ADDRESS BY L N SISULU, CHAIRPERSON OF THE AFRICAN MINISTER’S CONFERENCE ON HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT ON THE OCCASION OF THE SECOND MEETING OF THE CONFERENCE
29 July 2008
Abuja
Nigeria
Ambassador Babangana Kingebe – Secretary of the Federal Government of Nigeria
HE Mrs Halima Tayo Alao – Minister of Environment, Housing and Urban Development
HE Chief Chuka Odom – Minister of State, Federal Ministry of Environment, Housing and Urban Development
Bureau Members
Ministers from Member States of the African Region
Executive Director of UN-Habitat, Dr Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka
Dr Kebede Kassa Tsegaye – Representative of the Commission of the African Union,
Invited guests
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I feel privileged that I have served at the helm of this organisation. It is, amazingly, only now, as we take stock of what has been achieved, that I realise what an enormous responsibility lay on all of us to carry this – the hope of so many of our destitute and homeless. Housing, being at the very base of all human need, in turn forms the base around which we build communities that bespeak a settled people, a people with a stake in their environment, a stake in the state and its well-being, a stake in peace. All of these much needed attributes in Africa.
When we were established we had the unenviable task of turning a vision into a workable organisation that could deliver on our undertakings. The challenges were enormous and we shall deal with them in due course. For the moment it would be pertinent to recap why the need for Amchud and take you back a little to see how far we have travelled. .
The United Nations Population Fund estimates that half of the world’s population – about 3.3 billion people – will be living in urban areas this year. Further, this urban population is projected to reach five billion by 2030. And it is also expected that many of the people in the urban areas will be poor. With this trend, urbanisation will grow very rapidly in the developing world, especially Africa and Asia. At the moment Africa has the highest rate of urbanisation in the world, occurring at rates of above 3.5, against a global average of 2.7.
This wave of urbanisation has brought with it untold poverty, sedimenting it as it were in slums. In Africa, it is projected that the percentage of urban population will double.
We recognised that this urban migration is a systematic by-product of transition economies – which puts pressure on an unresponsive urban housing and especially on other services that governments should provide. In this regard, the contribution of housing to the improvement of people’s living conditions provides a measurable human development indicator towards the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.
We recognised further that the realities of living in informal settlements or slums mean no access to basic public services such as proper sanitation facilities and electricity. In addition, the reality of living in informal settlements is also accompanied by the psychological trauma of despair and hopelessness, which arise from the prospects for evictions – and, overall – lack of perceived improvement differential in one’s situation – against mounting aspirations – often leading to societal breakdown.
For these and many other reasons, AMCHUD was intended as a forum to prioritise issues of housing and urban development in Africa. Its establishment was informed by the acknowledgement that the future of development action, programs and policies will need to be attuned towards this objective. We thought, therefore to harness political awareness necessary to drive housing priorities. We intended a forum that would continue to convey a message of urgency and encouragement to African states on issues of housing and urban development.
While there are recognised platforms for common and concerted action among African states such as the African Union, they had, however, not sufficiently prioritised housing and urban development matters that were of burning urgency for us. And we felt AMCHUD would serve as a catalyst for creating and reinforcing fruitful relationships with these existing and established structures, supplement their strengths while simultaneously establishing greater capacity and profile for housing and urban issues in the continent and abroad.
AMCHUD was conceived out of recognition of a shared history and destiny for cities, towns and urban centres in Africa – a continent, which has traditionally been considered rural. As outlined in the context of urbanisation trends, Africa is the next frontier in the development of an increasingly urbanised world. The unique context of this urbanisation represents a shared political, social and economic setting which African states face in dealing with the challenges and opportunities of their rapidly urbanising cities.
We reasoned that AMCHUD would represent a platform through which African states harness their efforts to achieve a common agenda on urban issues in world forums. The global context has seen united fronts forged in different areas and for different purposes by states and continents. It also represented an unprecedented opportunity to share common interests, a phenomenon linked to increasing globalisation. By creating a collective and united front – Africa can develop and represent its common interests on urban issues better.
