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هويدا كامل – مديرة وحدة القاهرة

“كل ال ان فكراه إن كان فيه أيادي مسكاني من كل حتة في جسمي، أيادي بتحاول تفك حمالة صدري و بتفعص صدري من تحت البلوفر ال أنا كنت ارتديه. بقية الأيادي كانت مسكاني من ظهري و رجليا، و حسيت ببنطلوني بيتشد لتحت. حاولت أنظر حوالية عشان أشوف دائرة الرجال دي بتنتهي فين، لكن وجدت صفوف من الرجل محيطة بي، وكلهم بيزقو تجاهي.

بعد كدة رأيت رجل مجهول متجه ناحيتي مبين حوالي ٤٠ رجل تاني. لما عرفت أوصل له، حضنته و قلت له يساعدني. مسك أيدي و بدأ يلف بي في الميدان بخطوة سريعة. في اللحظة دي، مكنتش فهمة لو هذا الشخص فعلا بيسعدنى أوعايز يتحرش بي زي بقية الرجال. اتفزعت.

بدأت أدور على أي حد تاني يساعدني. لقيت رجل لابس تي شيرت قوة ضد التحرش الجنسي فبدأت أصرخ بصوت أعلى عشان يسمعني. لحسن حظي شفني الرجل ده و جاء ناحيتي. مسكني و وعدني إن هو هيساعدني. وقعت، لكن الرجل أومني، و أخذني وسط نساء تانية و غيره من رجال قوة ضد التحرش الجنسي.”

هذه شهادة من مرأة تعرضت للاعتداء الجنسي في ميدان التحرير يوم ٢٥ يناير ٢٠١٣. تم إصدار هذا البيان على صفحة فيسبوك منظمة قوة ضد التحرش

قوة ضد التحرش/الإعتداء الجنسي الجماعي هي مجموعة ناشطة تأسست في نوفمبر ٢٠١٢ بغرض حماية النساء أثناء تظاهرهم و حضورهم لمسيرات في التحرير والاتحادية. وتتألف المنظمة من مجموعة متطوعين يدورون حول الميادين أثناء المظاهرات، ويتم تدريبهم على التدخل في حالة وجود إعتداء جنسي جماعي. كما أنهم يوفروا المساعدة القانونية والطبية والنفسية للضحايا، فضلاعن حملات الدعاية لرفع مستوى الوعي حول مشكلة التحرش الجنسي.

في مقابلة مع المصري اليوم قال علام واصف، منسق قوة ضد التحرش، أن هناك محاولات متعمدة لتخويف النساء من الاحتجاج، “مما يجعلهم يشعرون بأنهم مهددون وغير آمنون.” معظم الحالات التي تدخل فيها رجال قوة التحرش كانت “هجومات منسقة من عصابات مسلحة، ربما يتم مكافأتهم للقيام بذلك.”

لمكافحة هذه الجرائم، وضعت المنظمة نظام يتطلب ما يقرب من ست مجموعات من خمسة عشر شخصا للقيام بدوريات في كل أنحاء التحرير، و هم يرتدون قمصان بارزة مكتوب عليها باللون الأحمر: “ميدان آمن للجميع.” وقد تم تدريب أعضاء قوة ضد التحرش للرد على الهجمات التي يتم التبليغ عنها من خلال الاتصال بالخط الساخن للمنظمة. بمجرد وصولهم إلى مكان الجريمة، تقوم مجموعة المتطوعين بتشكيل سلسلة بشرية حول النساء، ثم تقوم متطوعة من ضمن المجموعة بتغطية أو كساء الضحايا. و بعد ذلك يتم نقل الضحايا إلى مكان آمن.

في بيان صحفي رسمي، أعلنت قوة ضد التحرش أنها تلقت ٤٦ بلاغا باعتداءات جنسية جماعية على النساء خلال تظاهرات ٣٠ يونيو, و تفترض المنظمة أن هناك عديد من الحوادث الاخرى التي لم يتم الإبلاغ عنها. و قد اقترحت قوة ضد التحرش بإضاءة مداخل ميدان التحرير، و إستخدام وسائل الاعلام الحكومية مثل قنوات الراديو و التلفزيون

لإذاعة إعلانات للخدمات العامة و حملات لمكافحة التحرش.

و من خلال جهودهم في العامين الماضيين، تمكنت قوة ضد التحرش وغيرها من المنظمات المناهضة للاعتداء الجنسي من تغيير الفكرة الاجتماعية السائدة للتحرش الجنسي في مصر. كثير من المصريين الأن يعترفون بهذه الجرائم كحالات تحرش و اعتداء
جنسي، بعد أن كانت تسمى مجرد معاكسات من غالبية الشعب. و الهدف الرئيسي لقوة ضد التحرش و غيرها من الجماعات الناشطة لحماية النساء هو ضمان سلامة و أمن ملايين المصريين الحاضرين للمظاهرات، و الكفاح من أجل مستقبل أفضل وأكثر أمانا لمصر.

