A Review of Resource Efficiency in Sub-Saharan African Cities

A Review of Resource Efficiency in Sub-Saharan African Cities Author: Camaren Peter (PhD) Draft paper adapted from an unpublished 2014 report to the Global Initiative for Resource Efficient Cities (United Nations Environment Programme).

Abstract Sub-Saharan African (SSA) cities are growing at the fastest rates in the world, and are characterised by an emerging (but precarious) middle class, and a substantial youth bulge. These factors have elevated the Importance of SSA cities and the emerging African middle class in the global discourse on emerging markets. Yet the viability of sustainable growth in SSA, and the stability of the emerging middle class, is contingent on current resource pressures and projected future resource efficiency requirements. This review paper hence accounts for; (1) the urban growth trends and pressures in SSA cities, as well as (2) the state of resource efficiency in SSA cities in terms of demand pressures, efficiency of resource use and the state of infrastructures and governance. Due to the paucity of data on the subject, a mixture of quantitative and qualitative analyses are provided for a range of key resource sectors (i.e. water, energy, solid waste, food (and soil), construction materials and land), as well as a set of recommendations for how resource efficiency improvements can be made in each key resource sector. It proposes that a decoupling based framework for improving resource efficiency in SSA cities, which is positioned within a holistic inclusive development framework, holds the key to ensuring the sustainable growth of SSA cities and its emerging middle class.

1. Introduction The rapid urban growth of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) cities presents critical resource, infrastructure and service provision development challenges for central governments and local authorities across the region. African cities are growing at the highest rates in the world, yet are least equipped to absorb these levels of growth. High levels of poverty, slums and informal settlements, a substantial youth bulge and emerging middle class, as well as rampant sprawl, and inadequate infrastructures, service provisions and institutional capacity, present critical and urgent development challenges. However, they also open up new opportunities for urban development at the same time. This paper reviews the state of resource efficiency in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) cities. It outlines the key demand pressures, efficiency of use and the state of infrastructures and governance for the water, energy, solid waste, food, construction and land use sectors. External global and regional pressures, such as changes in global resource flows and availability, the global economy and global climate change effects, all impact on the majority poor urban citizens of SSA cities, and are also taken into account. In particular, this paper draws attention to the vulnerability of poor and low-income households to the

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unpredictable impacts of food-water-energy-transport (nexus) impacts, and argues that stabilising these households is key to the future success of SSA cities. It proposes a framework for improving resource efficiency of SSA cities by drawing on decoupling theory (i.e. decoupling from resource exploitation and environmental impacts) as a theoretical basis. Two dimensions, (1) closing flow loops and (2) cascading flows through systems, are key to unlocking the potential of resource efficiency programmes and projects in SSA cities. Green urban infrastructures, planning and technology choices, cleaner production, ecosystems-based adaptation and new urban management regimes, as well as institutional transformation and behavioural changes, are proposed as approaches for implementing sustainability agendas. It emphasises the need to address poverty and the challenges of slum urbanisation and informal settlements through a greater focus on inclusive approaches towards in-situ development. Moreover, it argues that the potential for the absorption of decentralised and semi-decentralised infrastructures and technologies is especially high where slums and informal settlements are concerned, as they typically lack access and proximity to bulk infrastructure and service provision systems, as well as credit and finance. Lastly, it highlights the need to harness emerging activities in SSA cities to enhance resource efficiencies and to improve potential for skills development, employment and new entrepreneurial activities. To this end, it warns against blindly adopting the same urban development trajectories that were adopted in developed world cities and adopting a more holistic approach instead.

2. Brief Overview of Urbanism in Sub-Saharan Africa 2.1 Urban Growth Trends and Pressures in Sub-Saharan Africa Table 1: Sub-Saharan Africa - Total Rural and Urban Populations (Thousands), Percentage Urban and Decadal Urban Growth Rates 1950-2050 Year/ Decade Urban Rural Total Urban% Growth Rates%

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

2030

2040

2050

20,069

33,180

55,643

89,709

139,414

206,322

298,402

426,522

595,544

810,152

1,068,752

159,698 179,766

189,297 222,478

229,420 285,063

284,996 374,705

355,722 495,136

435 244 641 566

524,321 822,724

620,467 1,046,989

707,474 1,303,018

777,385 1,587,538

822,959 1 891,711

11,2 N/A

14,9 5,02

19,5 5,16

23,9 4,77

28,2 4,4

32,2 3,91

36,3 3,69

40,7 3,57

45,7 3,33

51,0 3,07

56,5 2,77

Source: World Urbanisation Prospects Revised 2011

Between 1950 and 2010 Africa’s urban population increased 12 times over, the highest relative increase to other regions in the world1. The total African population is projected to reach 2 billion by 2040, an increase of 1 billion since 2010, reaching circa 3 billion by 20702. By 2050 Africa’s urban population is expected to reach 1.26 billion, rising from 400 million in 20103. In percentage terms, Africa is projected to reach the 50 per cent urbanisation mark by 2035, and to grow to 58 per cent urbanised by 20504. By comparison 2

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is considerably less urbanised than North Africa; the projections for urban growth in SSA are therefore lower than for the entire continent (see Table 1 above). Currently, however, Africa’s cities boast the highest population growth rates in the world i.e. they are growing fast, despite low levels of national urbanisation. Moreover, about 75 per cent of urban growth in Africa is absorbed by intermediate and small sized cities, indicating the importance of scale in responding to urban growth in SSA5. Data and trends over urbanisation in SSA are contested however. For example, a 2009 study indicated stagnation of growth in large and medium sized towns6. It also indicated increased circular migration, reducing the impact of in-migration on urban growth7. By 2030, the combined purchasing power per annum of the top performing 18 African cities are projected to reach a total value of USD 1.3 trillion8. Diversification of services such as banking, retail and telecommunications is also expected to accelerate, especially in cities, and already contributes more than 70 per cent of GDP growth in Africa’s most diverse economies (i.e. Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and South Africa)9. Generally, however, SSA countries are extractive economies that rely on global demand for raw materials such as minerals, rare earth metals, timber, and so forth. 2.2 Demographics of the Emerging African “Middle Class” Two demographic trends are key to this growth: the expanding African ‘middle class’, and the ‘youth bulge’. Projections indicate that 128 million African households are likely to transition into the largely urban middle class by 2030. Over the long term, the middle class is projected to grow from 355 million in 2010 (i.e. 34 per cent of the total population) to 1.1 billion in 2060 (i.e. 42 per cent). This means that by 2060 Africa’s middle class will be equal in size to China’s current middle class10. The African youth bulge refers to the projected growth of the largest labour force on the planet by 2040 (i.e. at 1.1 billion people); more than China’s and India’s current labour forces11. By 2040 Africa’s population will be 50% urbanized and there will more than likely be a labour force of 1.1 billion out of a total of 2 billion people12. Defined as those living on US$2 – US$20 per day, the African middle class is precariously balanced between upward mobility and poverty. In 2010, around 60 per cent of the African middle class actually lived on US$2 – US$4 per day (i.e. 198,739,000 out of 326,663,000) and have hence been dubbed the “floating middle class”13. This floating middle class comprises 20.88 per cent of the total African population, while those living in poverty (i.e. below US$2 per day) constituted 60.84 per cent14. These floating middle class and poor households are extremely vulnerable to change effects. For example, exogenous change effects such as those in the global economy (e.g. rising price of resources such as oil) and global climate (e.g. regional drought and crop failures) can wreak havoc on poor households that can spend between 50 and 80 per cent 3

of their household budgets on food, water, energy and transport. The African youth bulge is a potential labour and consumer pool, as well as a potential threat to socio-political stability. Should the pressing needs of SSA urban youth remain largely unmet (i.e. for employment, basic services, etc.), it is conceivable that this youthful social force can potentially serve as a force for socio-political destabilisation. Table 2: Sub-Saharan Africa - Urban Slum Populations and Urban Proportion Living in Slums 1990-2010 Year

1990

1995

2000

2005

2007

2010

Urban Slum Population (1000’s)

102,588

123,210

144,683

169,515

181,030

199,540

Urban Population Living in Slums (%)

70.0

67.6

65.0

63.0

62.4

61.7

Source: Global Urban Indicators 2009 (see Table 8 in source)

2.3 Key Urban Development Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa African cities are ill-equipped to absorb current and projected rates of population growth. SSA cities are characterised by (1) high levels of recent economic growth, which has been accompanied by (2) deepening socio-economic inequalities, (3) large proportions of slums1 and informal settlements (See Table 2), (4) uncontrolled sprawl, (5) weak institutional capacity at city and local government levels, (6) severe urban ecosystem degradation, (7) high levels of vulnerability to climate change impacts, (8) heavy reliance on centralised master-planning for cities, as well as (9) high unemployment (especially amongst the youth), and (10) the prevalence of general informality in trade, employment, provision of services, land and housing governance, and so forth. The continent is also heavily characterised by the spatial growth of existing and new cities and towns along inter-city and trans-boundary regional corridors in every region.

3. State of Resource Efficiency in Sub-Saharan African Cities: Demand Pressures, Efficiency of Use, State of Infrastructures and Governance. Figure 1: African Material Consumption and Raw Material Shares Per Capita Compared with Global Averages.

1By “slum” we refer to the UN-Habitat definition of slums, where inhabitants of an urban dwelling lack one or more of the following; (1) durable, permanent housing that is resistant to extremities, (2) sufficient living space (no more than 3 people per room, (3) easy access to safe, affordable water, (4) sufficient access to sanitation, and (5) tenure security against forced eviction. This also helps distinguish between informal settlements and slums. Formal, inner city buildings, for example, can fall in urban decay conditions.

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Fig 1a. Average domestic material consumption (tons Fig 1b. Shares of raw material categories of average per capita). domestic material consumption per capita Source: www.materialflows.net (2012). 15

As illustrated in Figure 1 above, Africa’s domestic material consumption per capita (Figure 1a) is much lower than other global regions, while its share of biomass consumption is much higher (see Figure 1b). This indicates the low levels of industrialisation, and high levels of agrarian sector activities in Africa. In this section, we review regional urban resource demand pressures, service provision and state of infrastructure and governance for water and sanitation, energy, solid waste, food, construction and land-use. 3.1. Water While some regions in SSA have water-rich areas (e.g. Congo River Basin, Ethiopian Highlands, the Great Lakes Region), climate change effects, water scarcity and drought have already started to have dire impacts on the continent. In 2008, 25 countries were directly affected by water scarcity and drought16. Generally speaking, Africa hosts 10 of the 12 most drought water vulnerable countries in the world17. There is evidence that climate change has increased drought and desertification in the semi-arid Sahel region, and it has moved 200km southward18, fuelling conflict over grazing and agricultural lands, as well as water sources19. Addis Ababa, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in Eastern Africa are vulnerable to drought20. Coastal regions (e.g. in Western and Southern Africa) are vulnerable to sealevel rise induced saline intrusion into aquifers, as well as groundwater and rivers that lead to the coast. Access to bulk water infrastructures is either low, or non-existent. Urban agriculture, often conducted on the peripheries of SSA cities, can also place additional stress on limited water resources. In addition, the rapid population growth and expansion of Sub-Saharan cities, unfolds in a largely unplanned manner; relegating inhabitants of new areas – especially slum and informal settlements – to heavy dependence on informal and private water

