Instead of capitalising on the advantages of agglomerations, there remain acute problems in Africa (as will be explained in Chapter 7), notably in electricity generation and transmission, and where the effect of migration has been to produce more and more congestion, rather than enhanced connectivity. More than half of sub-Saharan Africans in cities live in slums, with just 40 per cent having access to proper sanitation facilities. These are the same ratios as in 1990. Africa’s urban child dependency ratio is 40 per cent higher than in Latin America and 65 per cent higher than that of Asia.
Cities inhabit the space where implementation occurs, where the policy rubber has to hit the road, where policymakers come face to face with society’s problems. Although the role of municipal actors is frequently overlooked, their direct influence is often greater than that of presidents. Indeed, the rise of national governments in policymaking and implementation is a relatively recent global phenomenon, spurred on by globalisation, the need to raise armies (especially given the last century’s world wars) and the national importance of managing inequality.
City governments are inherently pragmatic and less partisan, since their job is to ‘clean the streets’ regardless of their political allegiances. Mayors are by necessity not legislative but executive. Or, as Teddy Kollek, who ran Jerusalem for 28 years, once put it in trying to negotiate between Israeli and Palestinian communities, ‘Spare me your sermons, and I’ll fix your sewers.’16
Still, for all their coalface responsibilities, cities mostly lack the policy tools. As Harvard’s Edward Glaeser, an expert on urban development, said, ‘Cities are the best path we know out of poverty. They are the best transformers of civilizations. But, there are also demons that come with density.’17
Figure 1.1: Africa: Urbanisation and population, 1950–2050
Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2014). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision, https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/DataQuery/
One challenge is that the political environment and boundaries have not kept pace with the rate and reality of expansion. There is a need for a clear demarcation between city and national responsibility, combined with the appropriate delegation of authority and allocation of resources to city governments. In an era when mayors are supposed to ‘rule the world’, given the burgeoning size of their immediate constituencies, local authorities have limited authority and few funding tools and resources.
A second challenge is that of inequality, and the stresses and strains this presents. For example, the centrepiece of South Africa’s tourism industry, Cape Town, is nevertheless a study in contrasts. Drawn by the backdrop of opulent coastal mansions, pristine beaches and ‘old’ wealth, visitors arriving at Cape Town International Airport are often shocked to pass through miles of squalid squatter camps where basic sanitation and electricity remain elusive luxuries. A reminder of the injustices of apartheid, the city’s wealth inequality is mirrored by spatial divisions. The poor and gang-ridden suburbs of the Cape Flats and the townships spread interminably away from the heart of the city, with the consequence that the people who live in those areas have a long way to travel to their places of work.
Still, the city remains an attractive destination for migrants from all over the country and the continent. The result has been massive pressure on housing, basic service delivery and public-transport systems, and more than anything, jobs.
According to Tim Harris, former Head of Investment for the City of Cape Town government, the authorities have three priorities for tackling the new urban-migration challenge: connecting citizens through investments in public transport and information and technology infrastructure; maintaining a high level of delivery for basic services as the city expands (including free allocations of water and electricity for those unable to pay); and ensuring sufficient and appropriate human-settlement solutions.18
Yet, like most African cities, Cape Town has very limited scope to act independently of central government in dealing with its specific challenges – or, more positively, to play to its strengths. The reasons for this, as in other areas, come down to money and autonomy.
Currently, the city, with its population of 3.7 million, has an annual budget of R36 billion ($2.6 billion), which includes R6 billion for capital expenditure – compared to the national budget of R1.25 trillion for a total population of 52 million. Eighty per cent of the city’s income comes from the premiums charged on utilities (especially electricity), property rates and other charges. The remainder comes from three sources: a tranche from the national government determined according to a countrywide formula; conditional grants from the Treasury (which remove the discretion for municipalities to spend as they may need to); and a portion of the fuel levy raised on sales within the municipal boundary. The vast proportion of these funds (like other municipal budgets) is spent on maintaining and expanding infrastructure, and delivering basic services, including water, electricity and refuse removal, on the back of that infrastructure. The shortage of funding is worsened by ‘unfunded mandates’, including library services and clinics, where the city is ‘left out of pocket by hundreds of millions of rands for services provided which are not matched by income or allocations from higher structures,’ says Harris.19
This fiscal and political environment severely limits the latitude of Cape Town, along with other South African cities, to act independently, for example, in designing strong investment incentives. It can offer ‘non-financial’ incentives: accelerated planning approvals, biodiversity offsets, an investment facilitation touch-point in the mayor’s office, and the overall ‘lifestyle’ advantages. On the financial side to support investments, the city has been able to offer discounted electricity tariffs and waive various application fees and development contributions that would normally be incurred by infrastructure projects. It can also offer discounted rates and land leases, though this is controversial within the administration, not least given the budgetary funding imperative.
From the city’s vantage, the most important reform allowing municipalities to shape their destiny would be the devolution from central government of the powers of taxation. Any intent in this regard on the part of the drafters of the constitution quickly ran afoul of the low capacity of many subnational governments and a move towards centralism by the national government. This has removed the potential for tax competition between subnational governments, a key tool in spurring development worldwide.
A common challenge for cities is to make full use of the potential for connectivity offered by high density of accommodation. But African cities generally expand by sprawling and not through increased density of the sort seen in Hillbrow, stretching out and not up.
But Africa can, again, learn from others. For example, the success of Curitiba, a city in southern Brazil, demonstrates how, with clever thinking, thorough planning, continuity in leadership and determined execution, a city can deal with apparently insurmountable problems. Curitiba is famous for how its invention and application of a novel transport system changed its transport environment and therefore the city’s connectedness. But a closer look reveals that it was just one element of a master plan that has delivered real improvement across the city and to the lives of its people.
Curitiba and bus rapid transport20
Curitiba, with a population of 2 million, is the capital of the Brazilian state of Paraná. In 2010 Curitiba was awarded the annual Global Sustainable City Award on account of its excellence in urban development. It deserved it, because it really did innovate and integrate.
‘We have many visitors from China, South Africa, Colombia and other countries,’ says Silvia Ramos of Urbanização de Curitiba, the transport regulator.
It’s little wonder.