Approvals signed for land in Uganda
pictured above: Federation leader Patrick Biija (standing) explains savings and the process of federation to the Jinja Central Division chairman (left) and senior assistant town clerk (right).
By Benjamin Bradlow, SDI secretariat
When SDI delegates from Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa visited Uganda in the beginning of February it was to help consolidate the process of profiling and federation building that has been underway there since 2002. Another goal was to meet with Cities Alliance in order to explain our process and work with them and government officials to develop a proper framework for developing sound urban policies and implementation activities in five “secondary cities”: Jinja, Mbale, Arua, Mbarara, and Kabale.
SDI delegates visited with local federation members and local politicians in Jinja and Mbale, where the CA program is already underway. Municipal-wide profiling has already taken place in both of these cities. The Mbale profiling was conducted while we were there, and the profilers reported that, in addition to successfully collecting data from all 14 informal settlements in the city, they mobilized six savings schemes, in addition to two that already existed.
In Jinja, we met with leaders of each division in the city. In Uganda, the administration of cities is broken down into a number of sub-units, of which divisions are the second biggest after the municipal unit. Discussions with division chairman, senior assistant town clerks, community development officers and the chairs of smaller units within each division, called LCs, were vigorous. In each division, LCs, and other officials challenged the federation to include them in their mobilization of savings schemes, collection of information, and other activities. This is a potentially promising development, as people-led development cannot take place at scale without the support and facilitating power of government officials at all levels.
In the Mpumudde division, the federation is already well known. In part, this is because federation leader Patrick Biija is on the division council. But, beyond this fact, the federation has demonstrated its organizational power there. When we met with the division, Biija presented the plans the federation had drawn up for a housing development in Kawama, located in the division. Biija later told me that this project is a key test for the federation: “We want to show the council that we can develop our own area.”
The Kawama plan was developed in 2008. The local federation visited with the division council to consult with the relevant planning authorities. They then went back to talk within the federation to agree on what kind of houses they want, given what was feasible and what would reach the maximum amount of people. The plan ultimately included 208 double-story units, as well as a mixed use sanitation facility that would include a nursery school, an office for the federation and a meeting hall. This building is not unlike one that has already been built by the federation in the slum of Kisenyi in Kampala. Such units have similar models elsewhere in the SDI network, like in India and Zimbabwe.
At the beginning of the month, the plan did not yet have final approval. But this week, I received word that the remaining signatures have been made and the plan is set to begin. The federation now has the title deed for the 7.6 acres of land designated for the project. A big step to demonstrate the capacity of organized communities of the urban poor to work towards their own development hand-in-hand with government in Uganda.
pictured above: The federation-developed Kawama plan, posted during a meeting with political leaders of Mpumudde Division, Jinja.
Rebuilding an urban poor fund
By Benjamin Bradlow, SDI secretariat
One of the key challenges of urban poverty is to find people-driven solutions to housing finance. An innovation of many federations in the SDI network has been to develop what are known as “urban poor funds.” All federations in the alliance practice daily savings as a means for community organization. These savings can often be used for various kinds of micro-credit as well, though their primary purpose is, as a general rule, to bind communities together, get them to unite around their own problems and their own resources.
But any member of a saving scheme can withdraw their savings at any time. There is nothing keep that person in a saving scheme except their own ties to their community and their specific scheme. The money always remains theirs. Federations that have been around for some time — what is known in the SDI lingo as a “mature” federation — soon realize that in order to develop at any kind of scale, they need to search for ways to come up with a committed, revolving finance facility: the urban poor fund.
Though an urban poor fund operates in different ways in different countries, the basic idea is the same. Each federation member commits a non-refundable amount of money that will initiate the fund. In South Africa, just to give one example, this commitment has a value of approximately US$100. The idea is that these funds that come from organized communities of the urban poor will attract more from outside sources like governments, donors and the private sector. Then, the fund can begin giving out loans to federation members to build houses, start businesses, buy land, and install services. If the loans are repaid then the fund “revolves,” meaning that the money can be loaned out again to someone else. For an excellent summary and analysis of the different kinds of urban poor funds that exist within the SDI alliance, a paper by Diana Mitlin, our colleague at the International Institute for Environment and Development, is a worthwhile guide: “Urban Poor Funds: development by the people for the people” (pdf).
