African Delegates Gather For Cities Without Slums Programme

Nairobi, September 22, 2005 (UN News Service) – Delegates from across east, central and southern Africa met at the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) headquarters today for two days of exchange and workshops on providing the poor with decent, liveable housing through the Cities Without Slums Programme.

“Your strategies may be slightly different, but your goal is the same: providing them with decent and well-serviced houses, but also, in the future, offering the poor alternatives to slums. Access to affordable, correctly serviced and well located land is central to this process,” UN-HABITAT’s Executive Director Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka said in a speech read on her behalf at the meeting in Nairobi, Kenya.

The challenge posed by slums was an enormous one, she said, but the agency, in association with development partners, would support programme implementers in their efforts to address the issue.

After many months of intense debate, the process had been successful in mobilizing many people, including those directly confronting the hardship of living in poor neighbourhoods lacking basic services and security of tenure – the slum dwellers themselves, Mrs. Tibaijuka said.

The Cities Without Slums Programme is currently being carried out in nine cities. They are Kisumu in Kenya, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Lilongwe in Malawi, Maputo, Mozambique, Durban, South Africa, Arusha in Tanzania, Kampala, Uganda, Maseru in Lesotho and Ndola in Zambia.