Nigeria, Ghana in collaboration on continental initiative for new urban agenda
Apparently disturbed by Africa’s fast-paced urbanization and population, Nigeria, with the support of Ghana, is championing a continental initiative on strengthening partnership for a new urban agenda aimed at empowering African countries to address their sustainable urbanization challenges.
The initiative also aims to ensure that the concerns of the continent are factored into new global urban agenda and the post 2015 sustainable development goals.
United Nations agency for human settlement (UN-Habitat) estimates that Africa has an urbanization growth rate of about 6-7 percent peer annum, predicting that unless some urgent and drastic is done, over 60 percent of the continent’s population will be living in urban centres by 2025 with the social and economic challenges of the growth of the urban poor and slums.
In Nigeria’s major cities, this growth is already phenomenal and could be seen in places like Nyanya, Bwari in Abuja, and Ajegunle, Amukoko, Orile, Okokomaiko etc in Lagos where rural-urban migrants find accessible and affordable.
At a business luncheon in Lagos at the weekend, Namadi Sambo, Nigeria’s Vice President, who gave the hints on the continental initiative, assured that Nigeria was working on the reduction of the national housing deficit and the transformation of its towns and cities into productive, healthy human settlements and engines of growth, stressing that all these, along with accelerated national growth, were compelling.
The Vice President who spoke as the special guest of honour at the business luncheon for Nigeria’s top 100 development professionals oganised by Century 21—publishers of Construction and Engineering Design (CED) Magazine—said that achieving these goals required strong political will, and a sense of urgency.
He added that the action also required long term planning, long term planning, pro-activeness, innovative financing and multi-pronged approach for dealing with improved access to land and housing finance, technological innovations, materials development, unprecedented rate of urbanization, urban security, and governance.
Sambo stated that the Federal Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development was addressing these concerns through a Roadmap for Housing and Urban Development Sector being developed in collaboration with key housing sector stakeholders.
“The infrastructure deficit will be addressed holistically and systematically through the National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan (NIIMP)which seeks to integrate all sectoral plans into a cohesive whole for sustained and affirmative actions”, he said.
ODINAKA MBONU