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vendors21 22. Where cities are located along rivers, on which they depend for water supply, inadequate upstream catchment management, as well as pollution from industrial and mining activities, can affect water quality adversely. In extreme cases, it can also affect water supply. Maintaining water supply and quality requires that both water reticulation and waste treatment facilities work well together. It is evident, from the service provision levels accounted for in the previous section, that the SSA urban context is characterised by poor water and sanitation infrastructures, as well as governance and administration systems. Institutional capacity to service, maintain and upgrade water infrastructures is severely lacking in Western African23 and Central African cities in particular. Moreover, the prevalence of trans-boundary river catchments and systems means that water is shared between neighbouring countries, and often requires international water agreements between them. Hence the potential for conflict over shared water resources is an additional demand pressure which must be taken into account, and city water use profiles need to be carefully worked out in order to stay within limits and guarantee supply to neighbouring and/or downstream cities and countries. 3.2. Energy Energy supply in SSA cities is generally characterised by discontinuous supply (i.e. of electricity and liquid fuel), which in turn hampers productivity and exacerbates poverty, especially among low-income and poor urban dwellers. Consequently, reliance on biomass, bottled gas, liquid fuel, coal, paraffin and diesel are very high in SSA cities, especially in slums and informal settlements where bulk energy infrastructure provisions rarely connect. The prevalent use of wood and charcoal, often impacts negatively on biodiversity in surrounding forested areas of cities (e.g. Kampala, Addis Ababa). In Lilongwe, although demand for electricity is around 7-9 MW per annum, the lack of affordability of electricity has resulted in the growth of wood-fuel use24. Moreover, vastly sprawled, unplanned cities lead to higher fuel costs for transportation, further exacerbating the vulnerability of poor and low-income households through downstream impacts on the cost of goods and food. The rapid growth of cities in SSA, when combined with pre-existing inadequacy of bulk energy infrastructures to meet demand, means that sheer population pressure, and associated socio-economic activities (which require energy supply) are straining under the energy crisis. In Western Africa, average compound growth of regional electricity demand exceeds 7 per cent per annum. It is projected to increase from 37 TWh in 2003 to 140TWh in 202025. Where unplanned expansion of the city takes hold, bulk energy infrastructures can scarcely keep pace and demand increases in areas that require substantial additional infrastructure investment in order to connect to centralised grids and energy supply infrastructures. Moreover, regional energy distribution infrastructures are inadequate in most regions in 6

SSA, impacting heavily on cities. Fuel supply interruptions can play havoc with socioeconomic activities in SSA cities. Consequently, illegal fuel smuggling and hoarding are commonplace (e.g. in Western and Central Africa). Poverty and productivity in Sub-Saharan cities are either directly caused, or made worse, by lack of affordable access to both electricity and liquid fuels26, as well lack of energy distribution infrastructures. In Tanzania, load-shedding and power shortages have had serious negative effects on economic growth27. According to the African Development Bank, lack of energy supply is the main obstacle to increasing ICT infrastructure and services in SSA cities28. Backup electricity supply systems are commonplace in SSA cities, and are often taken into account from the outset of building and construction. Where developments occur without planning for bulk infrastructure connections (e.g. such as in Addis Ababa) guaranteeing off-grid energy supply through backup systems is a clear imperative. Kenya and Uganda already make extensive use of solar power and backup generators with Kenya having trained in excess of 2000 solar technicians since the 1980s. Biomass constitutes a large portion of energy supply, especially in slums and informal settlements, and over half of informal settlements on the continent make use primarily of paraffin, diesel, bottled gas, wood and coal to generate energy29. Consequently, informal and private sector energy providers play a large role in ensuring energy security, but typically at higher costs, which put poor households under exceptional strain. 3.3. Solid Waste Poor solid waste management characterises SSA cities, and illegal dumping, irregular waste collection, and uncollected waste constitute a major health and hygiene problem, and impacts negatively on the environmental health of cities; for example, when dumped in or near waterways, wetlands and/or aquifers. Even though per capita waste production of African cities is far below the global average of 1.39 kg/capita/day, lying between 0.3 to 0.8 kg/capita/day30, poorly performing, inadequate or absent solid waste management systems present a difficult and deepening challenge for SSA cities, notwithstanding their large informal waste picker and recycling sectors. Informal waste recyclers and pickers typically live below the poverty line, on the margins of society, and eke out precarious existences and waste-related occupational health and safety requirements are not typically followed. Major hygiene and safety concerns prevail, and the informal waste sector can also perform environmentally unsound ways of dealing with waste. For example, electronic waste is often burned for copper and rare earth metals, resulting in heavy pollution, environmental contamination, as well as blood contamination. Private waste collectors also play a large role in SSA cities, although they can also be responsible for questionable waste disposal dumping and practises (e.g. often transporting waste to surrounding farms, where untreated waste is dumped directly onto farmed fields as fertiliser). 7

Solid waste management infrastructures and services are severely lacking in most SSA cities, and lead to major environmental and health risks. Landfill capacities for most cities are under strain, and are often not well managed. For example, sanitary landfills that were established 20 years ago in Lagos and Onitsha in Nigeria ceased to be operational within a year of being built. The City of Johannesburg’s eight official landfill sites have been under severe capacity strain, and it is unclear how the city plans to deal with its growing waste challenge. Policies, regulations and legislation on waste are also lacking, and as a result, many private waste recycling companies essentially proceed without adequate institutional support and certification. The most abject failure of waste management infrastructures and governance systems in SSA can perhaps be gleaned from understanding the plight of informal waste pickers and recyclers. The lack of supportive agencies, funding opportunities, training and skilling programmes, requisite equipment and organisation, and are largely ignored by city authorities, except when they are targeted for illegal activities. More than half of the waste in African cities consists of organic material31. This waste profile begs for more comprehensive, carbon sensitive waste to energy and waste to fertiliser programmes and projects. That is, the solid waste produced by African cities presents both a challenge and a critical opportunity at the same time that could potentially leverage carbon incentives, funding and markets while creating value from waste at the same time. 3.4. Food Generally, although the demand for food is rising (i.e. with population increase) in SSA and its cities, agricultural productivity in Africa has suffered due to the changes in the global economy (e.g. global recession, oil price fluctuations), changes in the global climate, as well as environmental degradation (e.g. 65 per cent of farmlands on the continent have been degraded due to physical and chemical impacts)32. Land degradation affects 32 countries on the continent33. Drought34, flooding35 and conflict36 over arable land and water resources, also play a large role in threatening food security. Food production and distribution systems are extremely sensitive to fuel (i.e. petroleum and diesel) price fluctuations in particular, as fertiliser, as well as fuel for running equipment such as tractors and generators, and the costs of food distribution depend heavily on fuel price fluctuations. Sub-Saharan African (SSA) cities rely heavily on rural agriculture for food security37, and urban agriculture plays a major role in ensuring that a balance of nutritional needs are met. Onions, tomatoes, leafy vegetables, root vegetables as well as poultry and livestock are typically farmed within the city where possible, or at its peripheries. Many poor and lowincome households diversify their income streams and food security options by cultivating

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fruit and nut trees, vegetables and/or poultry and livestock. Low productivity characterises agriculture in SSA (e.g. it is 2-4 times lower than the global average in Western Africa38). Maintaining soil fertility is essential for most farmers, and over-fertilisation, soil erosion, soil contamination as well as farming practises, can reduce soil fertility, and consequently, agricultural productivity. More effort has to be put into the soil in order to maintain yields, and these costs impact negatively on small-scale (and especially informal) farmers. City governments and local authorities are rarely involved in managing soil integrity and nutrient loads to the benefit of agricultural productivity, and is generally an afterthought to their desire to ‘control’ farmer’s access to land. In addition, urban agriculture typically takes place on the peripheries of SSA cities, and often encroaches along river banks, into wetland and lowland areas, threatening biodiversity and environmental integrity. The infrastructures for efficient food production and distribution are absent in many of the regions of SSA, where the majority of food is produced from farms under two hectares in size. The logistics for food distribution is severely lacking, especially in Western and Central Africa, as well as in Eastern Africa. Inadequate cold chain and storage capacity is compounded by poor road and rail systems. As a result, food surpluses aren’t effectively leveraged when available. Post-harvest losses in Africa are estimated at 25 per cent39. Urban agricultural practises also require close attention in SSA cities. Industrial pollution of rivers, such as occurs along the banks of the Akaki River in Addis Ababa (see section 3.1.4), along which industries were located many decades ago precisely so that they could release outflows into the river, now pose a severe threat to water quality, as well as the urban agriculture activities that are conducted along the river. Urban agriculture is heavily reliant on water supply; and many informal urban farmers circumvent safety regulations by making use of grey-water and/or by drawing water from contaminated sources. Food safety concerns over locally produced food have resulted. In this respect, schemes to educate farmers in the use of grey-water can prove worthwhile, for example, the use of wastewater for irrigation, requires closer regulation. In addition, the capture of food supply value chains by “supermarketisation” that is driven by large, often multi-national chains may impact negatively on peri-urban and rural food producers as the African middle class grows40. This may also lead to worsening food security for the poor, who typically lack the purchasing power to access the ‘supermarketised’ global food system41. 3.5. Construction Whether formal or informal, construction activities occur at significant levels in cities that host important economic and government functions, as well as smaller towns and cities that may host complementary functions. Government, commercial and business buildings, residential houses and complexes, houses, industrial buildings and warehouses, and so forth, all constitute formal sector construction activities within cities. Informal settlements are also dynamically changing (although not always drastically) and make use of a variety 9

of materials, often recycled from formal construction sites and waste dumps, in order to build and extend semi-permanent and temporary dwellings. Many Sub-Saharan cities contain a lot of un-cleared construction waste; which is absorbed by the informal sector. The construction cost breakdown shown in Table 29 is discussed in Appendix B. Costs generally compare similarly across different cities and regions for building costs of all classes that were evaluated (i.e. residential, commercial/retail, industrial, hotel and other). Luanda, known for being the most expensive city in the world for ex-pats, boasts the highest building construction costs amongst the selected cities in Table 29 (Appendix B), even when compared to global building costs across selected cities (see Table 30 in Appendix B). Building cost escalations are also important in SSA cities, where sensitivities to price fluctuations of materials can potentially play havoc with projects as (explained further in Appendix B). On another level, the question of building resource efficiencies also begs analysis. The actual construction materials used, the design and technology choices that are made, as well as the construction methods that are employed, all contribute to the resource use and environmental impact of buildings. This in turn impacts on their utility and other costs that are required to run a building or property effectively. Yet, locking buildings into high resource use and environmental impacts in SSA cities, which are least equipped to absorb price fluctuations in resources such as energy, will almost certainly constrain productivity and growth should resource constraints intensify (which they are projected to). Green building codes and certifications can be developed, but will likely be abused as an avenue for further corruption within bureaucracies, rather than be implemented. Hence, the promotion of green building standards should be approached with caution. It is difficult to envisage how green building codes could be institutionally enforced in SSA cities, when even existing building and construction codes are often openly thwarted. Emphasising building resource efficiencies e.g. water and energy efficiencies and lower utility cost profiles, is more likely to encourage uptake of more efficient design and construction practices in SSA cities. Retro-fitting holds great potential for lowering resource use and environmental footprints of buildings; and up to 80 per cent resource efficiencies can be achieved (albeit at a high cost)42, so new building construction is not the only vector through which large differences can be made in respect of building efficiencies. Moreover, it is important to address efficiency concerns in both formal and informal sector construction sectors. Resource efficiency is a critical element of stabilising poor and lowincome urban households. Interventions, such as the use of decentralised and semidecentralised technologies, that can help improve resource use efficiencies as well as create jobs and employment at the same time, are obvious choices. 3.6. Urban Land Use

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While it may not be appropriate to generalise the urban spatial form that SSA cities exhibit, some features are typical. They are usually typified by centralised cores that house financial, commercial and business activities, where land values are highest. Suburbs typically house the wealthy in gated communities and/or buildings and streets, while the urban poor typically reside in low income residential suburbs, informal settlements and slums. Slums and informal settlements typically dominate the SSA city, housing the majority of residents, and absorbing the majority of growth. Sprawl and unplanned development and squatting are commonplace. The urban poor are often relegated to the peripheries of the city, except in cases where inner city decay has opened up opportunities for low-cost rentals and/or squatting in buildings (as in the case of South African cities such as Johannesburg or in Nairobi). Formal land markets effectively exclude the poor and those transitioning between poverty and middle class (i.e. the “gap” market) from entering the formal property and land market systems. High land values, lack of finance, corrupt, impenetrable and tedious bureaucracies, speculation and control of land by wealthy elites, as well as unrealistic construction codes and by-laws; all contribute to this exclusion. Consequently, the poorer urban citizens of SSA cities are relegated to informal land and housing markets, where they are subject to a range of uncertainties and unscrupulous operators. Dominant land uses and efficiency of use in SSA cities is governed by the following key factors (see Appendix A, Table 2 for a detailed discussion of the listed factors below): •

Demand for land is high in Africa, with demand in 2009 alone surpassing the preceding 20 years43. Globally, SSA is expected to play a critical role in cropland expansion44.

