Overview

On the occasion of the 1st Sub-Saharan Africa Dialogue organised by Connective Cities, the International Community of Practice for Sustainable Urban Development, representatives of cities, business, and academia from six African as well as from European countries met in Johannesburg from 14.-16. October.
According to projections by UN Habitat the urban population in Sub-Sahara Africa will increase from 375 million to 1.2 billion by 2050.
The trend of increased urbanisation and resulting requirements for provision of public services particularly for the poor population provided the background to the dialogue event. 25 practitioners from Ghana, Lesotho, Sambia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe as well as Germany and the Netherlands discussed challenges and practical solutions for municipal service provision. By means of exchange of good practices a broad range of issues was presented ranging from participatory management of public services to alternate financing schemes and innovative approaches such as social franchising for water and sanitation service delivery: these practices were analysed according to underlying success factors as well as transferability to other contexts.

Keynotes

Results

Fruitful discussions took place in subsequent rounds of peer-to-peer counselling where individual practitioners presented their challenges in their specific municipalities and received professional inputs from their colleagues on how to resolve problems in a practical manner. A field trip to the Zondi Buyback Centre, a community based recycling centre in Soweto township, provided insights on how to manage waste collection and recycling coupled with employment generation for local communities. The dialogue event eventually explored the development of innovative project ideas, for instance on municipal waste management schemes, which hold the potential for future collaboration among practitioners present. Connective Cities will support the urban practitioners in their networking and cooperation efforts by means of learning events, virtual project workshops and peer-to-peer advisory services.