Photo credits: Heba Farouk and Gigi Ibrahim

Olatawura Ladipo-Ajayi, Lagos Community Manager

According to a survey carried out by the Financial Derivatives Company, prices in Lagos are rising largely due to increases in food prices, because of food supply shortfalls. Increases in prices make access to food difficult for the urban poor, so to tackle the problem of food supply, organizations are working to find out where the shortages come from, and who suffers from these breaks in food supply. To this end, Food Bank Nigeria organizes research to better understand its environment and to help design effective food relief program in various Nigerian cities, including Lagos.

Food Bank Nigeria (FBN) is a non-governmental organization that focuses on mending the food gaps in Nigeria. Their mission is to effectively address identified food gaps in Nigeria through sourcing and distribution of food, appropriate innovative programs, education, and advocacy. The organization serves as a central pantry for other organizations working to fill the gaps created by inadequate food supply, lack of affordability and during emergency situations, through soup kitchens, shelters, group homes, senior centers, and emergency food pantries. FBN’s programs are wide reaching, catering to different social groups and age grades in need of food supply, including children, senior citizens, single parent families, the homeless, the unemployed, disaster victims, and many other special needs groups.

The organization provides food to relief programs through a reliable source, created by partnerships with food retailers, manufacturers, and wholesalers to acquire, store, and redistribute food to agency programs, working as a central bank for food. They help other non-profit operations extend the impact of their food budgets, so that their scarce resources can be redirected to their programs. FBN programs include food drives and outreach campaigns. The organization has set up a system of sustaining food supply to other agencies catering to the hungry in the city through its food drive program. This program promotes and supports food and fund drives which allow private citizens as well as societies to organize food drives. They also solicit food stuffs from local companies, schools, and neighborhood associations to create a steady flow of food supply to the poor and hungry families. FBN is also responsible for a pilot program at the Makoko Children School which introduces lunch packs as a way to keep students in schools, while ensuring a regular meal each day for the pupils. The pilot was deemed successful and the organization is now working on extending it and on finding sponsors.

During this year’s Hunger Action Month (October), FBN will host booths at neighborhood stores and markets to spread the word about FBN’s mission and to inspire people to get involved with food/fund drives and with volunteering. The public will be informed about food security issues and the effort of FBN and its partner agencies in addressing such issues. FBN currently works with four agencies in Lagos and are looking to register more. Some of their agencies feed at least 100 people twice a day, every day. Project coordinator Paul Achem estimates that the program has fed roughly 22,500 people since it started. FBN has big goals to help close the food supply gap, aiming to feed about five million people a day across the nation. While the program is just gaining ground, it is definitely on the right track.

Photo credit: Food Bank Nigeria

On the streets of Dhaka you’ll find many like Sriti, crouched by her precious shanty, packing up the single blanket she and her mother use to make a tent at night. They cannot leave this behind as they set out to beg for the day because of the government’s law against informal settlements on sidewalks. There are 3.5 million slum-dwellers in Dhaka, and thousands more who are undocumented and homeless, lacking the resources even to live in slums. This extreme poverty leaves them without assets or services to call their own. While the government tries to confine slum dwellers within certain areas of the city, these travelling homeless, living hand to mouth, find themselves unwanted, without support, and in crisis. The most acute crisis is that of access to basic healthcare. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Editor — Mon, 03/11/2013 – 01:00

In crowded urban areas such as Dhaka, public transportation is essential for everyday life. Unfortunately, this public transportation has also become one of the main sites for sexual harassment, referred to as eve teasing in Bangladesh. Shanta, a university student, comments that as sexual harassment is increasing on public buses, most school and college aged girls prefer to travel in school buses instead of public buses. Some of the colleges and schools do not have their own transportation, however, forcing many girls to use taxis instead of buses; these taxis are far more costly and not affordable for everyone. Those who cannot afford taxis are forced to travel in public buses facing the threat of sexual harassment daily. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Editor — Mon, 03/04/2013 – 00:00

Five-year-old Shima is on the bottom rung in the human ecosystem of the sprawling slum habitat clinging to the banks of Buriganga. She squats outside the door of a bhangari shop, a shop which sorts out waste for recycling, sifting through the thick black riverside muck for miniscule bits of copper fiber. Her elder brother, Noyon, the proud holder of a “proper job,” spends twelve hours a day as a bhangari, snapping off needles from used syringes. For these children, it is only $15 that makes a difference between a secure future, and the perils of their occupation. This is why Selim, a child laborer working as a ragpicker, happily said yes to UNICEF’s cash-transfer program, which allocates $22 worth of grants to him every month. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Editor — Mon, 02/25/2013 – 00:00

The urban data revolution is here. From Abidjan to Mumbai to New York, we are beginning to learn about real-time trends: in traffic, land use, even in illegal cooking oil dumping in cities. City data is almost in surplus, and mayors are bombarded with new information on goods and resources every day. Yet little of this data shows us how a city’s most important resource — its people — are living. Read more.