•

Dual land management systems: formal and informal sector land management systems co-exist in SSA cities, with informal tenure often serving the majority of urban citizens.

•

Un-leveraged land values: High levels of informal settlement and slum urbanisation renders municipalities cash-strapped as they are unable to collect revenues.

•

Gating and enclave developments: pervasive gating and enclave developments fragment the city and introduce discontinuities that affect flows (e.g. traffic) within the city. In turn, this adversely affects the resource efficiency of SSA cities.

•

Sprawl, densities and corridors: SSA cities are simultaneously heavily sprawled, while often containing high density slums and informal settlements, as well as higher densities along urban and regional corridors. Overall, SSA cities are therefore low to medium density settlements, which increases their resource and environmental impacts.

•

Piecemeal, uncontrolled, unregulated development: Lack of coordinated planning and integration of developments within many SSA cities negates efforts to improve resource efficiency, as integration is required in order to optimise urban resource use profiles. 11

•

Environmentally unsound development: environmental impacts of urbanisation and urban development is often an afterthought in SSA cities, where immediate and urgent pressures to accommodate growth often take precedence. However, this in turn impacts on the resource security of cities e.g. in the case of water quality and quantity, heat enclave effect (energy use), as well as the ability to cope with flooding, disease, storm surges, erosion, coastal erosion and so forth.

Customary and informal land management systems are also important to consider, and stem from colonial histories. In Western and Central African cities, customary tenure is the most common form of tenure45. Even where it is formally restricted to rural areas, customary tenure is tolerated in urban areas46. Eastern African cities have diverse customary practises, with which different degrees of security of tenure are associated47. Somalia’s cities have the highest levels of informal land tenure. In 2002-2003, Kigali’s formal land market serviced only 10 per cent of demand48 and formal land and housing policies directly competes with informal systems. In Central Africa, Cameroon has long recognised customary land rights (i.e. since 1974)49 although practical conversion of informal land tenure agreements into formal systems remains rare. In Gabon and the DRC, customary land rights are not recognised, although DRC recognises user rights and Gabon recognises the right to be recognised by law after 5 years of peaceful occupation of a plot that does not exceed 10 hectares. In Southern Africa, where colonial and post-colonial legacies (e.g. land nationalisation) prevail in land markets and governance systems, freehold, customary/communal and public land constitute the main systems. Customary tenure is communal, and individuals pay for the right to use the land and effectively do not become owners of land. It must also be noted that in the 21st Century SSA urban context, variations and even new modes of informal land governance, which may or may not reflect traditional, customary systems often prevail. The processes that drive urbanisation have also driven significant changes in the informal realm. Hence, new, more recent textured and ethnographic understandings are required in order to understand how these changes have unfolded, and what consequences they may have.

4. Discussion and Recommendations 4.1. A Decoupling-Based Framework for Sub-Saharan African cities The need to actualise decoupling50 from resource exploitation and environmental impacts is not only a desirable objective for SSA cities; it is also necessary in order to ensure their long term sustainability. Projections of future demand for service and infrastructure provisions in SSA cities, when evaluated against projections of increased resource scarcities and commensurate cost increases, indicate that the need for lower resource exploitation profiles of SSA cities may prove critical to ensuring their competitiveness in 12

the medium and long terms. It has also been argued that “bio-regional economic diversification” provides a possible means for realising more “just transitions” to sustainability; an essential factor when considering the plight of SSA cities51. In this section, we detail how bio-regional economic diversification can be realised in SSA cities. Where resource flows and socio-metabolic flows within cities and locales are concerned, two mechanisms are key to unlocking higher resource efficiencies, that is: •

Closing flow loops: this requires closing material flow loops within a bounded system. For example, recycling water, grey-water, sewerage and organic waste (i.e. to water, energy and compost), soil nutrients, and so forth. When flow loops are closed for a particular bounded system, it reduces its external reliance and increases its internal reliance, leaving a system that is more resilient to exogenous change effects (e.g. offgrid systems).

•

Cascading flows: this requires linking flows between different bounded systems so that optimal use and re-use of flows is realised. For example, when maggots produced from slaughterhouse flies are gathered and used as inputs to aquaculture farming. When grey-water is reused in different systems, for example; for toilet flushing or agriculture; in both cases water flows are being cascaded, but in the case of agricultural reuse of grey-water nutrient loops are being closed as well (i.e. returned to the soil).

These two objectives can be achieved through/implemented in a variety of interventions, primarily by: •

Designing ‘green’ urban infrastructures and systems with the resource efficiency and sustainability imperatives given equal importance as liveability, mobility and accessibility.

•

Green urban planning: Integrating resource efficiency and sustainability criteria in planning frameworks for urban settlements, alongside traditional planning imperatives such as the aforementioned liveability, mobility and accessibility criteria.

•

The adoption of green technologies and infrastructure choices in urban settlement design and planning. Paying particular attention to low-cost, robust, easy to install, service and maintain technologies and infrastructures. This may require innovation as well as alternative sourcing.

•

Embracing cleaner production systems, techniques, technologies and processes in manufacturing, industry and mining and other extractive sectors.

•

Embracing ecosystems-based adaptations in planning e.g. where disaster relief measures are concerned, in the case of urban flooding, significant reductions can be brought about through creating and/or restoring green-belts, wetlands, riparian habitats and river systems.

•

Re-thinking urban management regimes, for example; through embracing new models that draw on the exploitation of waste streams to generate revenues, improve energy 13

security (i.e. through waste to energy), as well as models that seek to close loops and cascade flows within urban precincts and neighbourhoods in order to lower the overall costs of urban management and increase local resilience at the same time. Embracing green economic growth trajectories through these interventions can extend further benefits to society. These include; (1) improving and diversifying the skills base within SSA cities (especially amongst unemployed youth), (2) creating employment, stimulating entrepreneurship and opportunities for growth in the micro, small and medium sized business sectors, and (3) improving the resilience of households (especially poor) as well as businesses to exogenous changes and impacts that may result from changes in the global climate, environment and economy. At the same time, broader scale structural transformation of SSA city and national economies can also be stimulated and driven through these interventions, which promote green economic growth and sustainable development. Moreover, it is critical to acknowledge that transitions to sustainability are not simply an outcome of decoupling, in the technical sense. In the context that Sub-Saharan cities exist, it is also important to address additional dimensions that drive social and institutional change, as well as broader behavioural change in society. As outlined in section 5 earlier, these can be summarised as follows: •

Social and institutional change can be driven by, (1) the use of strategic intermediaries, (2) embracing inclusive development, (3) introducing policy and regulatory changes, and (4) acknowledging formal and informal systems as integrated systems.

•

Societal behavioural change can be driven by engaging with: (1) creative industries such as music, advertising, electronic media etc. to help stimulate changes in the values, beliefs and norms that drive social behaviours; (2) using growing educational activities in cities to increase awareness, develop skills, build career paths, and create business opportunities and entrepreneurship, and (3) adopting bold design, infrastructure and technology changes (e.g. mass public transit systems) that in turn drive wholly new behaviours and resource use patterns amongst the urban citizenry.

4.2 The Socio-metabolism of African cities: Opportunities for Transition to Resource Efficiency The opportunities that can be identified for the key resources in SSA cities are summarised in this section. 4.2.1 Water Water tariffs also affect access to water. Water tariffs are expected to rise 40 per cent by 2030 in the Southern African region52. Even where free basic water allocations are made, for example in South Africa, water tariffs have still proved unaffordable; and is well

14

illustrated in Bond & Dugard’s53 critique of prepaid water metre installations in Soweto township in Johannesburg, which resulted in public service delivery protests. Gaborone’s water costs are high due to the costs of transportation54. Poor catchment management practises can also impose additional pressures on the cost of water provision. For example, sedimentation can negatively affect both supply of water as well as the costs of water treatment55. Good catchment management agencies and systems are required to improve water supply in SSA. In Nairobi for example, good catchment management in the Aberdare mountain range has increased forest cover from 62000 ha in 2000 to 131000 ha in 201056, improving water supply. However, pesticide use and heavy groundwater abstraction levels presents a threat to water quality57. In South Africa, the City of Cape Town manages water supply from the Table Mountain range by heavily protecting biodiversity, and investing heavily in conservation efforts. Addis Ababa is working with the South African National Biodiversity Institute in Cape Town, South Africa, in order to improve catchment management practises in the mountains surrounding Addis Ababa. Programmes such as “working for water” and “alien plant clearance” in South Africa have proved successful, and these models may perhaps prove transferable to other SSA regions. The South African national government has also invested heavily in catchment management agencies; namely the Inkomati Catchment Management Agency, where water resources that are critical to both South African and Mozambican cities are managed in service of an international water sharing agreement between both countries (i.e. the Inkomati Accord). 4.2.2 Energy The availability of biomass in SSA cities and countries, and especially high bio-waste content of municipal solid waste, present an opportunity for improving energy security. Fuel efficient wood-fuel stoves have proved successful as an energy intervention in slums, informal settlements and rural settlements. The potential to produce energy from waste, and for processing local sewerage at the same time, through the deployment of biodigesters, can potentially bring great benefits to households in terms of energy security, improved sanitation and hygiene of settlements (and taking the demand/load off bulk infrastructures), as well as boosting urban agriculture. Similarly, the potential use of decentralised renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar power also begs further consideration in SSA cities. Solar water heater geysers, for example, can help bring household energy costs down, and create skilled and certified jobs at the same time, boosting local economies and generating cash flow where it is needed most. For wealthier precincts, smart grid systems that integrate a mix of renewable and non-renewable energies and manages energy use for greater efficiencies may prove suitable. For smaller scale energy management, such as in households, apartment blocks and large building complexes, smart appliance energy management systems, if built into 15