It is a powerful tool for development that really puts organized communities of the urban poor at the center of their own development. So what happens when the fund essentially vanishes — nearly overnight? Sounds devastating. But this is exactly what the Zimbabwean Homeless People’s Federation experienced when their fund, called the Gungano Fund, fell prey to the cruelties of hyperinflation that wrecked the Zimbabwean economy in 2008.
Federation members were determined to keep it going. Still anxious to continue repaying outstanding loans, members developed a system they called dombo-to-dombo (stone-for-stone), where instead of repaying in money, they repaid in material supplies for which they calculated an approximate worth.
With the introduction of the US dollar and South African rand as replacement currencies for the Zimbabwean dollar, the federation is now looking to restore the Gungano fund. I had the privilege of being part of a two-day reflection meeting that the Zimbabwean federation held in Harare at the end of January to discuss how to take the fund forward. My colleague Louise Cobbett and I have a full report of this meeting up at the main SDI website which goes through all of the issues raised and resolved around the fund and how it ties into the greater work of the federation.
It takes the kind of unity forged through savings, information gathering, and — in the case of the Zimbabwean federation — the common traumas of economic hardship, disease, and state-directed violence, to address such a difficult, innovative facility like the urban poor fund with the creativity and seriousness I saw at this meeting. With “urban poor funds,” “community development funds,” and similar terms becoming buzz words in the so-called “urban development sector,” the urban poor themselves are providing some of the most creative, effective examples of how these can actually operate.
Rebuilding the Fund
Though the past decade has been traumatic for Zimbabweans of all socioeconomic stripes, the urban poor likely have borne the greatest burden of hyperinflation, high rates of HIV/AIDS, political instability, corruption, and state-directed violence. Leaders and ordinary members of the Zimbabwean Homeless People’s Federation can all speak of their own or a close comrade’s experience with violence, sickness, and worsening poverty over this time period. For a federation built on the base of daily savings, hyperinflation was a challenge to the foundations of the organization. Unsurprisingly, then, Patience Mudimu, coordinator of Dialogue on Shelter, says that hyperinflation — when many bank accounts became worthless — has revealed the true meaning of daily savings for organized communities of the urban poor: “Federation is saying that ‘we are not mobilizing savings schemes, but mobilizing groups of savers around their own issues.”
Mobilization since the early months of 2009 has picked up at a fast rate. Since February 2009, says Mudimu, 10,000 families have been mobilized to begin saving. Political space has opened up since the post-election violence of 2008. At that time, the federation saw a city like Bindura as a no-go city for its mobilization activities. “It was such a morale boost to be able to mobilize in that area,” Mudimu said. The Global Political Agreement governs a shaky coalition government. While the minister of housing and social amenities is from MDC, the minister of local government is from ZANU-PF. In both ministries, high up officials from opposing parties work to undermine their counterparts. Federation co-ordinator Davious Muvindi says that high poverty rates, difficulty accessing currency under the new regime of dollarization and randification, have focused the federation on both what is affordable and politically feasible. “One way that we are trying to de-politicize our process is to advocate for fairer rules about land allocation in urban areas,” he said.
As a federation built on savings and an associated urban poor fund, called the Gungano Fund, it has had to adapt to such unique circumstances. The new currency regime has limited, uncertain potential for developing creative finance mechanisms of the urban poor. About 30 federation coordinators, bookkeepers, Gungano coordinators, and staff of ZHPF support NGO Dialogue on Shelter, met on 29 and 30 January in Harare to reflect on the experience of the federation rituals for community organization during this time, and to plan for potentially rocky waters ahead. What follows is an account of the main areas of discussion. While general strategic areas were identified by the end of the meeting, most conclusions were postponed until leaders could go back to identify the true feelings of the grassroots of the federation nationwide concerning the agenda that emerged by the end of the two-day meeting in Harare.
Affordability
The reports given on the first day support highlighted the lack of jobs. Many federation members are surviving on street vending or subsistence farming and selling any excess food as a means to save. However, they are not getting as much money from it as they had hoped, and the seasons are not as regular. Gungano is currently getting only a 15% return on its loans.
