Africa’s population is growing and urbanising much faster than the rest of the world. In fact, the African population will double between today and 2050, by which time two thirds of those people will be living in a city.
Catalina Marulanda, Practice Manager, Urban, Resilience and Land, East Africa at the World Bank points out this means more than 650 million people will move to African cities within the next 25 years.
This large number of people, if well managed, represent a huge opportunity to generate economic growth and drive development.
Marulanda works with governments and the private sector on financing programmes that make cities more productive, resilient and liveable through investments, policy dialog and technical assistance.
She will be a panelist at AGES 2025 on the session The Future of African Cities: Resilient & Smart Urban Growth.
Marulanda explained that for African cities to capture the potential of urbanisation, they must work properly. “They must be well-planned and well-managed to harness the high concentration of people, economic activity and to provide access to opportunities, services and jobs,” she said.
But, cities in Africa often grow in an unplanned manner, with high levels of informality and large gaps in infrastructure and services.
Investment into infrastructure and services are not increasing as fast as population growth – Marulanda enumerated some facts and figures to create a sense of the infrastructure service gap.
“What we see is that urbanisation in Africa has not led to the expected boost in incomes and living standards that we have observed in other regions.
“At the same time, risks from natural disasters are increasing across Africa, excerated by climate change. The frequency of floods has jumped 10-fold relative to the 70s, for example.
“Because cities concentrate people and assets, they also amplify impacts from disasters.
“What we are seeing is that annual economic losses from disasters, and the cost of recovery efforts have increased drastically in the past decades. Losses from natural catastophes drain fiscal resources and often set back development gains,” she explained.
For all these reason, the Practice Manager says, supporting cities in Africa will be central to ensuring a more sustainable and resilient urbanisation trajectory and there a steadier and greener economic growth for the continent at large.
She said at the global level, the financing gap for urban infrastructure is large, to the order of $4.5 trillion a year, and much of this gap is in developing countries, where cities are growing most rapidly.
“Accessing large volumes of financing for urban infrastructure in developing countries is challenging. At the Bank we work with national and local governments to mobilise financing by strengthening institutional capacities and systems and taking on innovative financing solutions.”
She believes it is important to understand that the policy and investment choices that African cities make today will lock them into patterns of urban development for decades to come, which will be difficult and costly to change.
“The stakes are high, but there is a window of opportunity in the next 25 years to change the urbanisation trajectory of African cities and set them on a path to greener and more resilient growth,” said Marulanda.
Find out what else the World Bank and DFIs are doing to mobilise financing for African cities and how people around the continent are working on ways to turn urbanisation into a positive influence on green economic growth at AGES2025.
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