developments from the outset (or retro-fitted into existing buildings) can make significant differences to building energy use profiles (e.g. through reductions in heating, ventilation and air-conditioning). The use of low-energy appliances such as LED lighting, insulation, etc. can also improve urban energy efficiencies significantly. The potential for leveraging carbon funding in order to deploy green energy technologies is high, but communities and organisations often require assistance in negotiating complex carbon accounting and application procedures. Given the high potential for renewable energy production on the continent58, the high demand for energy in cities, and the lack of reliable supply, the role of cities in leapfrogging energy infrastructures should not be underestimated. Some countries are incentivising fuel efficient technologies, renewable energies technologies, etc. but more needs to be done to secure energy supply and efficiencies in Sub-Saharan African cities. Where fuel supply and costs are concerned, mass transit systems proffer a worthwhile solution for the congested, air-polluted cities in SSA. They are worthwhile public investments as they can help bring increased mobility to the general public at cheaper costs. They also typically create many jobs, and help decrease congestion and improve urban productivity. Cities such as Cape Town, Johannesburg and Lagos have already put in place bus-rapid transit systems. Johannesburg has already completed the first phase of light rail system implementation, and Lagos, Kigali and Addis Ababa are also seeking to implement light rail systems of their own. Cape Town’s extensive metro system, which services many of the poorer neighbourhoods, is currently undergoing a complete overhaul where new coaches are being built in partnership with Brazil (70 per cent of the production of the coaches is taking place within South Africa; stimulating economic growth and employment). In the case of SSA cities, which are widely serviced by private and informal transport providers, it is very important to engage in public participation dialogues that bring all transport stakeholders together, and to integrate mass public transit deployments with existing transport provisions in the city (e.g. through feeder routes). Limited capital investment in energy generation capacity presents a problem for the region, despite its wealth in fossil fuel and hydropower potential. However, the region has high potential for renewable energies in solar (5-6 KWh/m2/day), wind, tidal, ocean thermal and ocean wave energy59. The bulk hydroelectric power potential of the Central African region has been estimated in excess of 40,000 MW60. In Eastern Africa, the potential for both additional hydroelectric power generation, as well as geothermal energy generation is still to be fully harnessed. The region hosts large potential for both renewable and non-renewable energy. A major obstacle, however, is the regional distribution infrastructures that carry electricity supply to cities and towns, and across borders. In response, the West African Power Pool is attempting to improve regional interconnectedness of electricity grid systems. Similarly, 16

the Central African Power Pool aims to do the same. The East African Power Pool has been created in order to help improve regional energy security. 4.2.3 Solid Waste The high percentages of organic waste within lower income settlements indicates that there is potential for localised composting linked to urban agriculture, and collection for livestock feed; can also link to the production of energy to supplement inputs to smallplant biogas operations (e.g. a recent University of Cape Town demonstrator project in the Khayelitsha informal settlement). The opportunity and potential exists to transform these informal recycling and reuse activities, through putting in place support infrastructures and programmes that help the sector transition towards greater relevance in SSA cities, as well as higher levels of job security and safety. More fundamental localised solutions are required for dealing with waste, and the potential exists to create small to medium scale industries that are engaged in the waste value chain and to create much needed semi-skilled and skilled jobs at the same time. Opportunities for recycling organic waste, glass, plastic, rubber, metal, tin and fibrous materials, as well as hazardous materials, should be carefully considered in city waste strategies. By transferring some of the responsibility of waste management to small-scale private sector actors that have demonstrated offerings, Southern African cities can begin to shed some of responsibility of maintaining and upgrading centralised waste systems and can instead turn their attention to ensuring that public-private sector projects are well monitored and have high levels and standards of service delivery and employment. 4.2.4 Food The potential for urban agriculture in SSA cities is already evident due to the key role they play in ensuring diverse urban nutritional supply, and from the high levels of urban agriculture in SSA cities (see Table 1 in Appendix A). With the exception of countries such as South Africa, urban agriculture cannot be denied as a vital component of the city’s food ‘metabolism’. Yet support systems for urban farmers – whether formal or informal – are largely absent from communities. Supportive agencies that can help with skills and training, advising on climate and environmental sensitivities, food processing (e.g. drying fish with solar cookers in Western Africa has decreased spoil), storage, soil management, irrigation practises, etc. are necessary in SSA cities. The potential to create employment and skills development – especially amongst urban youth and women – is substantial, and the opportunity to grow urban agriculture should be embraced as a result. Moreover, integration with other sectors, such as high percentage biomass waste that is produced in SSA cities, requires more keen consideration, as recycling bio-waste into compost can help return nutrient flows to the soil in high proportion. 4.2.5 Construction and Building 17

Prioritising construction and building resource efficiencies is key to stabilising property management profiles in cities across SSA. New builds can incorporate green design, technologies, systems and processes to ensure the resilience of buildings to utility price changes and resource scarcities. Retrofits can play a large role in bringing down the utility cost profiles and resource and environmental impact footprints of existing buildings. At the same time, similar measures, when applied to the vulnerable and urban poor who largely reside in slums and informal settlements, as well as low to middle income dwellers who live in low-income formal housing, can make a large difference to the stability of poor and low income urban households. Lastly, the question of how to improve awareness of resource efficiency in building construction, amongst governments, local authorities, property developers and owners, as well as amongst low income and poor urban residents, may require a smarter approach than simply legislating and enforcing green building codes and standards. It may be, that softer “nudge” factors may prove more effective in bringing about a green transition in African building efficiencies in cities across the continent. 4.2.6 Land Land use efficiencies are generally poor in SSA cities, and due to range of reasons (pervasive squatting, slums and informal settlements; unplanned development, sprawl, splintered infrastructures, gated and enclave developments), flows are inefficiently mediated through them, and land values remain largely un-leveraged. Consequently, the resources that are required for everyday activities and productivity are very inefficiently used, and costs are higher as a result. Consequently, productivity also suffers. Moreover, local and city authorities cannot collect revenues, and are heavily reliant on central governments for funding, while paradoxically often being delegated more decentralised authority at the same time. However, prescribing ways of overcoming these, often central conditions of SSA cities, isn’t simple. Overcoming existing urban forms and practices is likely to meet resistance at best and open contestation (or complete dissociation) at worst. Inclusive, citizen driven, broadly representative development programmes are necessary, so that highly contested views on how urban land is used and/or owned can be aired, and agreements established on the basis of cooperation. Most of all, society needs to directly experience the benefits of changes in land use profiles, and this can only be achieved if corrupt, monopolised property and land markets are destabilised and if new development approaches are introduced in their stead. Moreover, where densification is concerned, it may prove more realistic to densify where natural concentrations are higher or are projected to rise (see section 3.6.2); for example within urban nodes and along urban corridors, due to the high levels of existing sprawl within African cities. In the SSA context, densification within nodes and corridors may prove better assisted by decentralised and semi-decentralised

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infrastructure than by building centralised infrastructure provisions that may prove more expensive to run over vastly sprawled SSA cities. 4.2.7 Slums and Informal Settlements The Need for Low-Cost, Easy to Maintain Infrastructures Technologies: In addition to the need for more semi-decentralised and decentralised infrastructure and technology choices, it is important to consider how appropriate a particular technology may prove when implemented in slums, informal settlement areas, as well in formal, lowincome settlement areas that may lack access to bulk infrastructure provisions or cannot afford them. Considering this, as well as the dearth of high skills levels in SSA cities and economies, it is important to adopt low-cost, easy to maintain infrastructures and technologies. This is especially important for ensuring continuity and increased uptake and absorption over time. In-situ development versus slum eradication: Slum eradication programmes in SSA cities rarely show long term success. Consequently, there has been a significant shift in the discourse on urban development as it relates to slums and informal settlements in SSA cities. The development alternative that has been championed consists of in-situ development within slums and informal settlements i.e. working from within slums and informal settlements and their prevailing conditions, rather than attempting to remove them and replace them with wholly new builds61 62. Proponents of in-situ development argue that slums and informal settlements are ‘here to stay’, and that we must work with them rather than considering them to be a blight on the urban landscape. Proponents also argue that in-situ development solutions are often more context-specific and respond to challenges with a more textured understanding of context, and are more sustainable due to bottom-up, inclusion of communities in development planning and implementation. Many NGO organisations that work with slum and informal settlement dwellers (e.g. such as Shack Dwellers International; Abahlali Landless Peoples Movement and Ghana Federation for the Urban Poor) actively promote in-situ development approaches as they entrench and help guarantee the ‘rights’ of the poor and marginal occupants of slums and informal settlements. 4.2.8 Additional Considerations Going beyond pure resource efficiency criteria, and embracing holistic urban development in the developing world African contexts requires considering additional factors. These include opportunities for (see Table 3 in Appendix A for more detailed discussion of the factors listed below);

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•

Diversifying economic activities and leveraging extractive economies: e.g. through cleaner production in mining, manufacturing, industry etc., and establishing value chains that are linked to material flows.

•

Stabilising and harnessing the youth bulge and emergence of the African middle class: Here, stabilising household budgets of the poor, low-income and emerging middle class through focussing on the food-water-energy-transport nexus, and how it impacts on household financial viability, ability to save, afford services, and so forth.

•

Functions and processes: Carefully considering how city functions and efficiencies can be improved through enhanced interactions with urban corridor developments and nodes, as well as regional, trans-boundary corridors and nodal developments along them. Also, ensuring that the spatial location of functions within a city are optimised in relation to resource flows and environmental impacts.

•

Citizen driven and inclusive development: so that projects meet the contextual specificities of the communities and urban precincts in which they are implemented, and empower communities.

•

Centralised, decentralised or semi-decentralised technologies and infrastructures? Conducting context specific studies and analyses to determine whether centralised or semi-decentralised and decentralised solutions (or what mixes) are most appropriate for a particular city and its locales. These technologies have the potential to greatly enhance resilience to food-water-energy-transport nexus vulnerabilities of poor households, by lowering their vulnerability to exogenous impacts and influences.

•

Harnessing emerging activities and diversifying macro-economic growth: i.e. through promoting green agendas through emerging tertiary activities, micro-credit and mobile financial services, educational activities, creative economies and so forth.

•

Strategic intermediaries: To facilitate integration and coordination between different sectors, scales, arms of governance, institutional capabilities, and so forth.

•

Innovation: Promoting innovation in policy, regulation, design and technology that catalyses and enhances the capacity to implement green programmes for resource efficiency in SSA cities.

•

Working with Informality: Recognising that informal activities often tap into global markets (e.g. for cheap Asian goods), as well as local contextual opportunities that emerge from demand particularities. Moreover, that they are linked to formal systems, and that opportunities exist in the socio-metabolic flows that traverse them.

In conclusion, embracing new sustainability-oriented values may prove critical to the success of urbanisation in SSA. The pervasive notion of African belatedness, and blind aspirations to modernity, effectively work against resource efficiency and sustainability criteria. In the quest to establish “world class” cities, with “world class” buildings and urban infrastructures, the need to accommodate sustainability and resource efficiency criteria are often given less prominence in construction and development. Yet, locking cities which 20

are least equipped to absorb resource price fluctuations into resource-intensive and environmentally damaging modes of development will almost certainly constrain productivity and growth as resource constraints intensify.

