Mirna Fahmy- Diplomatic Inside

Leaders of developing communities in Africa brought up their efforts and struggles at WUF 12 Panel Discussions to pave ways for more solutions and benefits to the citizens they serve.

This year’s theme of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) Twelfth Session of the World Urban Forum (UN-Habitat) that was held in Cairo, Egypt, from November 4-8, 2024, endorsed the following slogan “It All Starts at Home: Local Actions for Sustainable Cities and Communities.” The forum has emphasised localising the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to address pressing global challenges such as unaffordable housing, climate change, and rising living costs, while fostering community-led initiatives.

This is the forum’s first time back in Africa after being last hosted in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2002. As the largest metropolitan area in Africa, the Middle East, and the Arab world, Cairo provided a fitting backdrop for discussions on urban development.

Not only to establish connections, but also to discuss various aspects and emphasise the challenges they face in striving for a better future for their communities in Africa, the leaders of these communities along with over 37,000 participants from more than 182 countries have come together to express their voices and the efforts they have made to garner greater attention, support, and funding. Most of the speakers and attendees were national and local government officials, urban planners, business leaders, academics, and representatives from civil society organisations. 

Instead of residing in towns and villages, the majority of people in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) live in dense cities. In the 47 SSA countries, cities with an average population density of 1,383 persons per km2 are home to 55% of the population, according to a World Bank assessment. However, 19 percent reside in towns with an average population density of 536 persons per km2.

This has led to slums and deteriorated crowded areas inhabited by people. 

As the UN explains, slum communities have bulged out because of migration from rural to urban areas. This is resulted from several factors: poverty and food insecurity, drought, lack of economic opportunities, lack of resources, and climate change. Africa is a complex, multi-faceted continent infused with a varied and fluid social, cultural, economic, political, and environmental milieu.

To boost-up the lives of these impoverished people, work through environmental practices and projects has been introduced to them from local and international initiatives. These projects were crucial to be infused with every single brought-up subject in many panel discussions at WUF 12 besides other issues related to climate change as the summers of both the years 2023 and 2024 were unbearably sweltering. The enactments shall contribute to the environment in a favourable way for a healthier life, such as by reducing energy consumption, waste, and pollution. 

What is the common problem?

Despite the efforts exerted and the launching of projects that engage slum inhabitants, there are still obstacles deterred from expanding to reach many locals and benefit them.

 “A lot of talk and no action,” Yayra Agbofah, a creative social entrepreneur based in Accra, Ghana, and Founder at The Revival & Afro District, said at one of the panel discussions organized by independent publication The Urban Activist at WUF 12.

Agbofah, who is working through his petite firms to upcycle textile waste and address the environmental damage caused by tonnes of discarded clothing, has emphasised that they made several attempts to get through many UN organisations to reach out for funds, sponsors and resources, but they get no reply.

Directing to the government for help will bring nothing, as Head of Politics Eurecat-CCentro Tecnológico of Catalunya and Leader of the Cassandra Programme Richard Elelman noted. In fact, “the UN relies more on the national governments.”

The same issue is even tougher on the environmental activist and solid waste manager Ezzat Gendy from the largest recycling garbage town in Egypt, Manshiyat Naser, who is grappling with the formal facilitations to help young entrepreneurs to move on and expand with their tiny businesses. From the same town, one of the Zabbaleen (garbage collectors in Arabic) communities named Rizk Hanna has explained more about the suffering of these businesses at one of the WUF discussion panels, and most importantly, the state usually makes decisions related to garbage without paying attention to the Zabbaleens’ opinions, who are experts in dealing with garbage and which cannot be dealt with accurately by multinational companies in Cairo due to its architectural, historical, and structural nature.

With the sprawling of social media and the emergence of content creation, everyone agreed that “networking and gathering as one voice to the government can trigger a heed.” That can help amid the mountains of problems a developing society can encounter. Elelman, who once worked with UN organisations in some African countries, has narrated about how unaware the UN Women sector in Nairobi is of the “throwing of the newborn babies in the trash.” The slogan “Don’t throw your babies away” popped out from the society that rescues babies daily from the trash.

Hana Tohamy, who is a member of the awareness team at Very Nile, an initiative to develop large-scale means to clean the Nile River, has agreed on the same issue, pinpointing that Very Nile established workshops for women to knead clothes from plastic when one of the fishermen’s wives, whom they collaborate with to gather and recycle the plastic, spoke up, shovelling a space for herself and those who are like her. Tohamy added that “the locals play a key role to be part of the solution.”

Elelmen reinstated that social activists who comprehend clearly the struggles of their community shall be connected to reach a larger portion of the citizens who shall receive the benefits and work harder to achieve the best for their community.

Innovations and projects:

During many conferences, there were some solution outcomes announced by community leaders and experts enhancing the green life quality of people and their cities especially in Africa whereas SSA records the top of the slum list with about 61.7% of its total population living in its slum areas according to UN-Habitat.

Aiming to achieve a “Zero Waste World,” including many types of waste, an Egyptian Clothing Bank initiative founded by Manal Saleh has just been kicked off, whereas all the torn-out clothes are collected and re-kneaded for better clothes. 

A platform to empower cities with tools and financing models for water resilience, supporting African municipalities in their climate action journey, the African Cities Water Adaptation (ACWA) platform, has been launched during one of the conferences at WUF. It has been labelled as a “game-changer” for water resilience across the continent. Supported by the EU through Horizon Europe, this platform embodies our approach of integrating research, technology, and development (RTD) directly into practical urban solutions. It offers cities vital resources to address water infrastructure challenges, particularly through innovative financial tools that blend public and private funding.

Cities are taking a more active part in the climate agenda by committing to ambitious, locally  focused initiatives to lower emissions, increase resilience, and preserve biodiversity. One such initiative is “City Climate Action” operated by the UN. The focus is on integrating nature-based solutions and green and blue infrastructure into multilevel action to improve urban climate priorities.

There is also urban climate finance. This shall transform climate commitments into action and needs innovative finance. Through coalitions like the “Urban Act” project, Omar Siddique, Head of Unit, Sustainable Urban Development at United Nations ESCAP, has revealed that they are working on investment frameworks that mobilise resources for sustainable urban development, empowering cities to fund and scale their climate initiatives effectively. To achieve that in a proper manner, a toolkit named Enabling Framework Conditions (EFCs) was globally launched during the WUF 12th session in Cairo, Egypt. This tool can empower governments and urban stakeholders to evaluate and strengthen urban climate finance ecosystems at both national and subnational levels.