Submitted by UNICEF — Mon, 11/04/2013 – 00:00

According to UNICEF, roughly 15 million children under the age of 14 were employed in Nigeria’s semi-formal and informal sectors in 2006. The most common forms of employment include street vendors, beggars, shoe shiners, mechanics, bus conductors, and domestic servants. This high incidence of child labor follows Nigeria’s high poverty rate: these children’s labour sometimes serves as the only source of income not only for themselves, but also for their families. Child labour has become an avenue for impoverished families in Lagos to provide basic needs for themselves, at the expense of the child. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Wura — Mon, 06/10/2013 – 00:00

The importance of empowering women goes beyond giving them a means to sustenance and income. It is fundamental to building the fabric of society. A successful woman who is a productive member of society is more likely to create a strong community both in her home and her society. According to CARE, women and girls suffer disproportionately from the burden of extreme poverty, and make up 70 percent of the 1 billion people living on less than a dollar a day. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Editor — Mon, 06/03/2013 – 00:00

Makoko is a slum settlement on the Lagos Lagoon. There are no reliable population figures, but estimates for the number of inhabitants range from 100,000 to 300,000. According to the NGO Social and Economic Rights Action Center (SERAC), Makoko supplies forty percent of the dried fish sold in Lagos. The settlement is not a face of Lagos that the state government is proud of, and there have been attempts to pull it down and evict the inhabitants, as has been done elsewhere. The first time I visited Makoko, in November 2011, residents showed me (I was visiting with two foreign journalists) evidence of what the demolitioners had accomplished on a previous mission. Read more.

Submitted by Tolu Ogunlesi — Fri, 05/10/2013 – 09:37

The lack of access to health care information, such as treatment options and preventative measures, as well as the dearth of affordable treatment relevant to the urban poor have been the focal points of the Lagos State Government’s awareness programs. It has been ascertained that some of the health information issues arise due to insufficient communication channels, or the use of inappropriate channels for target audiences. For example, television commercials tend to be ineffective, as most urban poor do not have access to such devices, and general illiteracy levels are high. With information materials usually in English, the message is lost on the majority of the populace that need it. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Editor — Mon, 04/08/2013 – 00:00

It just doesn’t add up. Nigeria is one of the world’s fastest growing economies (we’ve been in that exclusive club for years); Foreign Direct Investment ($8.9bn in 2011, a four-fold increase from a decade before) and Diaspora remittances ($21 billion in 2012) are growing impressively; crude oil prices are at record-high levels — but none of these is managing to make an impact on poverty rates. Read more.

Submitted by Tolu Ogunlesi — Thu, 04/04/2013 – 11:08

Event: African Perspectives 2013
14–17 November 2013 Lagos, Nigeria

African Perspectives is a series of conferences on Urbanism and Architecture in Africa, initiated by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Kumasi, Ghana), University of Pretoria (South Africa), Ecole Supérieure d’Architecture de Casablanca (Morocco), Ecole Africaine des Métiers de l’Architecture et de l’Urbanisme (Lomé, Togo), ARDHI University (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania), Delft University of Technology (Netherlands) and ArchiAfrika.

The objectives of the African Perspectives conferences are:

• to bring together major stakeholders to map out a common agenda for African Architecture and create a forum for its sustainable development

• to provide the opportunity for African experts in Architecture to share locally developed knowledge and expertise with each other and the broader international community

• to establish a network of African experts on sustainable building and built environments for future cooperation on research and development initiatives on the continent.

Learn more.

It made international news headlines. An estimated forty thousand persons, rendered homeless in no time, when a demolition squad rolled into Ijora Badia community. It’s the way of Lagos, it seems. The poor — who make up the ‘informal economy’ that reportedly constitutes about 70 percent of the city’s population — are perpetually on the run, hounded by government policies that seem to exist for the purpose of making more land available for the minority well-off to play with. (Apparently the bulldozers’ metal fist has been dangling above Ijora Badia since 1996/97.) Read more.

