Box 1.6: Examples of Urban Greening Strategies in Africa
▲ A Bus-Rapid-Transit stop on Market St, Johannesburg. ©Jeppestown. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.
An example of a nationally driven greening strategy is the solar water heater geyser rollout programme that is being undertaken by the South African government. City examples include the establishment of bus-rapid-transit systems in Cape Town and Johannesburg in South Africa, and Lagos in Nigeria. With the support of national governments, a light rail
system has been introduced in Johannesburg, while others are under construction in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as well as Lagos and Abuja. Ecosystem-based development priorities have been adopted by some African cities. Cape Town and Addis Ababa have turned their focus to managing the mountain and river ecosystems that play an integral part in the provision of key ecosystem services to these
constituencies in urban Africa. All too often, however, participation is weakly employed as a coercive mechanism to consolidate political power. Politicians make promises they fail to keep, thereby risking urban political disengagement and potentially inviting community power exercised in alternative ways, including public disobedience, social unrest or violent conflict. Enabling participatory models of governance will require some incremental learning and revision. Realizing participatory governance may require a transition period, when models are tested and refined in different urban contexts. It will be important to promote peer learning by making analyses available and evaluating progress. Professional and expert
THE STATE OF AFRICAN CITIES 2014
bridging the politics of inequality to tackle and improve the operations of formal and informal urban institutions. African urbanism needs to be rethought “from the slums”, as that is where the majority of urban dwellers live - and will continue to live as long as the capacity of cities and the political will to accommodate them are absent.140 Engaging formal and informal systems to bring about more sensitively regulated and monitored economies that are fair and supportive raises a particular challenge; it requires that new modes of governance be negotiated with the greater social majority over whom they govern. The participation of communities in their own development choices is an increasingly attractive option for those seeking to bring about more active political
cities (e.g. clean water and fuel wood). Accra (Ghana), Addis Ababa, Cape Town, eThekwini and Johannesburg (South Africa), Kampala (Uganda) and Nairobi (Kenya) have established priorities for green growth, but are grappling with the challenge of how to prioritize pressing development needs and challenges with making choices that ensure medium- and long-term sustainability.
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