Africities
Africities
For the very first time, the Africities-9 Summit will be highlighting the first level of the continent’s urban structure, made up of approximately 1,500 intermediate cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000 inhabitants. Kisumu, an intermediate-sized city, the third largest city in Kenya,for the first time too,will be hosting this major unmissable event for communities on the African continent from May 17 to 21, 2022.
The theme of the event will be: The contribution of African intermediary cities to the United Nations 2030 Agenda and the African Union Agenda 2063. Africities-9 is a continuation of its predecessors. It will take place in a period of rupture marked by the covid-19and the climate crises. More than 5,000 participants from around fifty countries are expected to take part in this 9th Summit including Heads of State, Ministers (of Local Authorities, Finance, Employment, etc.), local elected officials, economic actors, academics, as well as heads of African or international organizations, without forgetting the exhibitors and visitors of the Africities Fair, the business fair for African local authorities which will take place on the sidelines of the summit.The details.
Special topic produced by Afrimag
It’s unprecedented. For the first time, the 9th edition of the Africities Summit is being held in an intermediate-sized city, Kisumu. The third city of Kenya, with a population of 450,000 inhabitants, will host for five days(May 17 to 21, 2022) some sort of open-door days which will constitute a high point in the structuring of African intermediary cities, as well as in the reflection on the place and role of the local authorities in their development.
Africities, a determinant of African governance
The Africities Summits are key elements of African governance. It is the most important meeting of elected officials in all of Africa; a democratic approach to building African unity. This is governance that starts from the local level to renew the national scale and build the continental scale. The approach of Africities is to start from the living conditions of the populations and seek to improve them. The action of local governments is part of the daily life of the inhabitants. The 15,000 mayors and 500,000 municipal councillors, confronted with the daily life of citizens, are one of the ways of renewing all African leaders. Africities is their space for debate, reflection and training which places local concerns in an African perspective.
From Abidjan to Kisumu, the African municipal movement on the right track
Organized every three years, alternately in the different regions of the continent, Africities, an unmissable event for the local councils of the African continent, their public and private partners, was launched in 1998 in Abidjan, with the ambition of building the African municipal movement. Eight other editions followed: in 2000, in Windhoek, Namibia (on community financing), in 2003, in Yaounde, Cameroon, on access to basic services, in 2006, in Nairobi, Kenya, on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), in 2009, in Marrakech, Morocco, on the response of African local and regional authorities to the global crisis, in Dakar, in 2012, in Senegal, on the construction of Africa from its territories, in 2015, in Johannesburg, South Africa, on the contribution of territorial authorities to Africa’s 2063 outlook, in 2018, in Marrakech, Morocco, on the role of local authorities in Africa in the transition towards sustainable cities and territories.
Hosted for the first time in a mid-sized city, the 2022 summit will be dedicated this year to “The contribution of mid-tier cities in Africa to the implementation of the United Nations 2030 Agenda and the 2063 Agenda of the ‘African Union’.
This means that the best choice could only be to talk about the role of intermediary cities in the implementation of these two agendas, elsewhere than in an intermediary city. Hence the choice of Kisumu, locally called “Kisumo” which, by its name, literally means a “sumo” barter place in the Luo language.
It worth mentioning that this first level of the continent’s urban structure, made up of approximately 1,500 intermediate cities with a population of between 50,000 and 500,000 inhabitants, currently accounts for just over 30% of the urban population. This is the basis for the development of local economies which structure the relations between populations living in rural areas and those in urban areas.
Intermediate cities occupy a strategic place in the urbanization of Africa. Current and future trends indicate that the majority of urban dwellers are settling in cities with less than 500,000 inhabitants. These cities should absorb nearly two out of three new city dwellers. They will double in population and area in the next 10 to 15 years. They are therefore at the center of Africa’s urban future, and are the laboratory for the emergence of an authentically African urbanity. It is therefore understandable why intermediary cities must be considered strategic in the implementation of global agendas and sustainability strategies for the planet. In other words, advancing the implementation of the 2030 and 2063 agendas, in the intermediate cities, is the guarantee that they will actually be achieved. However, these cities have so far received little attention from most states. The fact that the Africities Summit chose to focus attention on them should be seen as the correction of an anomaly.
Africities-9 or the promotion of African intermediary cities
However, this 9th edition is a continuation of previous Africities, according to UCLG Africa – United Cities and Local Governments of Africa. It will take place in a period of rupture marked by the covid-19 and the climate crises. Thus, Africities-9 will highlight the network of cities and territories that constitute the backbone of the continent. Africa is the only continent in which the mayors of all its countries meet, at the invitation of the National Associations of Local Authorities of the 54 Member States and their continental organization, UCLG Africa. The Africities Summit is the most important democratic meeting in Africa, the one that brings together the most elected representatives from the largest number of countries. The previous edition in Marrakech brought together 8,300 participants representing more than 77 countries, including 53 African countries and nearly 3,000 local elected officials, mayors and other leaders of local authorities.
African local elected representatives were nearly 2,500, which represents nearly 15% of the 16,008 local and regional authorities in Africa. The legitimacy of Africities is also based on the opening of its exchanges to civil society and to all networks of actors: farmers, young people, women, trade unionists, academics and researchers, entrepreneurs and businessmen. All these actors, without distinction of opinion, seize on the same generic theme to present plural insights.