Submitted by Tolu Ogunlesi — Mon, 03/11/2013 – 13:28

In the area of sanitation, access to improved facilities, expanding women’s management and planning opportunities, and improving women’s safety and security are inextricably linked. For example, for women working in the market, commuting between destinations, or even for young girls in school, gender concerns limit their access to finding and accessing private spaces to go to the toilet. An October 2012 poll of 500 female residents on their sanitation and safety concerns in the slum communities of Ajegunle, Ijora Badia, Oko Agbon and Otto-Oyingbo sets the scene: two out of every five women said they lack access to sanitation facilities. They develop their own, informal solutions, relieving themselves outside, and in the open, such as behind buildings, in open drains, or off roadways. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Victoria Okoye — Mon, 03/04/2013 – 00:00

“How can we use technology to help share information?” asks Peter Ihesie, who developed iPolice Nigeria, a mobile app that crowdsources information on neighborhood-level crime. With the app, users can search and locate the nearest police station, report a crime in the area, and obtain local security and crime news, as well as emergency phone numbers. With this app, Peter is hopeful that people will not only share information, but share it strategically, using his app as a central depot. Read more.

Submitted by Victoria Okoye — Thu, 02/28/2013 – 11:45

In March 1998, 500 three-wheeled keke vehicles first appeared on the streets of Lagos. Bright yellow in color, powered by a motorcycle engine, balanced on three thick wheels and covered by a metal half-shell replete with plastic windows, the city’s most innovative transport mode was introduced by then Governor Mohammed Buba Marwa. The vehicle came to be known colloquially as keke marwa: Keke being the Hausa word for “tricycle,” (Marwa’s native tongue); and Marwa being the surname of the governor himself. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Victoria Okoye — Mon, 02/04/2013 – 23:00

Katy Fentress, Nairobi Community Manager

In Kenyan communities that have little of the collateral needed to access credit, a common approach is to set up savings and investment associations known as “Chamas.”

A Chama is an informal group, often composed of women, that follows a system by which everyone contributes money on a regular basis and in turn gets disbursed a fixed amount. The method evolved from the tradition of rural women grouping together and pooling their labor to work on each other’s farms.

Over the past decades, Chamas have increased in popularity: women have embraced them not only to send their children to school, undertake household maintenance, and weather them through major events and crises, but also as engines with which to forward their entrepreneurial skills and invest in income-generating activities.

As women’s priorities have changed, so have Chamas, which in time have evolved into recognized credit-worthy institutions. Major banks like Rafiki Microfinance, K-Rep, Barclays, Kenya Commercial Bank, and Bank of Africa have all begun to recognize the potential of Chamas and to create lending schemes focused on their needs.

Smaller credit institutions that provide financial mentoring, tailor-made solutions, and a more grassroots approach to lending are also getting in on the game. In Nairobi, for example, a company called Creative Capital Solutions (CCS) has since 2006 been providing cash-flow solutions to female-run Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and Chamas.

“We initially used to also target men’s groups,” says Sadiq Dewani, the CCS Operations Director. “Unfortunately, men would all too often use the money for other purposes or turn out to be serial borrowers. We realized that women were more reliable earners and generally had around 60 percent to 70 percent returns on their investments, so we decided to cater our credit solutions specifically around their needs.”

The objective of CCS is to offer fast, flexible and, above all, manageable solutions to women’s Chamas. “We aim to provide alternative, niche solutions for women who cannot find working capital from banks that have stringent requirements, rely on collateral, and do not offer flexible options catered around the groups’ needs,” explains Dewany, who says that although major banks do lend to Chamas, the system can be complicated and groups can easily get disheartened by all the bureaucracy. “With our approach we initially focus on providing a two-week financial training program; following this, we undertake individual group background checks in order to assess their ability to pay back loans, and if they are then accepted, we formalize the group and enable it to borrow from us.”

Similarly to unsecured micro-finance loans, Chama lending usually has high interest rates. CCS has devised a methodology by which if groups pay back loans faster, they can reduce the amount they have to pay. According to Dewany, the system is working, and the fact that their repayment rates stand at around 85 percent is proof of this.

CCS has over the years helped women’s Chamas set up irrigation schemes, flour mills, bakeries, tailors, hairdressers, and tea shops. In Nairobi, they currently work with 12 different women’s Chamas situated in different corners of the city. Their loans go from as low as 30,000Ksh- ($350) to as high as 300,000Ksh- ($3,500). They are currently in the process of mutating into an established Microfinance lending institution.

“We are exploring options for increasing the level of training we undertake with individual groups,” concludes Dewani. “Although this might prove costly for us, we feel that the better trained our members are, the more they can make out of their money and, eventually, the more returns we will see.”

