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STATEMENT BY LN SISULU MINISTER OF HOUSING AT THE JOINT EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND UN-HABITAT REGIONAL WORKSHOP ON URBANISATION CHALLENGES IN AFRICA 26 January 2005 Nairobi Kenya _____________________________________________________________
Chairperson, Just as we were finishing off the year last year preparing to celebrate the festive season the UN-Habitat released its publication that highlighted the enormity of the challenge we are facing in terms housing our people. The publication told us as both the region and the continent that we are host to the largest proportion of the urban population that resides in slums (71.9%); that 166 million from the total urban population of 231 million are classified as slum dwellers. The report highlighted that after South-Central Asia, with has 262 million slum dwellers, our continent had the second largest slum population in the world. This, it said was the result of urbanization. Thus in this regard the report highlighted that the urban population in our towns and cities, which increases annually by 4%, followed by Asia at 2.6%, increases far more rapidly than our economies are able to provide. But as this takes place our rapidly growing cities are not able to absorb the influx as they often lack the necessary infrastructure to provide for the increasing population. The concomitant result is the development of informal settlements and slums that increase at an equally faster rate. What follows too is the accentuation in inequality as well as living standards between those who do not have and those who do afford the services and the goods being provided by urban areas. In other words, from what started off as simply a process of urbanization and population growth quickly introduces and reproduces into the polity of African countries both uneven development and inequality. It is for this reason that the governments of the region through the African Union are consistently maintaining that a critical problem facing the entire continent is poverty. To be sure Chairperson, when wealth in the world reached unprecedented levels in the middle 1990s as a result of foreign exchanges, international bank lending and foreign direct investments; amongst other things, Africa was not able to benefit. The continent remained instead a cause of concern for the world in respect of its development. A direct consequence is now a growing youth population for whom our towns and cities are unable to provide with either jobs or housing including women, most of whom headed house-holds with on average lower levels of incomes. As South Africa we would not have been able to contend with this critical challenge and to be part of countries that today are able to claim some progress towards achieving the MDGs, were it not for the actions - the solidarity that countries in Africa as well as in Europe provided to end apartheid. And from this our government learnt important lessons about the necessity of solidarity amongst the people’s of the world. And in the recently released Sachs Report cause for the solidarity of the world with Africa to help extricate the continent out of poverty - is a loud cry. Amongst the recommendations being made is for deeper and far reaching development aid including debt relief by wealthy countries. In recognizing that external resources are needed to help Africa meet the MDGs it calls for a fairer world and fairer policies to engender that human solidarity. The recent outpouring of the solidarity of the world with the victims of the tsunami disaster in South-East Asia, Kenya and Somalia is another historical lesson in this regard. It demonstrated that where the world was willing to act to provide life-saving relief it would extinguish all barriers and simply do what is necessary for humanity to triumph as a whole. Thus, as we start this important year in the calendar of the different actions that countries and international organizations will be undertaking in respect of the MDGs Africa’s appeal remains that the continent needs increased development aid including debt relief from the countries that have the ability to provide so. We are heartened by the actions of some of the European Union countries who recently speeded up their aid to comply with the commitments they made at Monterrey. As the continent, we are convinced that it is only through such demonstrable acts of solidarity that we can confidently say the world is moving in the right direction for the acts underline one basic fact which is that the generations of Africa’s children never chose to be born in the circumstances in which they are today. They underline that the international community has the ability recognize that in assisting Africa to develop itself is not per se an act of safeguarding the security of the respective countries that do give aid against the terrorists that are argued to be originating from the poverty of Africa – but is most importantly an act of deep understanding, compassion and solidarity.
An African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development is taking place in Durban in South Africa within four days. Some of the issues being raised here and the implications for Africa’s development of the statistical data that the various speakers highlighted will again receive focus. I hope that even through that process our inputs as Africans will continue to inform what needs to be done to create a better life for our people. As South Africa, we are committed to ensuring that the conference is a success in order for it to achieve the important results we collectively need.
I thank you.
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