For African mayors, this summit is an important moment to express their wishes to governments and international partners. Today, in fact, even if the 2020 economic outlook, drawn up by the Economic Commission for Africa, shows interesting growth (3.4%), the high inequalities noted betray an economic growth whose inclusiveness is largely perfectible . The reconfigurations that have occurred in certain countries suggest that the end of the pandemic is at best expected for mid-2022. Economically, the impact of Covid-19 risks leading to a recession on the order of what the world experienced following the 1920 crisis. Measures to combat the spread of the pandemic, particularly containment, have reduced the production of added value by at least a third to a half. The economic implications are multifaceted via the different relationships between the branches of economic activity: bankruptcies risk cascading given the upstream and downstream relationships between economic activities. Finally, the collapse of tourism, the price of oil, financial transfers from migrants and development aid will lead to a sharp recession in African economies. Africa’s economic rehabilitation will therefore depend on post-covid recovery measures.
In a context of crisis, the development of an African strategic approach to the situation is urgent. The strategic approach involves responding to the emergency by dealing with the immediate effects of the new situation. It also involves opening up new perspectives for Africa based on the lessons that can be drawn from it. It is a question of articulating in this approach the general lessons of the period and the situation with the specific contexts which make up the diversity of Africa. This approach should be applied at the continental level, at the level of each African country, and at the level of African local authorities. At the continental level, the strategic approach should build a common vision and strengthen coordination between African states. At the level of each country, national policies will be decisive; they must be re-examined and coordinated in the light of global and African agendas and within the framework of a deepening of the African Union’s Agenda 2063, which aims for shared prosperity and well-being, unity and continental integration as well as the contribution of cities is one of the conditions for achieving this 2063 agenda.
Inclusive Growth and Sustainable Development go through social transformation and through an improvement in better and quality standards of living, so many promises that can only be carried by cities, as recognized by Agenda 2063. On the other hand, African ambitions to modernize its agriculture and strengthen its modern sector for more jobs created and income generated are closely linked to urbanization and the sharing of work between urban and rural areas. As for the global challenge of climate change, it can only be achieved by localizing Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
90 sessions on the Summit menu
These are all concerns that will be addressed through the 90 sessions that will be offered to Summit participants. It should be noted that the thematic sessions, the first three days of Africities 9, will be devoted to the deepening of the themes, around African intermediary cities, to exchanges and to the development of proposals. Some of these sessions are proposed and organized by Africities 9 bodies designated by UCLG Africa and the Kenyan authorities. Most of the other sessions can be offered by local authorities, institutions, and associations.
The political sessions devoted to meetings between ministers, local elected officials and development partners will lead to the adoption of resolutions and recommendations. Summaries of recommendations are prepared for policy sessions. Ultimately, the sessions are grouped into sets that organize and structure the contents of Africities 9. Summaries for each of the sets will be prepared for the political sessions and for the proceedings of the Summit.
Thus, five sets of sessions concern the declination of the theme of intermediary cities, the policies and strategies to be implemented to improve the contribution of intermediary cities to the achievement of the United Nations Agenda 2030 and the Agenda 2063 of the United Nations. African Union, the definition of coalitions with the different categories of local actors whose partnership with intermediate cities is necessary for the latter’s contribution to the structural transformation of the African continent, the sessions proposed by the Kenyan national and local authorities, as well as those who decline the program of UCLG Africa.
Challenges to overcome !
At the same time, seven priority themes will be the subject of dedicated Days: Urban Planning, Climate, Diaspora and Afro-descendants, Women, Young People, Digital and Culture.
Beyond that, the declination of the central theme on African intermediary cities will follow the official opening of the summit and a first introductory speech of the Summit. It will be discussed in five sessions: the situation and evolution of intermediate cities in the dynamics of urbanization in Africa, the contribution of African intermediate cities to the health situation and sustainable development in Africa, the response to the COVID-19 and post-COVID challenges in African intermediate cities, taking into account the investment needs of African intermediate cities in the face of the COVID pandemic and its consequences (the human and financial challenges), and finally the African intermediary cities in the urban, social and cultural evolution of Africa.
More than 5,000 participants from around fifty countries are expected to take part in this 9th meeting including Heads of State, Ministers (of Local Authorities, Finance, Employment, etc.), local elected officials, economic actors, academics, as well as heads of African or international organizations, not to mention the exhibitors and visitors to the Africities Fair, the business fair for African local authorities which will take place on the sidelines of the summit.
If urbanization is a source of opportunities, it is also and above all a source of real challenges for intermediate cities, which will concentrate two-thirds of growth. The policies and strategies of the local authorities have to take into account in this direction various aspects: the planning and the programming of the intermediate cities, the reinforcement of the human resources and the administration of the intermediate cities, the improvement of the environmental policies of the intermediate cities, social inclusion and gender equality in intermediary cities, and digital economy and information systems in intermediary cities. This is why, during this Summit, five essential functions will be highlighted for intermediary cities: to feed them, to build them, toprovide basic services, maintain their infrastructure and services, and also administer and organize them.
At the end of this Kisuma Summit, UCLG Africa through Africities 9 wants to define and propose a specific program for African intermediate cities based on several proposals. This involves, among other things, raising the level of development of intermediate African cities, encouraging them to renew their conceptions of territorial development and planning, guaranteeing access for their populations to public services, link their basic services and their development strategies, to give concrete expression to the priority given to ecology, to also encourage them to build a new model of relations between rural and urban areas, to allow the overhaul of public policies, to become support for industrialization policies. Today, more than ever, intermediate cities support the structuring of space. If the large metropolises ensure Africa’s connection to globalization, the intermediate cities structure their space of influence, equip their territories, strengthen economic opportunities and offer basic local public services to the populations, thus accompanying the structural changes that take shape in their territories. They are also the support of a convergence between space, ecology, economy and society. As studies on local economies led by UCLG Africa have shown, men produce and consume where they live and the way they produce largely determines the mode of social organization as well as the mode of occupation and organization from space. Any modification of one of the components (population, social organization, occupation of space) leads to transformations and the need for rebalancing.
Kenya