Thus Amchud was established, responding to the situation we recognised. We set out, as it were to craft a new dispensation, a new entity and a new discourse. As all pioneers will record, the frontier is a rugged terrain, not for the faint hearted.
When the organisation was conceptualised, it was quite clear we would be a product, both of the United Nations system through UN-Habitat and the African Union system, through the Commissioner. But, even as we celebrated our birth, it was clear to all who witnessed that we were a child of parents whose marriage was fragile. Parents whose relationship to the child remains a contested terrain. And we seem to have had an identity crisis ever since. Our early years have been characterised by this trauma that has featured very prominently in all our conferences.
This is the biggest challenge we faced and continue to face – and it was ingrained in us when we were born. In more sophisticated language, we would be saying our biggest challenge lies in our DNA.
We continue to have an unresolved relationship with the AU, stemming from our insistence on independence. I need to put across to you the fact that the AU Commissioner continues to view our position of independence with great concern. She points out that all African ministerial conferences fall under the AU structures and operate under the AU auspices and that therefore, all our protestations of independence are but the rebellious tantrums of youthful exuberance and that it would be in our own interest to look at our relationship with the institution with sobriety.
This is strictly my interpretation. In view of the importance of the African Union to us, we have discussed this matter in the Bureau and resolved to request the incoming Bureau to seek an urgent appointment with the Commissioner with the hope that we may resolve this as the most important outstanding matter.
What this threw up therefore, was a circumstance where effectively we were on our own – on our own to craft our identity, our own institutions and, more severely, on our own in terms of resources. This translated to an inordinate responsibility on members of the Bureau.
With limited resources and no institutional capacity, the Bureau has carried us here and I am extremely grateful to them for that. I know of no other organisation that, faced with the challenges we encountered, would have survived this long.
In particular, the challenge of resources cannot be over-emphasised. We are a bankrupt organisation from our inception. Most of our ambitious plans depended on some resources. Even our Bureau meetings rested on our ability to access resources. Currently, the host country is required to provide the running costs of Amchud, its Bureau, the Secretariat and any conferences that might need to be held in its tenure as chair.
What the issue of resources would tell us, is that unless this is resolved on an urgent basis, it would create an unfortunate challenge to our work, where countries without the necessary resources would be constrained in making a bid for hosting conferences. An attempt has been made to address the issue in the form of membership fees and we need to return to this if we hope to succeed.
We agreed to hold a special Amchud Conference in Kenya in 2006 and correctly so, to very urgently report back to yourselves around issues that affected our work. But what needs to be said is that there were no resources for such a conference and it would not have been done, had it not been for the extraordinary effort of the Executive Director of UN-Habitat, Ms Anna Tibaijuka. And much to her embarrassment, it took us, the South African Government as the ultimate resource, a long time to take on our responsibility. It is just one instance in the story of our lives – long on dreams and short on resources. A story of so much to do and so little with which to do it.
Pertinently, the conference focuses on this issue – the mobilisation of resources to deal with our work as Amchud and with the activities of African Ministers as they grapple with slum upgrading. We look forward to suggestions from this conference on how we can get out of the situation and the matter of financing the activities of housing has been especially chosen as a core matter of the conference.
Our other single biggest challenge yet has been operating within the context of a continent that is going through as rapid a change as ours, with a high turnover of politicians, at least at our level. Even as I stand here, I am conscious of my dinosaur status, as I am quite certain that I am one of the few that were part of the first conference of Amchud. The Bureau itself is perhaps a microcosm of what we have gone through. In the Bureau we have had a very high turnover of Ministers and again I remain the sole surviving dinosaur of the initial Bureau.
What this has done is that there has been a challenge of continuity at a time when we are at a fragile stage of our development. As we move forward, this might not be such a crippling impediment – for indeed this is an area we have very little control over and the best we can do is adapt to it. With institutional arrangements in place, an institutional memory will be created which can stand the test of our often precarious times as politicians. And, as the Bureau, we have crafted the institutional framework with a mind to ensure that continuity is assured.
It has not been all gloom and doom. We have had significant successes. Through AMCHUD, Africa has succeeded in exploring practically useful innovations.
