UN Moves To Provide Advanced Urbanisation In Africa …Says 90% Of Africans Live In Informal Housing

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has urged concerted efforts to create advanced urbanisation as an estimated 90 per cent of Africa’s population live in informal housing.
Director of the Africa Centre for Statistics at the ECA, Oliver Chinganya, made the call during a two-day Global Forum on Human Settlements (GFHS 2019) in Addis Ababa, recently.
The theme of the forum is “Sustainable Development of Cities and Human Settlements in the Digital Era”.
Chinganya stressed that “human settlement must be thought of in terms of quality of life and levels of satisfaction of basic needs’’.
The director deplored the fact that an estimated 60 to 70 per cent of urban households live in slums and close to 90 per cent of the population in Africa live in informal housing.
“This is a large share of the population that live in overcrowded, unhealthy and risky environments,’’ the ECA official said.
Chinganya added that the informal housing across Africa “lack the basic services and social protections that many of us here take for granted, such as clean and safe water, a decent toilet, title deeds or rental agreements, among others’’.
Chinganya further said that all sorts of discussions on smart cities and the digital citizenry must be conducted with the understanding that only a third of Africans are on the internet.
“The digital infrastructures are far from the world’s best in terms of speed, volume, and reliability.’’
Over the past two days, close to 500 experts and policymakers, who are drawn from 52 countries worldwide, have been sharing innovative policies, strategies, technologies and examples on sustainable cities and human settlements towards the betterment of cities and the lives of urban dwellers.
The forum, among other things, explored how to harness huge opportunities arising from the digital revolution to upgrade the planning, construction and management of cities and human settlements, and make them greener, smarter and more sustainable.