SDI council and board has set a maximum of $1000 for housing loans that come through its Urban Poor Fund International finance facility. But the experience of neighbors such as Namibia indicates that $1000 is too much. On average, a house costs Namibians $2000 to build. In the Namibian experience, only a third of the federation members take such large loans. This has caused the Namibians to examine what people can afford and then try build accordingly. They are currently giving loans for $600 for incremental construction. A similar case is in Kenya, where a shortage of land in cities like Nairobi meant that federation members were building multi-storey structures. Loans for full structures have been unaffordable, and a new loan system from the Kenyan urban poor fund, Akiba Mashinayi Trust, has focused on loaning no more than $600 to purchase land and build up to the foundation or floor slab level. The federation found that they were spending most of their time worrying about loans.
When it comes to affordability, the ZHPF has an information gap. Delegates to the meeting in Harare agreed that there is a need for a national federation survey to find out the average and variable construction costs, as well as what people in these different regions can afford, especially according to loan repayment data. Federation coordinator Sazini Ndlovu suggested that for most members, a loan repayment of $10 a month would be difficult, but within the realm of possibility. Based on this, Diana Mitlin of IIED said that according to her rough calculations, a 4-year-loan of $400 at 1% interest would be the maximum affordable loan, or $450 at 0.5% interest. Either way, she noted, the interest payments that were concerning some delegates should not be seen as the most important issue. Affordability of the actual capital loan needs to be the focus of how the Gungano loan process is restructured.
The Zimbabwean federation is also seeking to engage local governments around the issuance of urban poor fund loans. Though local governments are cash-strapped — Mudimu described their relationship to the national government as “hand-to-mouth” with little capital investment going to housing and infrastructure — they can still assist in donating land and/or services to augment or even help refund Gungano loans to projects under their local authority.
Fund Structure
ZHPF delegates examined the possibility of decentralizing the fund to regional accounts, which exists to varying degrees in the operations of urban poor funds within the SDI network. Most agreed that saving scheme members would feel more obliged to repay their Gungano loans if they came from what was perceived as a more localized / regionalized initiative. It would encourage a sense of ownership throughout the entire process and federation members would be able to see how the lack of repayment impacts their neighbors. A good example is the anomalous high repayment rate in Gwanda. Federation members there have set some of their own rules for repayments. The ZHPF expects to begin a series of exchanges with Gwanda to learn from the way they have managed their fund so successfully in a situation of extreme unemployment, even for Zimbabwe.
Decentralization carries its own pitfalls. There is the possibility that the federation would start to move in different directions because of decisions made at a regional level and the different speeds at which decisions are taken. This idea was also tabled at meetings surrounding the federation’s tenth anniversary in 2008, but was ultimately rejected on the basis that it would take longer to access the savings. The forum rejected the centralization of daily savings, and was agreeable to the notion of decentralizing the Gungano Fund.
Ultimately, the assembled took a decision to create city-wide funds drawn from $1-per-month savings in 3 regions as a trial run. By keeping the accounts regional, it would enable the federation to lobby the appropriate local authorities at that scale. The federation would be able to demonstrate their savings at the regional level and would be in a better position to leverage support and likely land / services from local authorities. The trial will start with Bulawayo / Gwanda, Kariba and Masvingo. It should be clear that proposals for housing construction would continue to be directed at the national level of Gungano.
Business Loans
Small business and income-generation loans have varying effects in the SDI network. Some allow for subsistence but offer little opportunity for growth. Other such loans have served as the basis for thriving businesses. Delegates were strongly in support of continuing loans for income-generation, but emphasized that recipients should be trained with the appropriate skills. In such a high unemployment environment, self-employment through such loans has particular relevance.
Some of the problems included members getting half-way through a project, losing interest, asking to be trained in something else, and applying for a second loan. Not only is the Gungano Fund being depleted but it leaves people constantly stressed and demoralized. The fund is now targeting those who have experience with their own businesses. They also found that the amount of capital is too little to help the business grow and are now trying to identify projects with a bigger scope and them fund accordingly.
