African Urbanization: Slum Growth and the Rise of the Fringe City
2014; Harvard International Relations Council; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0739-1854
Autores Tópico(s)Urban and Rural Development Challenges
ResumoEko Atlantic is a city that rises like Aphrodite from the foam of the wrote Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka. The city is defined by sustainability, luxury, technology, and i economic opportunity. It is own Dubai; a gleaming gateway to the continent that will revolutionize the city of Lagos, solidifying its place as West financial center. The private development, which is located on land reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean along Lagos' upscale Bar Beach coastline, is predicted to house 400,000 residents and to provide over 150,000 jobs. Eko Atlantic is ushering in a wave of futuristic African cities. These modern satellite cities are built on the edge of existing metropolises in the hopes of transforming the country's economy and its role in the global marketplace. For example, developers are building Hope City outside Accra and Konza Techno City, known as Africa's Silicon Savannah, outside Nairobi, in the hopes to turn Ghana and Kenya respectively into major players in the technology industry. African urbanization is occurring at a breakneck pace, and if done right, presents a valuable and unique opportunity to create jobs and lift millions out of poverty. However, if done wrong, the urban poor could become increasingly marginalized as slums are cleared to make way for housing they cannot afford and the mobile upper class migrates to upscale edge cities such as Eko Atlantic. Africa has the chance to urbanize in a way that increases the total populace's aggregate quality of life rather than deepening the divide between the tiny elite and the vast urban poor, but corruption and poor urban planning must first be overcome. A recent United Nations-Habitat report highlights the rapid growth of cities underway in Africa at the moment. According to Anna Tibaijulca, the executive director of UN-Habitat, Africa is currently experiencing the world's fastest rate of urbanization. Right now, about 40 percent of African people live in urban environments, but by 2030, the number will exceed 50 percent as Africa ceases to be a predominantly rural continent and some cities swell by up to 85 percent of their current size. This transformation is evinced by the extremely high urban growth rate in Sub-Saharan Africa of 3.6 percent, double the world average. As people flock to cities to escape rural violence, disease, and poverty, the slums of cities overflow. 200 million Africans live in slums, making up 70 percent of urban inhabitants, and; of these, 175 million do not have access to acceptable sanitation. In Lagos, so close to the opulence of Eko Atlantic, two thirds of the city lives in slums with limited access to clean drinking water, food, roads, electricity, or housing. It is crucial to ask why slums continue to persist on such a massive scale in the midst of rapid development. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] To begin, one must look at the root causes of slum formation in Africa. Historically, a country's urbanization has been coupled with and driven by its industrialization. Urban migrants are drawn to cities to fill a plethora of newly created industrial jobs, further strengthening the economy and spurring economic growth. This pattern of industrialization-led urbanization has not been repeated in Africa, where there has been a premature rural exodus. The rural sector is comparatively worse off than it was 30 years ago, due to a multitude of reasons such as climate change and increased international competition. As a result, there has been a large migration to central metropolises that are ill-equipped to handle the ballooning number of residents. These cities do not have the jobs, housing, or the infrastructure to accommodate thousands more residents. Migrants end up living in slums and working in the informal economy, which constitutes 61 percent of urban employment in Africa. The conditions in slums exacerbate urban poverty, with high rates of disease due to overcrowding and inadequate sanitation. …
Referência(s)