Submitted by Gemma Todd — Fri, 03/28/2014 – 11:18

The African city should be seen as a stimulating and exciting maelstrom of cultural conflict and transformation. We need to celebrate and dissect the fragments of urban life and empathise with the multiplicity and contradictions experienced in our cities, whilst at the same time understand the daily service needs of the urban inhabitants. Under current conditions of extreme and rapid growth experienced in the majority of South African cities, change manifests itself most evidently through space. The urban poor and the ‘space’ in which they occupy, define and conduct their activities and their relationships form fundamental, dynamic elements of the building of a city in the context of contemporary urban Africa. Public space (the street and the node) forms one of the most important venues for such transformation. Efforts by the urban poor to appropriate community space (although much contested) are an integral part to a process of self-empowerment and socio-economic networking. In the formation of contemporary urban developments in South Africa (particularly in low-income areas and informal settlements), it seems that less attention is given to the space in-between buildings and how these can function as ‘service venues’; the very glue that unites the elements of the positive spatial structure; the shared space. One may question why this is so? Read more.

La ciudad africana debe ser vista como una vorágine estimulante y fascinante de conflicto cultural y transformación. Tenemos que celebrar la vida urbana y diseccionarla mientras somos empáticos con la multitud y las contradicciones que experimentamos en nuestras ciudades y al mismo tiempo entender las necesidades diarias que tienen sus habitantes. Bajo las condiciones actuales en las que vivimos de crecimiento rápido y extremo en la mayoría de las ciudades de Sudáfrica, el cambio se manifiesta con más evidencia a través del espacio. La pobreza urbana y el “espacio” que esta ocupa, define y donde lleva a cabo sus actividades y sus relaciones constituyen elementos dinámicos y fundamentales en la construcción de una ciudad enmarcada en el contexto del África urbana contemporánea. El espacio público (la calle y el nodo) forma uno de los lugares más importantes para dicha transformación. Los esfuerzos que está realizando la pobreza urbana de apropiarse del espacio comunitario (aunque esté mucho más disputado) son una parte integral de un proceso de autodeterminación y de creación de redes socioeconómicas. En la formación de urbes contemporáneas que se desarrolla en Sudáfrica (especialmente en las zonas de bajos ingresos y asentamientos informales), parece que se presta menos atención al espacio comprendido entre edificios y cómo estos pueden tener la función de “centros de servicios”; el pegamento que une los elementos de una estructura espacial positiva, es decir, el espacio compartido. Entonces uno puede preguntarse: ¿por qué esto es así? Leer más.

Submitted by Editor — Tue, 03/25/2014 – 00:00

After the transition to democracy from the apartheid era in 1994, an ambitious post-apartheid housing initiative was implemented in South Africa to provide formal housing for those denied it under apartheid. However, the simplest and cheapest policy has been to locate this housing on the urban peripheries (typically over 20km away in the case of Johannesburg’s or Pretoria’s economic centres) — thus creating an alarming parody of apartheid-spatial planning in locating former black townships in marginal locations far from economic opportunities, amenities, and public transport. This has not only compelled people residing in these areas to use much of their income on transportation but, moreover, the dispersion perpetuates a marginal urban form which increases the burden placed on the city’s financial models and its already depleted and over-extended infrastructure networks. Read more.

Una iniciativa ambiciosa de viviendas post-apartheid se implementó después de la transición a la democracia de la era del apartheid en 1994 en Sudáfrica, para proporcionar viviendas formales, para aquellos que fueron negados viviendas bajo el apartheid. No obstante, la política más simple y económica ha sido localizar estas viviendas en las periferias urbanas (generalmente a más de 20 kilómetros de distancia, que es el caso de los centros económicos de Johannesburgo o Pretoria), y de esta manera se ha creado un parodia alarmante de planificación espacial-apartheid al localizar los viejos municipios negros en zonas marginales lejos de oportunidades económicas, servicios, y transporte público. Esto no sólo ha obligado que las personas viviendo en estas zonas usen una gran parte de su ingreso en transporte; por otra parte, la dispersión perpetúa una forma urbana marginal que aumenta la carga en los modelos financieros de la ciudad y de sus infraestructuras agobiadas y agotadas. Leer más.

Submitted by Tariq Toffa — Thu, 03/13/2014 – 11:16

South Africa has entered into its 20th year of democracy and as the world looks on at a society that has been free of the shackles of Apartheid for two decades, the form of its urban fabric is changing as its cities try to shake off their segregated pasts. Over the last two decades, cities in South Africa have seen the tremendous influx of people in search of economic opportunities and better access to services. This in-migration to urban areas has seen the proliferation of informal settlements from nearly non-existent in the late ’80s to over 2000 (and counting) in present day South Africa. Local municipalities and city planning departments have not planned for these settlements. If anything, the only strategy being applied today is a reactionary one, further handicapped by the very formal and rigid development methods imposed by city officials trained primarily in planning for and implementing very traditional city planning processes. Where does that leave the informal settlement dweller? Read more.