· We have created recognition and awareness among member states of the enormous challenge of housing and urban development in the continent;
· We have established a forum where lobbying funding for housing in the continent can be done collectively;
· We have created a common platform upon which African states can present their shared interests on urban matters at various international forums; and have done so on many occasions, challenging the marginalisation of the issue of shelter and slums.
· We have learned from each other and exchanging knowledge and experience;
· We have ensured housing and urban issues are prioritised in the development agendas of member states;
· We have supplement African Union and NEPAD efforts in achieving housing and urban development-related goals, as these have not been sufficiently prioritised;
AMCHUD has sought to build and utilise opportunities created by commitments made by the developed world towards Africa specifically on issues related to the Millennium Development Goals and particularly Goal 7 Target 11. We have achieved much to take us forward on the journey to sustainable human settlements in Africa. We have done much to ensure that the issue of poverty of the urban poor is not just a problem for the poor.
The inaugural African Minister’s Conference in February 2005 in Durban was the first concrete step, putting us on the road to a coordinated approach to sustainable settlements in Africa. The overall theme of the conference “Urbanization, Shelter and Development: Towards an Enhanced Framework for Sustainable Cities and Towns in Africa,” reflected a natural progression from previous discussions and actions by Africa and development partners.
You will recall that we discussed during Amchud I and approved three documents:
- Meeting the Millennium Development Goals specifically in relation to shelter and slums;
- Governance, specifically with regard to decentralisation and local government reforms;
- Pro-poor approaches to land reform;
- Development of sustainable financing mechanisms for urban development;
- Population development in the context of urban poverty reduction strategies; and
- Fostering regional cooperation towards these ends in the context of AU and NEPAD.
1. Declaration on the Establishment of the African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development (Durban Declaration);
2. An Enhanced Framework of Implementation on Housing and Urban Development in Africa, which made a number of resolutions to address the challenge of slums in Africa and set us on a path of action to “implementing and monitoring the goal of the United Nations Millennium Declaration on improving the lives of slum dwellers”; and
3. The Report of the 5th General Assembly of the African Population Commission.
These have now been refined and are part of our institutional establishment.
We are here now, three years later to hold a second conference; have had a very successful special conference; have held 10 Bureau meetings – all of this can only speak to the commitment that each here have had to the principles that hold us together.
In our time we have, within the limits of our possibility, ensured that we can begin to change international perception around the issue of shelter. In retrospect, we could have done better. I would have liked at this point to have been able to report that each country here has adopted our framework for monitoring. In that way we would have been certain that we have bound each of our countries to our agenda. Happily we can now provide guidelines for institutional arrangements for Amchud, as will be outlined later.
I have been a Minister of Housing for four years now and I can tell you this has to be the most demanding job anyone could be called on to perform. Because, against the staggering poverty of our continent, none of us here would be able to deliver anything near to that which would dent our backlog. We work almost against the tide – the tide of alarming urbanisation and budgets that are not linked to the need and demand. We are like the General who would clad his full armour and rouse his men to go to war, knowing full well the might of the enemy, knowing full well that victory is a phantom that exists only in his mind. But he holds on to it.
And yet, it is a job that can have immense gratification. We are one group of people that can make the difference between dignity and the wretched of the earth, between hope and despair, between stability and insecurity, we can and should give hope to the world that the impending urban crisis can be managed.
The levels of poverty in our urban environments, especially in slum areas are a ticking bomb that any would ignore at their own peril. We therefore hold in our hands the power to save the world from the undesirable result.
When you interact with the poor and know that you could change their life, then you know that the burden and responsibility is in fact a blessing because through you, hope is sustained and faith in humanity can be restored. Treasure this burden therefore and lighten the darkness of so many of our people because only you can.
To the Bureau, your support and hard work are what brought us here. I can not thank you enough. To the incoming chairperson of Amchud, take care of this precious entity. You have the power to take it to higher levels. To you, all of you, thank you for holding this together. It was an incredible privilege to serve you. Thank you for the honour.
I thank you