The federation has tried to solve these problems by giving loans to savings groups rather than individuals. However they found that they would individualize the group loans. This means the $500 loan that is given to a savings group of 5, they will split it 5 ways. Rather than spending entire $100 on a income generating venture, a member will invest only $30 for produce and spend the rest of the $70 on housing construction. They still expect the produce to finance the loan repayment, which is unrealistic.
There are success stories. Some delegates reported that the money they got through Gungano uplifted them, and their businesses are prospering through the loans. There are examples of people who are repaying their loans and are still left with profit. Those in the market towns, where there is a high demand for produce, are doing very well. However, in the more rural areas, it is much harder to forge a successful business, and whilst business risks tend to be minimized in urban areas, it is a very difficult economic environment within Zimbabwe for business to succeed.
Relationships with Local Authorities
The ZHPF has been engaged with a number of local authorities in the past year, and has a footprint in almost all of the urban local authorities in the country. The federation is encouraging exchanges between the local authorities, with whom they have a good relationship, and newer local authorities with whom they have had promising engagements. Enumerations have been found to be particular useful to local authorities and therefore an opportunity to strengthen such relationships.
Meeting delegates agreed that the ZHPF must make itself relevant to local authority. A particular focus of the coming year is on city-wide profiling — including a profile of Harare planned to begin in June — and using the information as a way to address the local authority. Such information can be vital in working towards securing land tenure and services at the scale at which local authorities work. Assuming that the political climate continues to become more stable, the local authority will need such information to claim resources from the national government.
Though the federation is very united internally, they are agreeing, with the encouragement of Dialogue on Shelter, to emphasize that the federation is fighting for everyone and not just one place or group of people. The point of working on these local authority relationships is for the federation to demonstrate their relevance at city-wide scale. Informal settlement profiling can be used to develop coordinated pilot projects planned in conjunction with local authorities, that can lead to wider redirection of resources to the urban poor at actionable scale.
Repossessions
The Zimbabwean federation has been struggling with beneficiaries refusing to repay their loans once they have received housing. This places the federation in a difficult position as they are fighting to house people, and it would expose a great contradiction to evict someone. After lengthy and heated discussions it was decided that the Zimbabwean federation is decidedly unwilling to pursue repossessions.
In order to try deal with the problem, there is a need for a binding agreement with members, and that they must understand the ramifications of their loan defaults for other federation members. The federation is going to focus on proper vetting of those allocated the land to ensure defaults occur less frequently.
In addition, ZHPF is planning to concentrate on “remobilizing” members. It is better to reignite the passion for the federation than to try evict someone. Throughout the SDI network, some individuals try to take advantage of the system. But individual actions will not destroy the federation as a whole. The key is to have strong systems in place to deal with such problems when they arise. As one federation member, Chipo Matafi, said, “We are a federation. It’s like a mother, sometimes there will be arguments, but ultimately you cannot stop looking after your child.”
People-driven development in Uganda
pictured above: SDI deputy president Rose Molokoane and Michael Werikhe, Ugandan minister of Housing, Land, and Urban Development, at a meeting of SDI delegates and Ugandan officials in Mumbai, India, last week.
By Benjamin Bradlow, SDI secretariat
This week, SDI delegates are traveling through Uganda with members of the Cities Alliance secretariat to meet with Uganda Slum Dwellers Federation-organized communities, ACTogether, an NGO supporting the activities of the USDF, and officials from all levels of government. This is part of a project facilitated through the new Cities Alliance “Land, Services, and Citizenship” program that is focusing on five secondary cities in Uganda (Jinja, Mbale, Arua, Mbarare, and Kabale).
During the Cities Alliance consultative group meeting last week, SDI and ACTogether delegates met with the Ugandan minister of housing, land and urban development Michael Werikhe and his commissioner, Samuel Mabala. The key goal of these engagements, at all levels, is to ensure that organized communities of the urban poor are put at the center of the processes of development in Uganda.
Updates on this greater process of organizing communities through SDI’s tools such as savings, community-driven information gathering, and community-based urban poor funds, will be forthcoming as events progress on the ground in Uganda. As one of the poorest countries in Africa, with a low rate of urbanization (about 15%), this is an exciting opportunity to put organized communities at the center of urban development in its relatively early stages.