Sudáfrica ha entrado en su vigésimo año de democracia y mientras el mundo mira a una sociedad que ha estado libre de las cadenas del apartheid durante dos décadas, la forma de su tejido urbano está cambiando a medida que las ciudades tratan de deshacerse de su pasado de segregación. Durante las últimas dos décadas, las ciudades de Sudáfrica han visto una enorme afluencia de personas en busca de oportunidades económicas y de un mejor acceso a los servicios. Esta migración a las zonas urbanas ha visto la proliferación de asentamientos informales casi inexistentes en los últimos años de los 80s, a más de 2.000 habitantes (y va aumentando) hoy en día en Sudáfrica. Los municipios locales y los departamentos de planificación de la ciudad no tienen planes para estos asentamientos. En todo caso, la única estrategia aplicada hoy en día es reaccionaria, con límites por los métodos de desarrollo muy formales y rígidos impuestos por los funcionarios municipales capacitados principalmente en la planificación e implementación de procesos muy tradicionales de planificación para la ciudad. ¿Dónde deja esto al habitante del asentamiento informal? Leer más.

Submitted by Editor — Thu, 03/13/2014 – 11:03

Data has emerged showcasing the latest trends of our demographic shift – the global population now articulates a ‘youth bulge’. The UN-Population Demographic Profile (2010) show children, and ‘youths’, comprise 1.6bn, and 1.0bn, of the population in less-developed regions. The population is younger; and Sub-Saharan Africa is no exception. Attention is now turning to youths: what young people do, what opportunities they initiate for their families and nations, and what it means to be ‘young’ in the developing world. However, an important caveat requires recognition: the focus has been particularly male-focused. Our understanding of girls, within both public and private spaces, remains limited. Such is the debate in this blog post – if we are now looking at ‘kids’ in the city and development, what are the experiences of girls? What can we learn about the city through an engendered perspective? Fundamentally, who is responsible to grant equal rights? Two models of intervention are discussed be, each using alternative methods to provide rights for girls. However, each acts to reinforce the need to improve our understandings on ‘being’ a girl. Read more.

Submitted by Gemma Todd — Mon, 01/20/2014 – 10:08

Upon exploring how just and inclusive cities can emerge a key component of analysis is social life — how people act in cities, the complex character of sociability, and the factors designing urban life. Multiple concepts have been raised to define what a city is — and has become, and further, what kind of life materialises within urban spaces. Over time cities have been conceptualised as ‘misanthropic’, expressing disorganisation, violence, and a dense concentration of people whom adopt different mentalities and motives. Such urban personas are expressed through space. Read more.

Submitted by Editor — Mon, 12/02/2013 – 14:18

Travel in South Africa, and Southern Africa in general, is highly skewed by economic means. It is dominated by walking (often great distances on poor quality footpaths) and by public transport, primarily among the poor. In Johannesburg, the situation is exacerbated by the marginalisation created by historic spatial planning and the sprawling, low-density nature of the city. According to the City of Johannesburg’s Department of Transport, urbanisation and urban poverty require not only urban transport solutions but also low-cost modes of travel such as cycling. This strategy, known as “Non-Motorised Transport” or NMT, over recent years has gradually become a priority area at National, Provincial and Local Government levels, resulting in the City of Johannesburg’s Framework for NMT in 2009. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Tariq Toffa — Mon, 11/04/2013 – 00:00

In South Africa, the government’s response to the characteristically peri-urban poverty of informal settlement (between 1.7 million and 2.5 million households) has occurred within the paradigm of individual title (subsidised housing), the conventional route for informal settlement upgrading in the country. Despite well-intentioned policies, however, this ownership model is far removed from lived realities; where many households are condemned to either waiting patiently for state-subsidised housing or to land occupation, while others cannot access the state subsidy, such as foreign nationals and the poor-but-not-poor-enough-to-qualify. In the longer term, the model could even be said to lock poor people into marginal locations. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Tariq Toffa — Mon, 10/21/2013 – 00:00

Africa’s cities are growing — and changing — rapidly. Without appropriate planning, they will become increasingly chaotic, inefficient and unsustainable. In many countries, planning legislation dates back to the colonial era. It is ill-equipped to deal with contemporary urban problems. A shortage of urban planning and management professionals trained to respond to urban complexity with progressive pro-poor approaches exacerbates urban dysfunction. Read more.