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5. Appendix A: Regional Cross-Comparison of Sub-Saharan African Cities: Water, Sanitation, Energy, Waste, Food, Construction and Land-Use Note: All references to tables (i.e. Table 1, Table 2, etc.) in this section refer to the tables in Appendix B. Table 1: Cross-Comparison of Regions: Resource Efficiencies Water

Eastern Africa The region exhibits high vulnerability to drought and climate change variations. In Eastern Africa, the drought of 2010/2011 affected around 13 million people63. At country levels, improved2 urban drinking water and urban household drinking water coverages (as well as improved sanitation) between 1990 and 2008 are shown in Table 22 (section 6.3.4). Urban drinking water coverage is typically higher than that of urban household drinking water coverage, indicating that infrastructures that service households lag significantly behind demand. Access to piped water in selected Eastern African cities in Table 18 (see section 6.2.4) range from very low in 20.2 per cent in Lilongwe in 2006, and 20.5 per cent in Kigali in 2005 – to highs of 68.8 per cent in Addis Ababa in 2005, 78.2 per cent in Nairobi in 2008, and 62.1 per cent in Dar Es Salaam in 2004. Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, had only 26 per cent coverage in 2006.

Western Africa At country levels, urban access to improved drinking water coverage in Western Africa is generally high (i.e. majority in excess of around 80 per cent, with the exception of Mauritania at 52 per cent); see Table 19 in section 6.3.1). However, household connections to improved water coverage remains generally low, with Cote d’Ivoire the exception and highest levels of coverage at 67 per cent; see Table 19). Improved sanitation coverage levels also remained relatively low, with the exceptions of Cape Verde and Senegal at 65 and 69 per cent, respectively. The lack of formal water service provisions means that urban dwellers are highly dependent on private sector and informal water service providers in Western African cities. Supply buffers, such as rainwater harvesting systems, have been adopted by middle classes in Lagos, but has not disseminated further

Central Africa At country levels, urban access to improved drinking water coverage generally increased across the region between 1990 and 2008, while urban household connection to improved drinking water generally stagnated or decreased for this period (see Table 21 Section 6.3.3). Only in the case of Angola did urban household connection to improved drinking water increase (i.e. from 1 to 30 per cent).

Southern Africa Southern Africa has some of the highest levels of urban water and sanitation coverages in SSA. Urban access to improved drinking water coverage, as well as urban household access to improved drinking water coverage are generally higher than 90 per cent (on average) for the former and higher than 70 per cent (rough average) for the latter (see Table 20 in section 6.3.2). Notable exceptions include Angola, with only 60 per cent improved urban drinking water coverage, and only 34 per cent improved household water connection. Mozambique also has very low improved coverage for urban households, at 20 per cent in 2008 (down from 22 per cent in

2

In this section, the following definitions from UNICEF/WHO are used2: “Access to improved water sources” refers to: “piped connections to a yard or dwelling, protected wells, tubed wells and boreholes, protected springs, rainwater collection and public taps or standpipes”. “Access to improved sanitation” refers to: “the use of flush or pourflush systems that are connected to piped sewer systems, septic tanks or pit latrines, ventilated improved pit latrines, pit latrines with slabs or composting toilets”. These measures do not always guarantee that services are administered in reality, as bulk infrastructure failures, higher numbers of people per connection than assessed, and other factors can contribute to intermittent service provision.

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Sanitation

Eastern Africa Municipal services have been widely privatised in Eastern African cities since the 1990s64 and have taken the form of “open competition, management contracts, franchising, concessions and compulsory competitive tendering”. In Kampala and Jinja in Uganda, Eastern Africa; 56.8 per cent and 55 per cent of households were serviced by private water companies in 199665. In Addis Ababa, even though around 40 per cent of housing stock is formal, 26 per cent of those living in formal housing lacked access to toilets, while 33 per cent share toilets with over six families and 34 per cent are dependent on public water taps that have discontinuous supply66. In Kigali, the majority of the city relies on water kiosks, and the sales of piped water at kiosk rates67, yielding 87 per cent access to water in the city through these channels, despite low piped water percentages.

Western Africa down to low-income and poor urban dwellers.

In Eastern Africa, pollution of water sources is a critical threat to urban water quality. For example; due to Kampala’s low household connection to sewerage (i.e. 10.7 per cent; see Table 18), open sewerage, septic tank and pit latrine use leads to 77 per cent of the pollution of Lake Victoria resulting from municipal loads68. In Addis Ababa, where

Access to sanitation in selected Western African cities shown in Table 14 in 6.2.1 is generally low, with Dakar in Senegal the exception at 78.3 per cent. At the other end of the spectrum, Ouagadougou had only 4.6 per cent coverage in 2006. In the median range, Abidjan, Accra and Lagos had 42.7 (2005), 37.1 (2008) and 56.3

Central Africa

Urban access to improved sanitation across the region is generally low, with Angola being the exception at 58 per cent (see Table 17)). Regional access to urban services is illustrated in Figure 1. For selected cities shown in Table 16, household piped water ranges from low to very low (e.g. 36.6 per cent in Luanda to 3.5 per cent in Berberati),

Southern Africa 1990; see Table 20 in section 6.3.2). For selected cities in Southern Africa (shown in Table 15 in section 6.2.2), access to piped water services are generally high, with Luanda, Lusaka and Ndola the most notable exceptions at 36.6, 31.6 and 39.5 per cent, respectively. Relatively higher levels of urban water supplies in the Southern African region are due to vast formal water management infrastructures such as damns, trans-boundary basin agreements and interbasin transfer schemes. The region is generally water scarce, and hence water is viewed as a critical security threat in the region, and has led to a variety of agreements and more comprehensive planning for the administration of water resources. The many dams in the region also contribute hydropower generated electricity supply to national energy grids. Southern African sewerage coverage levels, while generally high in the region, are very low for some of the selected cities shown in Table 15 in section 6.2.2. Maseru and Maputo had only 9.7 and 8 per cent coverage in 2004 and 2003

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Energy

Eastern Africa industrial production facilities were deliberately located along the Akaki River in order to release effluent return flows into it, 90 per cent of 2500 industries lacked onsite treatment facilities in 1999, and despite attempts to implement environmental standards, progress has been slow69. Even where waste-water treatment facilities are in place they scarcely meet treatment standards. For example; in Nairobi the Ruai and Kariobangi plants operate at 74 per cent and 34 per cent efficiency, respectively70.

Western Africa (2008) per cent coverage, respectively (see Table 14 in 6.2.1 in Appendix B).

Central Africa with Brazzaville a notable exception at 89.1 per cent. Sewerage coverage remains very low for these cities (see Table 16), with Luanda the highest at 53.2 per cent. In Central Africa Kinshasa’s Lukunga water treatment plant was constructed in 1939 and serves only around half a million people in the city71.

Southern Africa respectively. Poor access to water and sanitation have already had severe impacts in Luanda in Angola, Harare in Zimbabwe and Beira in Mozambique; resulting in cholera outbreaks that claimed the lives of hundreds, sometimes thousands of people.

Hydropower plays a large role in guaranteeing urban electricity supply in Eastern Africa (see Table 28 section 6.6.2), and only 20 per cent of hydropower resources have been developed. Hence, the potential for increased hydropower supply exists (see Table 28), but should be balanced with an understanding of climate change projections for the region, falling water levels in lakes, as well as concerns over lack of investment in the power sector. Regular power-cuts are an everyday fact of life in most Eastern African cities, and back-up generator capacity is required by most businesses, industries, critical functions (e.g. airports), government buildings and facilities, and so forth. Current programmes and projects are focussed on unlocking 3,600 MW by 201572.

Oil and natural gas constitute the primary energy resources in the region, as well as hydropower. Ghana and Nigeria dominate energy demand in the region, and access to electricity in the region is generally moderate to high for selected cities shown in Table 14 in section 6.2.1, with the exception of Monrovia (Liberia) at 8.1 per cent in 2007, and Naukchott in Mauritania at 47.2 per cent in 2001. Even though the region is rich in energy resources (especially oil and gas, with new discoveries recently being made e.g. in Ghana), limited capital investment in electricity generation capacity has held back the sector. Rapid growth in demand is projected for the region, and limited energy supply is detrimental to potential growth.

The Central African region is energy rich in both fossil fuels (hosting 28 per cent of African oil reserves75), as well as the hydropower potential of the mighty Congo river. The regions hydropower potential alone, has the potential to supply all of Africa and most of Western Europe. Congo derived 99.72 per cent of its electricity supply from hydropower in 2007. Cameroon derived 84.5 per cent of its power from hydropower and biomass in 2002, but its thermal capacity has been increasing (it rose fourfold between 2004 and 2011), and plans to install an additional 100 MW capacity76.

In Southern Africa, coal-fired power plants as well as hydroelectric power, constitute the major electricity supply. South Africa’s extensive national grid reaches beyond its national boundaries, supplying neighbouring countries. However, recent tariff increases have proved difficult for most urban households to absorb, and since 2007, electricity supply in South Africa has been hampered and rolling blackouts and load-shedding schemes have become the norm. South Africa has undertaken to build two new coal-fired power plants (i.e. Khusile and Medupe), but escalating costs (USD 7 to USD 10 billion between 2007 and 2013) and low productivity has hampered progress77.

Household access to electricity for selected cities in the region range from very high in the cases of Addis Ababa and Nairobi (96.9 and 88.6 per cent respectively; which presumably includes only formal sector housing), while cities such as Lilongwe,

Urban access to electricity ranges from very low to very high for the selected cities shown in Table 16 in section 6.2.3 for the region. Gabon’s Libreville had 95.5 per cent access in 2000. Douala and Yaounde boasted 98.9 per cent access in 2006, and Kinshasa and Luanda at 82 and 75.5 per cent in 2007 and 2006, respectively. However, electricity access was general low in the cities of the Central African Republic, Chad. Consequently, the use of biomass (i.e.

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Eastern Africa Arusha and Kigali were relatively low (i.e. 18, 35 and 40.8 per cent, respectively). Mixed use of energy sources prevails in many Eastern African urban households, depending on cost of electricity. In Nairobi, even though 72 per cent of households have access to electricity, only 20 per cent of households used electricity for cooking, preferring kerosene (i.e. 68 per cent)73. In Blantyre (Malawi), lighting dominates household electricity use (i.e. 45 per cent), and only 17 per cent of households used electricity for cooking (64 per cent used charcoal). Around 88 per cent of informal settlement households used firewood and charcoal for energy74.

Western Africa

Central Africa charcoal and wood) for cooking in urban areas, dominates in most Central African countries, with the exception of Angola and Gabon at 86 and 79.6 per cent using gas (see Table 27 in section 6.6.1).

Southern Africa Access to electricity for selected cities in Southern Africa are shown in Table 15; generally high levels of access to electricity exist in the regions cities, with the exception of Maseru, Maputo, Lusaka and Ndola at 33.1, 28.8, 57 and 38.9 per cent respectively. In Maputo and Lusaka, 90 per cent and 78 per cent of energy supply is met through the use of wood-fuel78. In Southern Africa, and South Africa in particular; large centralised national electricity systems feed independent power providers at city level, and supply was – in a sense – taken for granted, until the electricity supply crisis that unfolded in 2007. Rapid urban population and economic growth, as well as the drive to electrify previously unconnected households in South Africa, has placed large pressures on its ageing electricity grid infrastructure and power supply capacity. In cities such as Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town in South Africa, many activities are now backed up by generators, in order to mitigate against interruptions in centralised power supply.

