities’, responding to an example of grassroots financing of “regularization” in Tanzania.

“It worked best when we consulted communities in design and implementation,” said Reshian Kanyatila founder and director Ardhi Clinic, an NGO that took a bottom-up approach to providing roads, title deeds and other basic services to informal settlements in the wake of a World Bank-funded national regularization program that closed after achieving only 20% of its target. Despite that evident “failure”, community members who saw the benefits of their neighbours’ regularization wanted to partake, but needed support. “They were willing to pay,” said Reshian of the community’s financing of their own regularization process—an endeavour that led to over 200,000 informal households taking the reins in their own “formalisation” through a methodology that the government has now adopted.

A conscious focus on making good examples visible is crucial to advancing the conversation about the seemingly intractable problems of urbanisation. “We seldom talk about what makes sense in the context of sustainable infrastructure,” Pieterse noted.  He added that infrahub.africa, is a communication mechanism to share and promote African infrastructure projects. Infrahub was jointly launched by the ACC and Urban Futures Studio at Utrecht University.

While many of the examples discussed in the Sustainable Infrastructure session—for example, Tanzania’s diversifying energy production and South Africa’s unbundling of its electricity utility—raised more questions than they answered, that is perhaps part of the point here. “What is the voice of city government in the planning process?” Pieterse asked of the struggle that many African countries are confronting as they rethink energy transition plans. “The inevitable fiscal pressure that these transitions will create [are also an opportunity] to not look at just the energy sector, but at sub-national government’s comprehensive fiscal framework,” he added of the difficulties South African municipalities are facing as they negotiate the country’s energy transition.

Returning to the “bottom up” theme, the word “inclusive” has echoed through AUF sessions to the point where it is in danger of losing meaning. Not so at the Just City Dialogue session. Ostensibly organised around the newly published “Pathways to Just, Resilient and Liveable African Cities” report, panellists grounded the high-level, mega-projects being discussed in parallel sessions with reminders of the importance of the people at the centre of all of this.

Dr Steve Ouma of Trialog Journal spoke of the “city yet to come”, and how moments of crisis bring forth innovation that, if multiplied, could bring the just city closer. “We find communities organise and redefine resilience in crisis,” he said, referring to innovative youth responses to the Covid pandemic, and urging a recognition of people—especially African youth and their ideas and energy—as precious infrastructure.

They’re (youth) not waiting for government—they are creating the change for themselves. Through technology, they can find their voice and articulate what they need and want to do’ – Florence Nyole, Architectural Association of Kenya president

The proactive resilience of youth was also on display in the recent protests in Nairobi, remarked Florence Nyole, Architectural Association of Kenya president. “They’re not waiting for government—they are creating the change for themselves. Through technology, they can find their voice and articulate what they need and want to do,” she said of these “Gen-Z protestors”, whom she went on to compare to the AUF attendees. “We are here in this hall, Gen Zs are just on their phones spreading the message. So how do we capture that and convert it from social media to policy. Something tangible with a workplan?”

Indeed, with the right investments and engagement, the African youth dividend could be the continent’s most sustainable infrastructure resource yet.