Submitted by Editor — Tue, 10/15/2013 – 15:55

With the projected world population increase of over two billion people by 2050 to be felt mainly in urban areas in developing countries, the future looks urban. This will increase pressure on the larger metropolitan centres to supply not only services such as housing, but also food security. For this reason, urban food gardening has begun to receive increasing attention from policy makers and government officials around the world. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Tariq Toffa — Mon, 10/14/2013 – 00:00

In the early hours of Monday 11 February, as Kibera residents set off to work, they were treated to the sight of a brightly painted train passing through the heart of their slum. This was the Kibera peace train, a collaborative effort of members of the community-based organisation Kibera Hamlets, Nairobi’s celebrity graffiti writers Spray Uzi, and many other Kenyan artists who turned up at the city’s railway station the previous Sunday to paint the entire side of a train with messages of peace and unity. The project, which was endorsed by the Rift Valley Railways, is another episode in a long line of political artistic campaigns targeting Kenyan citizens and politicians in the run-up to the elections this coming 4th of March. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Mon, 02/18/2013 – 00:00

Every Thursday at 10am a motley group of people gathers in a circle in Nairobi’s Arboretum, a small park that lies adjacent to the president’s compound, to engage in an intense two-hour session of power yoga. Anyone can attend the practice free of charge and the occasional Mzungu (white person) or Mhindi (Indian) has been known to take advantage of this unique class. Nevertheless, the main component of the group are youngsters who hail from the poorer part of Kangemi, a neighbourhood on the north western periphery of Nairobi. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Mon, 02/11/2013 – 00:00

The Kenyan Traffic (Amendment) Act 2012 came into force at the end of last November amidst widespread Public Service Vehicle (PSV) worker strikes and scepticism as to how effective it would be. The objectives of the introduced regulations were to minimize carnage on the roads by imposing steep penalties for those who commit traffic offences or engage in reckless driving. The main targets for the new penalties are the 14-seater PSVs — commonly known as matatus. These mini vans are widely considered to be the main source of Nairobi’s traffic delirium, and calls to do something about them have been mounting over time. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Mon, 02/04/2013 – 23:00

The Kenyan Traffic (Amendment) Act 2012 came into force at the end of last November amid widespread Public Service Vehicle (PSV) worker strikes and scepticism as to how effective it would be. The objectives of the introduced regulations were to minimize carnage on the roads by imposing steep penalties for those who commit traffic offences or engage in reckless driving. The main targets for the new penalties are the 14-seater PSVs — commonly known as matatus. These mini vans are widely considered to be the main source of Nairobi’s traffic delirium, and calls to do something about them have been mounting over time. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Mon, 02/04/2013 – 00:00

In order to engage in urban poverty reduction, it is essential to have a clear understanding of the nature of the area to be targeted and the essence of the problems faced by the people there. During the Huruma slum-upgrading project, the Italian NGO COOPI collaborated with Pamoja Trust to come up with a participatory data collection technique to identify the needs of the community. Chiara Camozzi, an architect who works at COOPI and closely followed the project through its different phases, agreed to talk to urb.im and explain how the data was collected and later used. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Mon, 01/28/2013 – 00:00

The Why Not Academy is a shiny jewel in the rough heart of Mabatini village wedged onto a terrace on the steep slopes of Mathare. The primary school was first started by Mathare resident and soccer coach Dominic Otieno in 2000 after he discovered that most of the youth he worked with were having trouble attending school. What began as an academic study group that Otieno ran from his small room soon began to expand, as more students flocked to attend the informal class. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Mon, 01/21/2013 – 00:00

Upendo Hero is “a public space superhero,” says Kenyan-based public space activist Vincenzo Cavallo — “a defender of public space, a lover of Nairobi, a sworn enemy of gentrification and a soldier against the privatization of public space.” Cavallo is one of the founders of the community-based organization Urban Mirror, a group that has run several public space and public art initiatives in Kenya over the last few years. One of the ideas behind Urban Mirror has been to incorporate participatory methodologies as tools in the struggle to reclaim urban public space. Learn more.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Mon, 10/29/2012 – 01:00

The Thika superhighway, a ten-lane highway that covers the 42 kilometers between Nairobi and Thika, northeast of the capital, is a first-of-a-kind flagship “mega project” launched by the Kenyan government. Its development marks the initial phase of an urban planning strategy aiming to make Nairobi a world-class city by 2030. The highway has raised the quality of life for many residents of adjacent towns and made the commute into central Nairobi relatively painless. Nevertheless, the project has not been accompanied by any concrete pro-poor interventions, and it risks excluding many of the urban poor who might otherwise have benefited from the upgrade. Learn more.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Tue, 10/23/2012 – 01:00

Mothers of disabled children growing up in under-served informal settlements are faced with a daily uphill struggle to feed, nurture, and care for their children. To exacerbate the issue, there is a higher incidence of disabled children living in slums than in the rest of the city, mainly due to inadequate healthcare women may receive during pregnancies and childbirth and to curable diseases like meningitis — which, if not caught in time, may result in permanent brain damage. According to World Friends, an Italian NGO that runs Neema Hospital, situated in Nairobi’s eastern periphery: “Ten percent of children living in slums under the age of 15 are disabled and live in conditions of severe marginalization.” Learn more.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Tue, 10/16/2012 – 00:00