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Waste

Eastern Africa

Western Africa

Central Africa

Southern Africa

Waste management in Eastern African cities has been undergoing both decentralisation and diversification; with public, private and informal sector service providers playing key roles79. For example; Black River and Port Louis in Mauritius, waste collection services (including drain, road, road verge, watercourse waste management) is outsourced80, whereas in Zomba in Malawi, the City Council shares responsibility with the private sector and the Malawi Housing Corporation. As shown in Table 26 in section 6.5.3, the percentage of waste collected in selected cities ranges between 40 and 65 per cent.

The average household and market waste per capita generated in four Eastern African cities (i.e. Accra, Kumasi, Tamale and Ouagadougou) is shown in Table 25a in section 6.5.1. A range of between 30170 kg/capita/annum was observed to come from households, while approximately between 7-58 kg/capita/annum was generated from markets. Accra’s waste output dwarfs that of the other selected cities, and was estimated at 1,500 tons per day in 200582. In Nigeria, however, the Lagos Waste Management Authority collected 255,556 tons per month (i.e. around 8,500 tons per day)83.

*Information scarce on solid waste management in Central African cities*

Varying capacity for waste management exists across the range of Southern African cities. Whereas waste management in Maputo and Luanda have poor waste collection and management systems, South African cities such as Cape Town and Johannesburg typically manage large, multiple landfill sites, and host a range of recycling activities (many private) within them (even though there is much room for improvement). High rates of recycling exist in South Africa. For example, around 80 per cent of metals, 57 per cent of paper waste, and 32 per cent of glass is recycled88.

However, the selected cities may not reflect the broader realities of waste management in Eastern Africa, as the sample consists of a few cities from a few countries. For example, in Dire Dawa in Ethiopia, 48 per cent of solid waste is collected81. Waste collection is worst in urban slums and informal settlements in the region, and open dumping is the norm (often in environmentally sensitive areas such as on forest edged, and in close proximity to water courses and wetlands). In Blantyre, Malawi, where urban waste management is administered by the City Council, the city’s low income dwellers dispose of 78 per cent of their waste in pit latrines. Landfill operations, even when initiated with environmentally sensitive ambitions, often fail to maintain standards (e.g. in the case of Mpererwe landfill in Kampala).

Organic waste constitutes the bulk of waste that is collected and/or disposed of in Western African cities. Bamako’s organic waste is re-used by farmers who cultivate along the banks of the Niger River as fertiliser84. Informal recyclers conduct a range of recycling activities in Western African cities, but in poor working conditions that incurs serious health and environmental risks (e.g. the burning of electronic waste for copper and other metals). ‘Donkey-cart’ waste service providers cover 57 per cent of households in the Bamako district85.

According to 1993*data (Achankeng, 200386) for six capital Central African cities (i.e. Bujumbura, Douala, Yaounde, Kinshasa, Brazzaville and Conakry); per capita waste generation ranged between 0.6 to 1.2 kg/capita/day, and percentage households that had garbage collection ranged between 42 and 71 per cent, with the exception of Kinshasa, which had 0 per cent waste collection (see Table 25b in section 6.5.2). It is unclear to what extent these statistics may have changed over the past two decades, and hence, it may be unwise to reach any conclusions on this basis. However, the case of Douala and Yaounde in Cameroon, for which more recent information is available, may shed additional light on the plight of waste in Central African cities. Douala outsourced its municipal solid waste management as far back as 1969. Yaounde also privatised waste management services, but later in 1979. When the Cameroonian governments decentralisation programme was implemented (circa 1987) new district councils were tasked with service provision but failed to do so, despite being funded by the central government87. Later in 1994 the government went into partnership with the World Bank, and put in place a domestic waste management programme to deal with the growing problem of open un-managed landfills. However, this programme also failed due to centralised management by the Finance

Recycling and re-use is conducted in Southern African cities, but these activities are mainly conducted in unhygienic and/or dangerous working conditions, and informal recyclers earn a pittance and are marginalised from urban society; living and working on the street. Some organised city recycling schemes have been put in place (e.g. in the City of Cape Town), but the viability of these operations is dependent on the costs of transporting materials. The city of

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Food

Eastern Africa Larger institutions, and wealthier neighbourhoods use formal service providers, whether public or private; in Nairobi 45 per cent of the population pay for waste collection services (see Table 26). Waste composition in Eastern Africa for selected cities consisted mainly of biowaste (see Table 26), which opens up a range of opportunities for recycling into energy and compost. However, electronic waste levels are also growing in Eastern African cities, constituting both a serious environmental threat, as well as an opportunity to improve recycling at the same time.

Western Africa

Central Africa Ministry and localised service delivery model (i.e. to NGOs and other organisations), all of which were ill-equipped for their roles. In 1998, Hysacam, which is now the country’s largest municipal solid waste management company; was contracted to service Douala and Yaounde.

Southern Africa Johannesburg has an ambitious strategy to reduce waste in the city89. Already, organic waste is composted, as well as sludge from wastewater treatment plants in the city of Johannesburg. In the town of Marianhill, near Durban in South Africa, a landfill site been adapted to capture methane gas, which is used to produce energy. The site is also managed according to environmental principles, and aims to be registered as a conservancy in the near future90.

Although the Eastern African region is a majority exporter of agricultural products on the global market, this has not translated into greater food security or improved nutritional intake91. The region is heavily dependent on rain-fed agriculture, and irrigation levels are very low (of 5 million hectares under cultivation in the region only 328,000 ha were under irrigation in 2008). Moreover, the region is drought prone, and may react in extreme ways to climate change and/or combinations of climate change and El Nino effects.

Staple food price increases between 2002 and 2008 in selected Western African city markets shown in Table 23 in section 6.4.1; were mostly above 65 per cent, rising as high as 113 per cent in Dakar’s Tiléne market. In Western Africa, 50 to 80 per cent of the household budgets of the poor are spent on food95. Food security is hence a major challenge and threat to security in the region.

Urban malnutrition in Central Africa is a severe socio-economic problem. In Cameroon; in comparison to the wealthiest 20 per cent of children, the poorest 20 per cent of children are twice as likely to die before the age of five, and four times more likely to suffer from moderate and severer malnutrition99. More than 40 per cent of children affected by stunted development as a result of inadequate nutrition100.

The 2008 recession had major impacts on household food security in the region, as food prices escalated drastically plunging households into debt96. Urban agriculture within Western African cities, as well as their peripheries, plays a key role in guaranteeing nutritional supply to their inhabitants; Accra, Freetown and Ibadan have around 1000, 1,400 and 5,000 active market gardeners97. In Accra, Kumasi and

In contrast to Eastern and Southern Africa, Central Africa is heavily dependent on food imports. Hence, urban agricultural activities play a very important role in buffering against import price fluctuations, and in ensuring nutritional diversity in urban diets. In Bangui, 1000 tons of vegetables is produced every year from eight city market gardens (51). In Brazzaville, market gardeners occupy 500 hectares of land, and

Urban food security in Southern Africa is a complex issue. It is not solely a matter of food availability, but also of food choices. Despite its relative wealth as a transitional economy, in South Africa 70 per cent of poor households reported experiencing significant and severe food insecurity103.

Poor urban household budgets spend around 60 per cent of total budget on food in Eastern Africa, revealing their relative vulnerability to food price increases (it is likely worse for rural households). The 2011 food crisis in Eastern Africa affected over 12 million people, and “tens of thousands” perished92.

Large scale agricultural production systems do not necessarily translate into widespread food security. Moreover, this system of production can make it difficult for smaller scale farmers to enter the market and sustain their membership to it.

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Eastern Africa Conflict, drought and weak disaster recovery and management systems (i.e. including aid systems) escalated the crisis to unmanageable proportions. When one considers that grain imports are projected to rise by between 20 and 40 per cent by 202093, it is clear that poor urban households will remain vulnerable to food price fluctuations. Urban agriculture is a key source of food and nutritional security in Eastern African cities, with many cities relying heavily on local urban farmers and markets. In Kampala, more than half of households are engaged in some kind of agricultural activity. Moreover, hillsides and wetland valleys are cultivated by urban farmers. However, in other cities such as Mbale and Mbarara, the legality of urban farming remains in question. Typically, urban agriculture lacks substantive support from local authorities and city governments, and efforts at regulation tend to dampen urban agricultural activities rather than catalyse them. In Kigali, however, urban agriculture has been taken up in the city development plans and as a result, 25 per cent of the city’s food supply is met through urban agriculture. Moreover, around 37 per cent of its work force are taken up in urban agriculture activities94.

Western Africa Ouagadougou, around 80 per cent of lettuce and spring onion supply is met by urban and peri-urban agriculture98.

Central Africa produce 80 per cent of the city’s leafy vegetable supply, earning up to five times more than the average per capita income. However, unsound agro-ecological practises threaten productivity through adverse effects on soil nutrient composition, erosion, over-fertilisation and unhygienic fertilisation. Yet, opportunities for warding off soil depletion effects do exist. A recent study101 investigated urban agriculture in Cameroon. In Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, leafy vegetables are produced from 32,000 households, mostly from the efforts and supervision of women. Moreover, livestock farming brought income, nutritional and socio-cultural benefits to households, with women raising more chickens (75 per cent) and men raising more pigs (76 per cent). Around 50,000 pigs are kept in urban and peri-urban areas in Cameroon, and almost a million chickens were kept. Sixty nine per cent of the manure that is produced (at around 20,000 tons) is reused102. The study calculated the nutrient value of the un-recycled waste, and found it to consist of 400 tons of nitrogen, 220 tons of phosphorous, and 114 tons of potassium. Hence the opportunity for closing nutrient loops and revitalising urban soil fertility exists in Yaoundé, as well as other Central African cities, but the institutional policies, infrastructures and supporting legal and other frameworks are not in place to adequately leverage opportunities for recycling nutrients and re-using waste in general.

Southern Africa Nonetheless, South Africa has around 350,000 small scale food vendors. Generally, food secure households tend to secure their food from supermarkets, while food insecure households tend to rely on informal markets more often104. Both supermarkets and informal food markets are frequented, but to different degrees. In Harare, Lusaka and Maputo food is almost entirely purchased from informal markets, but these are exceptions in the region. In Cape Town, Gaborone, Johannesburg, Maseru and Windhoek households frequent supermarkets more than informal markets. In Harare, 60 per cent of households grow their own food (see Table 24 in section 6.4.2). Even when households frequent supermarkets at high rates, the informal sector remains important, as in the case of Windhoek (Namibia) (see Table 24). Yet the role of urban agriculture in Southern Africa is becoming more apparent in the policy discourse, and cities such as Gauteng, which are heavily reliant on food imports, yet

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Eastern Africa

Western Africa

Central Africa

Southern Africa host a large proportion of highly arable land, are looking to urban agriculture as a growth industry that can seed at micro, small and medium scales of production. Only in Southern Africa are large scale production systems and infrastructures in place i.e. historically in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The collapse of Zimbabwe’s food production systems – once referred to as the “bread basket of Africa”, placed additional strain on South Africa’s food production systems. South African farms are generally well optimised for efficient use of water, as South Africa is a relatively dry country, and farmers have historically had to take that into account, and take steps to conserve precious water resources.

