Municipal & Climate Finance

Looking at Subnational Governments from a Global Perspective: The New and Unique Findings of the World Observatory on Subnational Government Finance and Investment (SNG-WOFI)

By |2019-06-27T09:44:35+02:00June 27th 2019|

The SNG-WOFI initiative collects comparable data on national, subnational, regional, and municipal government finance flows in order to enable informed and targeted policy-making. Following are the latest key findings of the Observatory as presented at its international conference on June 17, 2019 in Paris, France, summarised for URBANET by Isabelle Chatry, Senior Policy Analyst at the OECD.

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Real World Civic Tech Implications of South Africa’s Grassroot Platform

By |2019-06-25T09:34:25+02:00June 25th 2019|

Enabling participatory democracy is the goal of South Africa's online platform Grassroot, where community members get together to change their municipalities for the better – with considerable success, as Katlego Mohlabane, outreach and campaigns coordinator at Grassroot, illustrates with examples from Mnandini and Mzondi.

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Boosting Urban Development in Africa Through New Mechanisms of Financing

By |2019-06-18T10:30:27+02:00June 18th 2019|

With the sectors for development and finance closely intertwined, a municipality's financing mechanism of choice significantly influences its development path. Khady Sarr, Programme Director of the Dakar Municipal Finance Programme, outlines several models and explains the advantages of bond loans – for municipalities and investors alike.

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How to Change the World with Better Financial Awareness & Financial Literacy

By |2019-06-13T11:39:31+02:00June 13th 2019|

Many people around the globe struggle with finance management and debt. Michael Ochieng Nyawino describes why it is important to teach everyone financial literacy skills to tackle the problem.

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The Role of Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisations in Kenya’s Housing Finance Sector

By |2019-06-11T10:05:49+02:00June 11th 2019|

Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisations play a key role for housing security in Kenya. Davina Wood explains how they work and discusses benefits and current challenges.

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Building Rights and Municipal Finance – The Experience of São Paulo, Brazil

By |2021-02-23T13:48:37+01:00June 6th 2019|

Revenue from building rights, or land value capture, plays an important role for municipal finance. Martim O. Smolka and Camila Maleronka report on the specific challenges and achievements in the city of São Paulo.

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Who Captures the Gain from Urban Land Value?

By |2021-11-04T10:18:25+01:00June 4th 2019|

Urban land offers governments in developing countries a vital opportunity for self-financing development. While authorities often see these taxes as administratively burdensome and politically impossible, this doesn’t have to be the case.

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Promoting Innovative Financing Solutions for Cities

By |2021-11-04T16:38:57+01:00March 14th 2019|

About 75 per cent of the infrastructure that needs to be in place by 2050 does not exist today. Getting such an immense scale of infrastructure development right will be critical to whether or not the world locks into a high- or low-carbon growth path. The newly established City Finance Lab tries to contribute innovative, replicable and scalable solutions to reach this ambitious goal.

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Understanding and Tracking Affordable Housing Investment Opportunities in Africa

By |2019-03-12T11:20:28+01:00March 12th 2019|

Housing has become a policy issue that interests not only housing departments and local construction authorities, but Central Banks and financial players as well. Kecia Rust from the Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa (CAHF) explains why housing has become an investment opportunity, and the role that policy makers play.

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Banking the Unbankable: Community Finance in Asia

By |2018-04-10T15:29:43+02:00April 10th 2018|

Most urban slum dwellers in Asian countries cannot access conventional systems of finance. To get a loan, you need to prove you are creditworthy. But without a pay slip, you are unbankable. People living in poor communities need access to loans and other forms of financing to develop solutions to the serious problems they face, writes Somsook Boonyabancha. With a variety of models and scales ranging from small community funds to national-level networks, community finance is a popular and growing tool that promises to open up new possibilities for the people most in need.

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“Productivity increases with the size of a city” – An Interview with Rüdiger Ahrend, Head of Urban Policy Programme at OECD

By |2021-11-03T16:36:19+01:00January 27th 2017|

A lot of processes in cities depend on the financial resources of the municipal and national government. But how can these resources be generated? How can cities make money, how can they save money? And what role does urbanisation play? We talked to Rüdiger Ahrend, Head of the Urban Policy Program at the OECD, about how cities can approach these challenges.

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Access to finance a key consideration for urban leaders at the C40 Mayors’ Summit

By |2021-11-03T16:42:16+01:00December 21st 2016|

In early December, mayors, city delegates and urban experts met in Mexico City for the sixth biennial C40 Mayors’ Summit. The summit emphasised the key role cities play in global low-carbon, resilient, and inclusive development. Providing our cities with adequate access to financing is one of the most pressing issues that need to be addressed.

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