WORLD BANK INTERVIEW: “Urbanisation needs to be seen as an opportunity, not a problem.”

Exclusive interview with Catalina Marulanda, Practice Manager, Urban, Resilience and Land, East Africa at the World Bank. A moderator at last year’s AGES, she is a panellist at the upcoming Africa’s Green Economy Summit in February 2025, she is a panellist in the session on “The Future of African Cities: Resilient & Smart Urban Growth.”

Q: Let’s start with some background on you and the work that you currently do at the World Bank.
Hello, my name is Catalina Marulanda. I work at the World Bank, where I currently manage the Urban, Resilience and Land Unit in East Africa.

I am a Civil Engineer with a PhD in Geotechnical Engineering. I started working at the Bank in 2001, focusing on brown environment issues such waste and pollution management. I have worked in Latin America and South Asia, and for the past 2.5 years I have been working in Africa, looking at urban resilience issues.

We work with governments and the private sector on financing programs that make cities more productive, resilient and livable through investments, policy dialog and technical assistance.

Q: Why are “resilient cities” an important topic in the green economy space and how resilient are African cities today?
Around the world, cities are drivers of economic growth, and therefore central to a discussion on the green economy.

• Cities are particularly important in the context of Africa.
• It is estimated that up to 70% of the African GDP is generated by cities, and this share will increase with increasing urbanisation.

The population in Africa is growing and urbanising much faster than the rest of the world.

• In fact, the African population will double between today and 2050, and 2/3 of those people will be living in cities.
• That means that more than 650 million people will move to cities in the next 25 years.
• This is a very large number of people, very fast, and if well managed, a huge opportunity to generate economic growth and drive development.

For African cities to capture the potential of this 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.

However, cities in Africa are growing in an unplanned manner, with high levels of informality, and with huge gaps in infrastructure and services.

Investments in infrastructure and services have not increased as fast as population growth. To give you a sense of the infrastructure and service gap:

• Roughly 70% of the urban population lives in slums.
• Just about 35% of urban households have access to piped water, and just over 25% use a flush toilet.
• Less than half of the SW generated is collected and over 70% of what is generated is openly dumped or burnt.
• Roughly ~ 1/3 of urban dwellers in SSA have no access to electricity.

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, exacerbated 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 catastrophes drain fiscal resources and often set-back development gains.

For all of these reasons, supporting cities in Africa will be central to ensuring a more sustainable and resilient urbanisation trajectory, and therefore a steadier and greener economic growth.

Q: You return to AGES this year as a panelist in a session on “The Future of African Cities: Resilient & Smart Urban Growth.” What’s currently working to finance sustainable cities, and what roles do DFIs and private sector investments play?
At the global level the financing gap for urban infrastructure is very large, in the order of $4.5 trillion dollars per year. 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.

We invest an average of $5 billion dollars every year in urban development and resilience projects to help cities meet the critical demands of urbanisation.

More broadly, 45% of the overall World Bank financing will go toward climate projects by the end of 2025. This is roughly $40 billion dollars to address the growing need caused by climate change and to promote low-carbon growth.

This huge financing need for urban infrastructure cannot be met solely by Development Assistance (ODA), which totals around $225 billion per annum. Lots of work needs to be done to raise additional funding at the country level, for example by:

• Boosting financing from local governments
• Increasing access to private and commercial financing,
• And third, promoting innovative forms of urban financing.

The World Bank supports national governments to adopt policies and regulatory frameworks that enable cities to borrow responsibly, improve their revenue mobilisation efforts, attract private sector investment, and build robust financial management systems.

Q: Which African countries are doing the right things in your opinion?
There is a tremendous level of effort across the region in increasing financing resilient infrastructure and services in cities. Many countries are focusing on what needs to be done with a focus on building resilient infrastructure, not only to withstand the disasters of today, but also those that are expected in the future, under increasing climate change threats.

At the World Bank we are supporting exciting and innovative projects in Tanzania, Mozambique, DRC, Malawi, to name a few, which are creating the right conditions to increase domestic revenue mobilisation for financing urban development, with very interesting results on urban flood management, for example, which is a tremendous urban challenge in Africa.

Q: What keeps you excited about this sector?
Africa’s current urbanisation trajectory may be a bit off, but it is not too late! Two-thirds of urban space in Africa will to be built in the next 25 years. There is an opportunity now to support cities and leverage the opportunities that urbanisation brings. There is a lot to do, a lot of enthusiasm, lots of ideas, innovation, and this gives me a lot of energy.

Q: You were a moderator in a session on solid waste management in last year’s AGES. What were your impressions?
I had the pleasure to chair the panel that discussed ways to improve solid waste management in African cities, a topic related to the discussion we will have at the meeting this year.

It was very interesting to hear about the experiences of stakeholders from every side of the table, including a city government, a private sector CEO, a leading NGO, a representative from a trade association, and a regulator.

They all brought different perspectives and experiences to address the same problem. This helped raise awareness of the audience of the urgency and complexity of the problem, as well as on practical ways that cities and governments have partnered with the private sector and with civil society to tackle this challenge.

Q: How important is this event for the continent?
This event is exciting and important because it brings together a diverse audience of mayors and city government officials, policymakers, financiers, donors, and city networks. It provides an opportunity to share experiences and lessons learned in infrastructure finance, disaster preparedness and risk reduction, and to support knowledge exchange on issues related to green and resilient growth.

Urbanisation needs to be seen as an opportunity, not a problem. If properly managed, African urbanisation can drive structural transformation and create livable cities that are engines of resilient growth. The connections that are made possible through this event and the exchange of experiences between countries and cities facing similar challenges are hugely beneficial and allow participants to build on existing knowledge and to tackle challenges more efficiently.

Q: Anything you would like to add?

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 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.