Land

Urbanisation levels are lowest in the Eastern African region, and lies approximately between 21.4 and 25.3 per cent (i.e. 2010 and 2020 values), and is projected to increase to 42.9 per cent by 2050 (see Table 11a for regional and Table 11b for country level urbanisation in section 6.1.4). However, Eastern African cities are dominated by informal land markets where slums and informal settlements proliferate without

Western Africa’s countries currently lie just below the 50 per cent urbanisation level, but are projected to rise significantly above this level by 2050 (see Table 1 and Table 2 in section 6.1.1). The proportion of urban population living in slums in Western African cities is very high (i.e. according to 2007 statistics); is generally above 50 per cent, and may rise up to above 80 per cent (as in the case of

Central African countries are currently between 43-45 per cent urbanised (see Table 7 section 6.1.3) on average, and are projected to rise to 61.5 per cent by 2050. In 2010, Gabon was the most highly urbanised country in the region, at greater than 62 per cent (see Table 8), followed by Congo (63.2 per cent), Sao Tome e Principe (62 per cent) and Angola (58.4 per cent). The percentage of people living in slums in Central African

The Southern African region was 47.6 per cent urban in 2010 (see Table 4 in section 6.1.2). In 2010, Southern African countries exhibited high rates of urbanisation in Angola (58.4 per cent), Botswana (61 per cent) and South Africa (61.5 per cent) (see Table 5), with South Africa

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Eastern Africa planning, and substantial proportions of the urban population live below national poverty lines, and within slums and informal settlements (see Table 12 and Table 13 in section 6.1.4). Urban population pressures in Eastern African cities are compounded by poverty, inequality and the proliferation of slum urbanisation; as well as regional conflicts (e.g. in Somalia) and disasters (such as the recent famine in 2010 in the Horn of Africa).

Western Africa Niger) (see Table 3 in section 6.1.1). Consequently, land pressures are high in Western African cities, and unplanned, piecemeal development only serves to intensify and concentrate these pressures. Western African land markets are heavily influenced by English and French colonial laws that were put in place during colonialism, as well as in the post-colonial era. Western Africa’s emerging urban middle class, as well as migration trends, is largely responsible for driving demand and opening up the private land market sector, raising land prices in the process. This has also been accompanies by changes in governance, regulation and legislation; with decentralisation of land management to local authorities (while retaining land allocation and registration as a central government function) constituting the general trend. Rising land prices in Western African cities, especially near higher value central parts of the city, are increasingly responsible for displacement of the urban poor.

Central Africa countries is very high (e.g. 90.3 per cent in Chad and 95 per cent in the Central African Republic in 2007, and 86.5 per cent in 2005). Population pressures, and the high extent of slum urbanisation (see Table 9) and poverty (see Table 10) in the region, place heavy pressures on land markets in cities. Moreover, a desperate lack of land management, allocation and distribution by local and central authorities further exacerbates the strain on land use in Central African cities. Consequently, the lack of appropriately leveraged land values, translates into a dearth of infrastructure and service provisions, as the requisite revenues aren’t captured. Corruption and tedious bureaucracies are exploited by local elites and the wealthy instead, and further exacerbates these problems.

Southern Africa breaching the 62 per cent urbanisation level in the 2011 census. In Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique, urbanisation levels are significantly lower (see Table 5). Moreover, the percentage of population living in slums in the countries of the region are generally lower than that of Western, Central and Eastern African countries, with major exceptions being Angola (86.5 per cent in 2005), Mozambique (80 per cent in 2007) and Zambia (57.3 per cent in 2007) (see Table 6). South Africa’s proportion of population living in slums is relatively low (28.7 per cent in 2007), although this masks chronic under-delivery of services and housing, which is indicated by the high rates of public protests over service delivery in the country. The land markets mirror the extent of slum urbanisation, with formal land markets mixing with informal land markets in different degrees, depending on the country and city in question. In South Africa, for example, slum urbanisation may take the form of hijacked inner city buildings in the City of Johannesburg, while in Luanda and Maputo, squatters

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Eastern Africa

Construction

Western Africa

Large construction projects in SSA: A 2013 Deloitte105 report on construction trends evaluated the scope of construction projects in Africa, according to two criteria; (1) the projects were over USD 50 million, and (2) that projects had broken ground but not yet been commissioned by the date of 1 June 2013. It identified 322 infrastructure projects that were evaluated at USD 222 billion. Of the total number of projects, 38 per cent were in Southern Africa (USD 83,199 billion in value), 29 per cent in Eastern Africa (USD 67,688 billion) and 21 per cent in West Africa (USD 49,869 billion). Central Africa constituted 5 per cent (USD 15 296 billion) and Northern Africa accounted for 7 per cent (USD 6 715 billion). Foreign construction firms from the EU and US account for 37 per cent of all projects, while China accounts for 12 per cent, while the rest are from South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Japan and South Korea. The energy sector contributed the largest proportion of all projects (i.e. 36 per cent), while the transport sector was second largest (at 25 per cent). Real estate, by comparison, constituted only 4 per cent in Eastern Africa, 17 per cent in Southern Africa, 12 per cent in Central Africa, and 4 per cent in Western Africa. Governments owned 56 per cent of all projects, while public-private partnerships owned 4 per cent, and private sector players owned 39 per cent. Mega-projects (e.g. such as power stations) constitute a large proportion of the deals. In SSA cities, medium and smaller scale construction activities are also present, but would largely be unaccounted for in the aforementioned Deloitte report.

Central Africa

Southern Africa may locate along the peripheries of the city. In South African cities such as Johannesburg and Durban, inner city decay has led to the loss of core financial, commercial and business functions from the city core to the suburbs, and land values have fluctuated in different parts of the city as a result.

Costs: Table 29 in section 6.7 accounts for the differing building costs incurred across a selection of African cities. The rates are based on July 2013 costs (projected; not actual). Exchange rates were based on 1 December 2012 rates106. The costs included were building costs such as air conditioning, electrical fittings, etc. but site infrastructure development, parking, future escalation, loss of interest and professional fees were not accounted for. The costs are more indicative of the relative differences between cities, countries and regions and should not be interpreted as anything other than normative indicators of building construction costs as they pertain to building standards. Costs generally compare similarly across different cities and regions for building costs of all classes that were evaluated (i.e. residential, commercial/retail, industrial, hotel and other). Luanda, known for being the most expensive city in the world for ex-pats, boasts the highest building construction costs amongst the selected cities in Table 29, even when compared to global building costs across selected cities (see Table 30). Building cost escalations are also important to consider. AECOM’s 2013 evaluation of building cost escalations (i.e. of negotiated tender prices) estimated that in South Africa in 2008, the average annual rate of cost escalation derived from comparing monthly indices was 14.4 per cent. Building cost changes have fluctuated anywhere between less than one per cent, to a maximum of 18.5 per cent between 2007 and 2014107, exceeding 6 per cent on average. Although these cost escalations do not account for the actual costs of building construction (i.e. labour, materials, equipment, fuel, power, etc.), it stands to reason that construction firms only remain viable if the actual building cost escalations do not exceed that of the tendered building cost escalation. In

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Eastern Africa

Western Africa

Central Africa Southern Africa this sense, building construction efficiencies must also fall within the ranges that were identified for negotiated tender prices.

Table 2: Land-Use Efficiency Factors Land-Use Efficiency Factors Dual land management systems:

Description Informal and formal land and housing markets coexist in SSA cities, which house large slum and informal settlement populations. Informal settlements of all ages, some well settled, and should be distinguished from new areas in which squatting takes place, often opportunistically and/or out of necessity. Formal land management systems are generally inaccessible to the majority of the urban populace, who are vulnerable to poverty. Informal and/or customary systems fill the void, but what may be regarded as “customary” likely requires significant revision, as changing practises have accompanied the rapid evolution of SSA cities.

Un-leveraged land values: Housing and cash-strapped municipalities:

The large proportions of people living in poverty in slum settlements in Southern African cities means that land is not significantly leveraged by local authorities. They cannot collect revenues, and this in turn renders them over-reliant on (often unreliable) central government funding, and effectively cash-strapped and unable to effectively perform to their mandated functions in society. Attempts to provide social housing for the poor sometimes fail because they are located on the distant peripheries of the city, increasing the travel costs and times of potential occupants. Some dismal failures have unfolded (e.g. in Luanda), and in South Africa (where commensurate service provisions failed or where inadequate). At the same time, many of the potentially upwardly mobile members of the middle income pool (i.e. the “gap” market), who are described as the African “middle class”, the dynamics of which have been explained earlier in section 1.1; are unable to enter the land and property market due to a lack of appropriately priced provisions and offerings targeted at the “gap” market. However, good examples exist of inclusive, community based approaches that help re-generate hijacked buildings and re-house tenants who previously lived under slum lords (e.g. the Johannesburg Social Housing Corporation have successfully transformed several buildings in the inner city of Johannesburg). Northern Africa effectively halved its numbers/proportions of urban slum dwellers since the 1980s through public-private partnerships that delivered massive social housing programmes to the poor. That is, there are lessons to be learnt from successes that may require closer inspection and deeper interrogation, so that attempts to alleviate the housing crisis in SSA cities can be shared more broadly. Recognising community needs is important. For example, access to good quality education is another factor that low-middle income residents of the city, as it is a key vector through which social advancement can be achieved in a short space of time. Hence, many low to middle income households make the choice to incur higher rentals within the city, and to weigh that against the travel costs of re-locating to the peripheries. While gaining property assets is no doubt important to all households alike, for those transitioning

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between income and class levels, access to good quality education is key. By recognising this, we can leverage this understanding to cater for the needs of lower income groups more effectively and creatively, in turn; enhancing liveability and leveraging the long-term value of land as a social asset at the same time. Gating and developments:

Sprawl, corridors:

densities

enclave

Gated communities, streets, complexes, shopping mall complexes, as well as fortified, limited access buildings, and the like; have severe impacts on the efficiency of land use, and the sustainability of productive activities in the city. By fragmenting urban space and form, flows (i.e. of people, resources, data, goods, etc.) are restricted to longer, often congested routes through the city. It increases the amount of resources required for flows to navigate the urban landscape, and locks Sub-Saharan cities into inefficient, often highly bottled flows (e.g. traffic) that threaten to intensify in the future should development continue to take the form of the “fortress city”. In addition to social polarisation, gating of all kinds has serious implications for sustainability and the ability of Sub-Saharan cities to embark on decoupling trajectories (i.e. from resource use and environmental impacts). Exploring other means of securitising neighbourhoods and precincts, and improving safety for members of the public might unlock new, much needed innovations that go beyond gated development as a mindless panacea to the social ills of SSA cities.