Students of the Undugu Primary School and St Gabriel’s School are taking part in a tree-planting drive to reforest a corner of Kibera. The initiative, spearheaded by the Kibera Community Youth Program (KCYP) and run by local environmental volunteers, aims to plant a total of 700 trees using funds donated by British NGO Trees for Cities — which, in collaboration with the KCYP, has created a project that actively encourages communication and dialogue between students, volunteers, and members of the community. Learn more.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Tue, 10/09/2012 – 01:00

By Gemma Todd

With urbanisation becoming a rising topic on the research agenda it is interesting to see how new models for urban planning, and laws, are being constructed. Recently, an event by the Africa Research Institute raised such ideas. The speakers introduced how the contextual diversity across Africa required exploration, and consultants need to focus on adapting a checklist of rule making, rather than make the rules, in planning Africa’s emerging cities. Current African cities were presented as ‘un-planned’, or in need of a re-visioned approach to become inclusive and equitable. Urban planning was the solution — a means of enabling tax reform, effective management, and equal rights to the city. However, urban planning law needed to be re-written to work for ‘African cities’.

The model introduced identified how the process of law making, and therefore planning, in African cities would change. Firstly, using a participatory approach to identify needs and interests; secondly, devolving power through to civil-society and municipalities; and finally, stepping away from a ‘one size fits all’ framework to ensure basic standards are maintained. Crucially, the speakers documented the need to focus on land laws. Urban planning law was identified as the key to creating just, inclusive, and social, cities. Effective urban planning had to be based on a functioning legal system; and the planning law would only work by embracing participatory approaches. The participatory approach proposed encouraged citizens to be the direct link to the central and local state, and redistribute power in planning to lower socio-economic groups. However, key questions need to be raised on the one hand, concerning the politics of ‘informality’; and alternatively, the relationship between civil-society, participation, and the state. Crucially, it needs to be asked — can the law work for everyone and what kind of law(s)? Is there too much trust in ‘planning’?

As highlighted, the promotion of participatory governance provides an opportunity to enable the sharing of ideas and a democratic process to make rules. Civil society enables greater accountability, transparency, and access to rights. However, in the African context, is civil-society too weak or alternatively has the voice of civil-society actors chosen to be marginalised? Further, whom does ‘civil-society’ include, and whose rights will they raise? When looking at what planning law can do, decentralising who spends the time to create such laws needs to be met with a state willing to take note. It seems there is a new paradigm emerging across the developing world, one of which embraces a ‘localist’ idea. However, the role of the state, and political nature of civil society, remains key. Whose ‘informality’ will be changed if new planning laws are implemented?

New planning laws are needed on how we build and design cities. However, as David Harvey has shown the switch of urban governance from managerialism to entrepreneurialism, with the state role switching from provider to enabler, comes with implications. A new model is born whereby investment in land becomes speculative, governance lawless, and a volatile geography the norm to avoid risk. The Open Government Partnership provides a step in the right direction for designing planning laws — encouraging a dialogue, and partnership, between multiple actors. However, we need to ensure the voices of urban inhabitants are heard.

Planning laws need to return to whom the urban environment is for and how the urban is imagined; and therefore who is involved in the process. Rather then being a simple ‘chicken or egg’ scenario where we now need new planning laws to engage in building just cities; we are missing a piece of the puzzle within the paradox — whom needs to be involved to lead such changes?

Photo credit: Carlos Fernandez

Cairo Community Manager and Content Coordinator — URB.im

URB.IM, the global community working for just and inclusive cities, propagates innovation and connects all members of the ecosystem working on urban poverty alleviation.

A project of Dallant Networks, LLC and the Ford Foundation, this new online platform establishes an international community of practice and learning, sharing ideas and experiences in order to innovate, replicate, and scale working solutions to the problem of urban poverty.

It is currently focused on eighteen cities: Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Jakarta, Dhaka, Chittagong, Cairo, Lagos, Nairobi, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Bogotá, Cali, Curitiba, Accra, Cape Town, and Johannesburg.

We are looking for a Community Manager and Content Coordinator for the city of Cairo.

The Community Manager and Content Coordinator for the Cairo node of the urb.im network will:

• Produce and aggregate news, events, projects and other developments of interest to members of the community of practitioners and program leaders working in urban poverty alleviation in Cairo

• Recruit bloggers and other volunteer contributors for the urb.im/cairo platform and coordinate all content traffic

• Initiate and moderate online discussions happening on the urb.im/cairo platform

• Be an active participant in the overall urb.im network and interact on a regular basis with other Content Coordinators in the network

This position is ideal for urban-planning students and graduates, journalists and social activists working in urban poverty alleviation. In addition to receiving extensive visibility on an important social media platform, the ideal candidate will receive a monthly stipend.

Qualified candidates should email their detailed information.