Recently, ministerial housing delegates from South Africa, Brazil and India put their heads together in Cape Town to come up with a united proposal for slum eradication ahead of the United Nations meeting on Millennium Development Goals in September.
The political fight at that meeting is expected to be over Target 11, the proposed reduction by 10% of the estimated 100-million slum-dwellers worldwide. Developing countries — via the Brazil-South Africa-India axis, the African Union’s African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development and the G77 — want to push for a 50% reduction in the number of slum-dwellers.
As the current rate of urbanisation is unlikely to abate, a 10% reduction is regarded as inadequate to make a positive impact. And international financing is seen as key.
South African Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu told the International Housing Research Seminar that failure to reach a collective stance at international forums meant “the presence of slums will continue to weaken the capacity of our governments to generate economic growth and development through our cities”.
UN-Habitat’s tracking of urbanisation trends in developing countries shows that by 2006 urban populations will outnumber rural inhabitants. Especially affected will be smaller towns, according to research presented at the housing seminar.
Eight of the world’s cities with more than six million inhabitants are in developing countries and 43% of residents in developing nations live in slums. An estimated 72% of urban residents in Africa are slum-dwellers, compared to 6% in developed countries.
The Cape Town gathering was to tailor solutions that can work for developing countries. One outcome is the creation of a housing website to facilitate south-south research exchange.