Traditional cooking stoves consume a lot of energy and emit harmful fumes, leading to high rates of premature deaths. Improved cooking stoves are addressing this issue, making it possible for poor households to save money and reduce illnesses related to emissions. Looking at the example of Maputo, Mozambique Rosario Loayza and Alessandro Galimberti explain the benefits of such efficient kitchen appliances.
Providing access to urban sanitation is challenging because of space limitations, complex land tenure and higher public health concerns in crowded settlements. This is especially true for low-income urban areas. For URBANET, Jane Njagi describes how this challenge has been tackled in Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya.
Like most major cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, Abidjan has a traffic problem: Congestion, pollution and extortion amongst public transport providers means that the basic service of mobility can only be provided to citizens on a limited scale. Alexis Gueu analyses the situation.
Mobile money has revolutionised the lives of many people in the Global South, most of all the ones living in difficult economic circumstances. The M-Pesa service in Kenya is one of these success stories. Judith Owigar describes how it helps making basic services like water and energy available to citizens.
In South Africa, historical shortcomings in city planning by the apartheid regime, rapid urbanisation, and a lack of economic opportunities have increased inequity and social exclusion. Faced with high rates of violence and crime, citizens are getting involved in enhancing safety in public spaces. Margo Weimers and her co-authors present an example from the city of Johannesburg.
Over the next 15 years, African cities will add 300 million new urban residents—fully two-thirds above today’s urban population. This unprecedented demographic shift presents a tremendous opportunity for economic uplift and poverty reduction, but these benefits hinge on the ability of African cities to dramatically improve the delivery of infrastructure and services to drive future growth.
The international community has come a long way when it comes to sustainable development. The next step is to continue the partnerships that helped create these frameworks and bring them down to the level of implementation.
In the International Development world, “youth” constitutes a critical variable to look at in any given country. Policy makers believe that more educated generations with better health and economic conditions than their parents are the absolute precondition for achieving long-term economic and social development. They are also aware that a frustrated youth is a serious threat to political stability and economic growth.
Food security touches many different issues, among them poverty, hunger, price levels, and land and food policy. For URBANET, Inês M. Raimundo describes the situation in the Mozambican cities of Maputo and Matola, where the urban poor have resorted to food borrowing to survive.
Are African cities cheap or expensive for their inhabitants? And by how much do cities grow each year? The URBANET infographics on African cities provide key figures and numbers on some interesting trends concerning urban life and development.
In a four-part series, URBANET takes a closer look at specific projects that contribute to making cities more liveable. This fourth and last part describes how a Tanzanian and a German municipality partnered up to contribute to climate protection - and to also collaborate on other issues.
In a four-part series, URBANET takes a closer look at specific projects that contribute to making cities more liveable. This second part describes how the coastal city of Beira in Mozambique mitigates floods and other climate change-related natural disasters, which usually effect the poorest communities the most severely. By rehabilitating the Chiveve River, the situation has improved significantly.
How can citizens become more actively involved in urban development? The Second Urban Festival that took place in Maputo, Mozambique, earlier this month offered various urban actors, stakeholders and inhabitants a multifaceted platform to come together, exchange ideas and jointly reflect upon their city’s development.
Slums and informal settlements are not just a matter of housing quality, they also affect the quality of life that people have, their health and their chances at a good education. At the Habitat III conference in Quito, URBANET talked to Sarah Nandudu, vice-chairperson of the National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda, about community building in slums, the responsibility of the New Urban Agenda, and what formal settlements can still learn from informal ones.
In September 2016, Cities Alliance organised a workshop in Accra, Ghana, to encourage mutual learning between Cities Alliance’s members and active partners in Africa and to create synergies and increase collaboration efforts. The official delegation from Mozambique used this opportunity for an extended study trip in order to exchange with their Ghanaian peers.
