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often reside in slums and informal settlements that lack infrastructures, services, urban planning and management (see also Box 1.6). The dual goals of green urban development in Africa must be to meet these compelling needs through appropriate urban design, planning and management, as well as through the deployment of sustainable, low ecological footprint, infrastructure and technology. Green development in African cities must thus engage with these dual goals as mutually inclusive priorities. Global funds can play a key role in facilitating sustainable urban development in Africa. It may be worth establishing a fund for African green urban development that can be accessed and leveraged by African central and local governments. The African Development Bank issued clean energy bonds in 2010.133 Municipal bonds can play a key role in attracting finance for the introduction of clean energies, transportation, waste and other systems at local scales, but lack of skills among local authorities may be a major obstacle. Microfinance that targets the urban poor can also play a key role in this respect.134 Africa’s central governments must also reorient urban development trajectories and can play a key enabling role by prioritizing programmes aimed at green and sustainable growth. At local, city and national scales, the public sector has the potential to catalyse the private sector financial flows, and expertise needed to deploy to service green development.135 Local funds, although limited, can be leveraged and decentralized development (city to city) cooperation might be able to play a strong role in ensuring funding and expert support for local urban development in Africa. City-scale carbon banks (e.g. the Gwangju Carbon Bank in South Korea) may become viable should the price of carbon stabilize. Post-2012 carbon finance seems guaranteed in the short and medium terms; five leading European public financing institutions have established a EUR 125-million post-2012 Carbon Credit Fund.136 While carbon markets have showed signs of instability, there are no indications that the establishment of a carbon economy will be halted. It is viewed by some as a necessary instrument for large-scale conversion to low-carbon activities and by others as an “unstable financial risk” management instrument. Although carbon funding is difficult to access, it is one of many mechanisms that can be harnessed to catalyse much-needed scaling up of urban infrastructure projects in African cities. Significant private sector interest has also emerged in response to Africa’s high potential for the application of renewable energy technologies. Smaller systems for households include solar water geysers, smart grids, closedloop sanitation, and biowaste-to-biogas systems. The sector can attract private investment, and participate alongside regional, national and local governments in diversifying energy markets. The African Development Bank is well-positioned to facilitate this convergence and is already involved in many continent-wide non-renewable and renewable energy
programmes. Given renewable energy’s global significance, African cities and national governments must apply these technologies and develop the skills base required to be innovative and competitive. Renewable energy is especially relevant for African cities, since they have the greatest need for local, decentralized energy capacity. These technologies can best be deployed, tested and improved within African urban environments, where the skill- and labour bases to implement decentralized systems are greatest. Given the projected demand for decentralized energy in African cities, the market for these technologies will ensure the growth to make these operations viable. Good governance is essential to the successful development and growth of inclusive and well-managed cities. It is inadequate to depend on finance, technology and/or expertise alone.137 UN-Habitat supports enabling approaches which rely on decentralizing authority, functions and fiscal responsibilities to local levels to ensure subsidiarity and accountability; to promote the inclusion and participation of civil society in the design, implementation and monitoring of local governance; encourage wide ranging partnerships and supportive networking across multiple levels of governance; as well as adoption of modern technologies to help improve efficiency and reduce cost.138
The Politics of Inequality
Urban politics will begin to dictate overall African politics in the medium and long-term as the level of urbanization increases. Participatory governance in urban Africa, or lack thereof, will likely determine the quality of politics and political action in the future. Cities are the engines of political and sociocultural change that will transform the polity of every African country with a high level of urbanization. Discovering and developing new modes of cooperation in urban political constituencies may well turn out to be a “politics of daily issues”, where these coalesce around local problems with which they are particularly concerned. Perhaps the greatest challenge to urban politics in Africa is the inequality that characterizes the “urban divide”,139 with urban dwellers highly segregated by class and ethnicity. Typically, African cities are economically controlled by small political or economic elites, while the vast majority of dwellers eke out a mere survival. Spatially, the urban divide in Africa is reflected in the high slum and informal settlement incidence. Inappropriate or deficient urban infrastructure and spatial planning choices can increase costs of municipal transportation, water, sanitation, waste removal and electricity services, and hamper the quest for more sustainability and liveable cities. Basic urban service and infrastructure provision may dominate urban politics to the detriment of greater political visions. The politics of the “here and now” is more immediate where the struggle for survival is a daily reality for millions of urban Africans, and where public protests over lack of service delivery or exploitative prices take priority over grander political goals. Cultivating inclusive visions of African urbanism requires