and

SSA cities are typically low density, highly sprawled cities, which contain high density slums and informal settlements, often on the peripheries, but also within cities. In severe cases, whole autonomous informal zones, often self-governed and in contestation with local and city authorities (e.g. JOS or “Jesus Our Saviour” in Lagos). Centralised cores that host formal sector commercial, government and business functions are also typical. Mixed use and industrial precincts and zones are usually located further away from the centre. Some cities also connect to one or more satellite cities that develop along urban corridors, and in other cases have activities that link to those in secondary cities that may be located along regional corridors and cities (e.g. Nelspruit; on the corridor between Johannesburg and Maputo (including Swaziland). Generally, however, development is piecemeal across SSA cities, and vast sprawl results in high levels of land-use inefficiencies (i.e. in respect of the flows that must travel through the city in order to sustain its metabolism). African cities are forecasted to increase from 34 to 79 people per square kilometre between 20102 and 2050108, but it is not clear whether these average densities will be skewed by much higher densities in slums and informal settlements, while densities in other areas of SSA cities remain significantly lower. In Western Africa and Central Africa, significantly large, densely populated corridors are emerging and consolidating. In Western Africa, the Senegalese Dakar-Touba, the Bouake’-Abidjan corridor in Cote d’Ivoire, the Ouagadougou-Bobo Dioulasso in Burkina Faso. Transboundary corridors in Western Africa include the Maradi-Katsina-Kano corridor, as well as between Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire connecting Bobo-Dioulasso, Korogho, Banfora and Ferkessedougou109. In Central Africa, the Luanda-N’Djamena and Brazzaville-Kinshasa links are significant. That is, cities are increasingly seeking out stronger linkages between each other, and in some cases are driving the formation of urban mega-regions (e.g. along the Western African coast)110. The Johannesburg-Nelspruit-Maputo corridor is also developing at a rapid pace, improving trade and other linkages between South African and Mozambique. These corridors constitute a vital opportunity to link economic growth and activities conducted within primate cities, to secondary and smaller cities and towns, and un-skew growth from the major urban metropolitan areas and spread it to the rural hinterlands. This in

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turn requires re-thinking the functional specialisation and diversification of secondary, intermediate and smaller cities and towns that occur along corridors, and developing them accordingly. Piecemeal, uncontrolled, unregulated development:

Private sector developers, informal settlers, and city and local authorities are often all complicit in allowing high levels of piecemeal, uncontrolled and unregulated development from unfolding in such large proportions in SSA cities. Developments make take place without adequate planning and consideration of how the development may connect with bulk infrastructure and service provisions. Rather, these considerations are often made retro-actively; getting a development up and running is of more importance. The consequences are that infrastructure and service provision planning (and corresponding resource use profiles) cannot be optimised; because there is no form of integrated development planning in the first place.

Environmentally development:

Agriculture is another example of unplanned and unregulated land-use development, often encroaching on lands that are unsuitable for cultivation and/or which may have high value biodiversity and ecosystem services on which the city is dependent (e.g. for clean and sufficient water supply). Where little regard is shown for the natural environment in which cities are located, the essential services that they provide can suffer or become irreversibly damaged. Urban rivers, wetlands and forests are prime examples of how degrading the natural environment has rebound effects upon society, essentially driving up the costs of resources such as energy and drinking water, escalating the urban heat enclave effect, lowering natural resilience to extreme events such as heavy downpours and flooding, and so forth. Degrading mangroves and coral reefs, for example, reduce coastal zones natural buffers to storm surges and hurricane events. Neglecting environmental security effectively raises the cost of the resources that cities require, increasing costs and resource use profiles of cities. Neglecting the role that the natural environment plays in cities is a resource-inefficient way to approach urban development.

unsound

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Table 3: Table of Additional Strategic Considerations to Enhance Resource Efficiency in SSA Cities Strategic Consideration Diversifying economic activities and leveraging extractive economies: Stabilising and harnessing the youth bulge and emergence of the African middle class: Functions and processes:

Citizen driven and inclusive development:

Description For example; through cleaner production in mining, manufacturing, industry etc., and establishing value chains that are linked to material flows. Here, stabilising household budgets of the poor, low-income and emerging middle class through focussing on the food-water-energytransport nexus, and how it impacts on household financial viability, ability to save, afford services, and so forth. Carefully considering how city functions and efficiencies can be improved through enhanced interactions with urban corridor developments and nodes, as well as regional, trans-boundary corridors and nodal developments along them. Also, ensuring that the spatial location of functions within a city are optimised in relation to resource flows and environmental impacts. The need for citizen-driven development approaches that are inclusive of civil society – and preferably citizen-driven – is a key requirement for ensuring that interventions and the programmes and projects that are associated with them map suitably to the contexts in which they are implemented.

Centralised, decentralised or semi-decentralised technologies and infrastructures?

The infrastructure and technology transition that is currently underway, tends towards semi-decentralised and decentralised systems that provide local-scale resilience (of which ‘off-grid’ living is an extreme example). Solar and wind power systems, smart grids, energy savings management technologies, water and grey-water recycling systems, bio-digesters, and urban agriculture activities all contribute to improving local scale resilience to exogenous change effects (i.e. whether induced by climate change effects or changes in the global economy such as demand, price and productivity fluctuations) that affect the cost of resources at a local scale. Green and decentralised technology offerings are a natural ‘fit’ for SSA cities, as they typically lack the bulk infrastructures that are required to meet their current, expanding demands (especially in slums and informal settlements). As such, technologies such as solar power, rainwater harvesting systems, water and grey-water recycling systems ‘makes sense’ where continuous, uninterrupted services are required in SSA cities, and cannot be guaranteed by bulk infrastructures and associated service provisions.

Harnessing activities:

Tertiary activities in finance, banking and telecommunications have also grown significantly. These open up opportunities to improve absorption of green and renewable energy infrastructures, technologies as well as systems design and planning, especially at larger scales of implementation. Medium and large scale businesses, as well as local authorities and city governments, require financial assistance and banking facilities through which incentives for absorption can be administered in service of public-private partnerships. The telecommunications industry holds great potential for contributing to improving resource efficiencies, especially through applications that enable smart mobile owners to act as a distributed sensor network (e.g. for traffic management; optimising transport route choices for commuters; highlighting urban management priorities such as reporting potholes, road closures, flooding and drainage challenges, and; managing energy and water use profiles by linking to prepaid schemes etc.).

emerging

Micro-credit and financial services based on mobile telecommunications have also proven to be in great demand in SSA cities, where many urban citizens lack access to formal banking and financial services systems. Where low-income and poor urban citizens are

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concerned, access to micro-credit and financial services can prove vital to the uptake and absorption of decentralised, renewable energy and green technology offerings such as solar power, solar water heaters, rainwater capture systems, grey-water and water recycling systems, bio-digesters, and so forth). They could also presumably play a key role in facilitating higher use of public transit systems, especially where costs (e.g. light rail) can be prohibitive below a particular income level. Educational services have also grown in SSA cities, making cities more desirable destinations for those seeking out educational opportunities, and access to employment. In this respect, the potential for training, skilling and certifying – especially youth – in the installation, maintenance and servicing of green and renewable energy technologies and infrastructures through these educational organisations and institutions should be carefully considered. In order to facilitate a transition towards higher levels of resource efficiency, through the deployment of new technologies and infrastructures, requires that enough people with the right skills and training are available. Where creative economies such as the music, movie and advertising industries are concerned, they can potentially play a key role in creating awareness and catalysing behavioural change at a societal level. These industries largely draw on and affect the values, beliefs and norms which drive behaviours in society, and as such, are well positioned to influence them. “Going green” campaigns, driven by these industries, can often be regarded disparagingly as “green-wash”, yet they hold great influence on social aspirations and lifestyle choices. Similarly, civil society organisations such as NGO’s, religious organisations, community groups, and so forth, can also play a large role in re-orienting society on sustainability and resource efficiency objectives. Strategic intermediaries:

Where efforts to promote decoupling are concerned, two factors require close consideration. Firstly, detailed data of how sociometabolic flows are administered through cities is required (i.e. so that material flows analysis and life-cycle analysis). Secondly, actualising decoupling at aggregated scales (e.g. the city and national scales) requires that sufficient ability to coordinate between different sectors, as well as government ministries and departments is required. In respect of the first requirement (i.e. for better data), there is a need to establish monitoring, measurement and evaluation agencies that can effectively ‘map’ out socio-metabolic flows in SSA cities. Here, urban observatories such as the Gauteng City Region Observatory (GCRO) in South Africa, can play an essential role by collecting, collating, evaluating and disseminating data on socio-metabolic flows. That is, they can play a key role in integrating data from different sources into a holistic mapping of the city and its sub-regions, which can act as a basis for determining intervention points and the types of interventions that are necessary to improve resource efficiencies through acting on sociometabolic flow profiles. In respect of the second requirement, there is a strong need for agencies that can coordinate priorities, programmes and projects so that multi-sector criteria for resource efficiencies are met. Here, the role of “strategic intermediaries” (i.e. agencies, task-teams, working groups and/or new government departments that focus on integration) cannot be underestimated. Achieving resource efficiency at both local and aggregative scales is required; else the resource efficiencies realised at a local scale may in fact be displacing its resource burdens to other parts of the system. This can lead to contestation, conflict and dispute, and it is necessary to safeguard against such events.

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Innovation: Policy, regulation, design, technology:

Innovation can potentially play a large role in meeting the resource efficiency and sustainability needs of SSA cities, and open up new markets for innovative solutions at the same time. However, it must be remembered that innovation is not solely a technological preoccupation. Innovation can take on a discursive orientation, which is necessary for actualising transitions to lower resource usage profiles. For example, innovation in policy, regulatory and legislative frameworks can play a key role in increasing absorption of new green and renewable energies infrastructures and technologies. Moreover, innovation in urban design and planning frameworks and processes are also required, as well as in the educational systems through which urban practitioners are produced. In order to realise new ways of doing that drives transitions to resource efficiency, innovation at multiple levels is required. Lastly, innovative financing models are also required, in order to ensure that the majority of urban citizens in SSA cities, who aren’t able to access formal systems and markets, are specifically targeted and supported.

Working with Informality:

Informal sector practises have evolved with changes that the world has undergone, and globalisation has had a tremendous impact on these practises and activities111. Moreover, formal and informal systems are rarely decoupled. In reality, they mix to generate an economy that classical economics (and African economists) has (have) yet to devise a theory to represent. The same can be said of the formal systems through which the state and government govern, administer and manage in the interests of the public good; they have yet to generate a system that adequately governs and administers in the public good in both formal and informal systems, and with minimal contestation and conflict between the two. Moreover, we need to address both formal and informal systems that help mediate socio-metabolic flows through Sub-Saharan African cities. Case study evidence exists for higher cost expenditure on resources and services by low-income and poor households, especially in slums and informal settlements. In this respect, linking urban development to reductions in inequality with infrastructure choices and resource efficiency prerogatives are paramount. Stabilising poor and low-income households in terms of their household budget expenditures on service provision, and improving their resilience to exogenous and/or endogenous change effects that impact upon household budgets and physical security (e.g. drainage system failures, storms, floods, droughts, landslides, etc.) is key to actualising the desired transition out of the ‘poverty trap’ as it manifests in African societies. In this respect, urban development approaches need to change, and the emphasis they place on both formal and informal systems needs to be evenly distributed. Ensuring growth in formal sector systems, requires that the needs of informal systems are not addressed at the cost (or at least, with minimal cost) of formal sector productivity. And if resource efficiencies can be increased in both sectors, as well as in the interstitial spaces where they overlap, then the potential for freeing up resources and service provisions grows. In this respect a mix of centralised, semi-decentralised and decentralised systems, infrastructures and technologies are required. Moreover, integrated resource planning is required to address inequalities in resource and service provisions between formal and informal systems. This in turn requires that we devise better ways of monitoring and measuring, as well as interpreting and evaluating informal systems within Sub-Saharan African cities. Often, this understanding cannot be obtained from data alone, and requires a more textured, fine-grained understanding of the processes through which informal systems function, and are accessed by potential informal sector providers and customers. Detailed ethnographies and understanding of flows (e.g. how commuters navigate a

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complex mix of public, private and informal transport providers) are required in order to respond aptly to the contexts in which resources are administered and accessed.

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6. Appendix B: Data and Evidence Base *Provided in separate document.

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