Category: Ghana

KnowYourCity.TV Workshops in Ghana & Nigeria

Images from SDI’s May 2017 KnowYourCity.TV workshops in Lagos, Nigeria and Accra, Ghana.

SDI Kenya & Ghana Evictions Solidarity Exchange to Nigeria

An SDI delegation from Ghana and Kenya are in Nigeria this week to share 20+ years of experience negotiating successful eviction alternatives. The Nigerian SDI affiliate has been fighting ongoing violent forced evictions for nearly three years.

Yesterday was the Ghana & Kenya team’s first day in Lagos. They started the week with a solidarity visit to the Otodo Gbame evictees, accompanied by the Know Your City. TV documentation team.

On day 2 in Lagos workshops were held on methods to prevent evictions for Nigeria federation members, facilitated by Joseph Kimani of SDI Kenya.

On the last day, the teams from Kenya, Ghana & Nigeria shared years of experience and strategies preventing and developing alternatives to evictions that work for the urban poor.

CoLab for Change: Case Studies for Collaborative Urban Transformation

CoLab for Change: Case Studies for Collaborative Urban Transformation is a project of the Cities Alliance Joint Work Programme for Habitat III. 

Transforming fast growing cities of the global south into globally attractive hubs of the world economy cannot be achieved without including the urban poor as leaders in housing and urban development processes.

Roughly 1 billion people worldwide live in slums, with little to no access to safe housing, water, sanitation, electricity, or any of the other physical and social services that many of us take for granted. For these people urban development is about survival. It is about creating cities in which they can live safely and with dignity. Yet it is precisely these populations who remain least represented in urban decision-making processes.

The Cities Alliance Joint Work Programme on Habitat III highlights the value, experience and role of partnerships between national governments, local authorities and organized civil society in achieving sustainable development and poverty reduction in cities and believes that development partnerships:

• Are key catalysts for a sustainable future
• Help realise good urban governance
• Strengthen economic development
• Build inclusive cities

For more information, read the JWP’s Technical Background Paper.

The CoLab for Change case studies highlight the need for local government to implement the successful tools developed by community organizations and civil society that generate inclusive urban policies and development.

The work highlighted in these case studies shall inspire governments and civil society to develop effective strategies to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 11 to “make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” and SDG 17 to “revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.”

This project was made possible through financial support from Cities Alliance and GIZ.

These films were made by youth in slums as part of SDI’s Know Your City TV project, equipping youth with video documentation resources to tell stories of the lived experiences of the urban poor, and make media that contributes to the transformation of slums and cities.

Click here to visit the project page and watch the 6 case study videos.

KnowYourCity.TV in Action!

A few images from behind the scenes and on location in Afghanistan, Bolivia, Cambodia, Ghana, South Africa and Uganda.

Follow KnowYourCity.TV on Facebook for updates.

Joint Communique Against Forced Evictions Affecting the Urban Poor

Uncovering the Pockets: Profiling Accra’s Slums

By Mara Forbes, SDI Secretariat

The Ghana federation is embarking on its largest and most ambitious data collection process to date – citywide profiling of seven municipalities in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA). GAMA is comprised of 11 districts, each of which has multiple sub-metros and many neighborhoods.

Last week the Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor (GHAFUP) held a “learning-by-doing” planning exchange to lay a strategy for their first citywide profile. Federation members and technical support staff from Uganda, Sierra Leone, and South Africa joined the Ghana federation to share lessons from their own citywide profiling experiences.

It was immediately clear to all involved that they had underestimated the shear size of Accra’s informally settled communities. During the first day of mapping the federation discovered that many of the communities identified by local authorities were a mixture of formal areas interspersed with pockets of informal slums. These slum pockets are not formally recognized by local authorities.

Community Voice:

At first we were many so then they divided us into groups. One group went to New Town and one went to Kandar and one went to Mamobi. I was in the Mamobi team. When we got there we first took [mapped] the boundary of the whole Mamobi. We couldn’t finish that day so we had to come back. The following day we took [mapped] the pockets of slums. We took [mapped] a lot! Because the place was so big we couldn’t finish all the slums, so they were saying we should pick some service points, such as streetlights, roads, toilets, garbage dumps, schools, churches and mosques. So we took [mapped] all these things and when we got back we saw it was too much. So we needed to choose just some. Since the federation can’t build schools and churches we decided we should pick some key services like toilets, garbage dumps, water points, and drainage. So the following day we took just those points and it was very fast to capture. It was fantastic! Everything was moving on so well. People were eager to learn the GPS and some were doing the recording. We all came back together. Meanwhile there were some slums people couldn’t finish so we had to go back to the field to help capture the whole place and it was marvellous. Some of the community leaders were so tired and they refused to go back to the field. Only one went back, but the rest of us all went to help finish.

– Rhode Allhassan, Federation member from Ashaiman

After seeing and understanding the actual context on the ground the team had to come back to the drawing board to develop a new plan for identifying slum areas within these communities. After much discussion and reflection it was agreed that in order to conduct a citywide profile the teams must first enter a community or neighborhood and map the boundaries of the electoral/administrative area. During the process of walking the boundary and discussing with local leaders the team can then identify and map the boundary and services of the pockets of slums within each community. Once these slum pockets have been identified and mapped the community will return to hold the profiling focus group discussion.

Planning their mapping approach

Community Voice:

Learning about the GPS was a good experience because I never thought I could hold it and use it. But I could use it, I learned. Also recording the data – I did that as well. I was able to figure out the coordinates on the GPS. I learned to capture the data on the computer and I felt on top of the world! I realized I now have a level of confidence to impart the knowledge I learned to someone else. I was able to build my confidence to share knowledge with others. Being with the foreign team (delegates from Uganda, Sierra Leone, and South Africa) I learned so much. I learned from Sharon (Uganda federation leader) how I shouldn’t be selfish when you know something. You should be ready to impart what you know to others and be patient. The international team was not bossy, they know many things, but they don’t think they are so big. I’m so eager and want to put in best. I’m ready to learn and face my challenges now.

– Mabel Hawa Abakah, Tumah Vela Savings Group, Nungua

Mapping team

Community Voice:

This is going to improve my community based on me. Because the knowledge and understanding I’ve had I now can teach and inform the community so they have the knowledge too. The savings will help our community because it is this savings that gives you the power and strength. It shows the authorities your weight to put in for something to improve the community. Without savings, someone can’t come from outside to help you. I made them to first understand that our development will be 95% based on our savings. Even yesterday, some people called and came to the house to get information on starting savings. They wanted to buy savings books but didn’t have the money, but are willing to come in and start. I was telling Sharon (Uganda federation leader) that God works in mysterious ways. Coming together with this humble family [federation]. I give glory to God to making me part of this unique family. I’m so happy. I can’t emphasise it.

– Mabel Hawa Abakah, Tumah Vela Savings Group, Nungua

In the span of a week the team had planned to profile and map four communities within Ayawaso East – one of eleven sub-metro areas in Accra Metropolitan Area (AMA), which is just one of the seven metropolitan areas the federation is planning to profile and map within the next year. Due to their adaptability, new plan, and enthusiasm to uncover all the pockets of slums in the four communities of Ayawaso East they mapped 26 settlement boundaries and the services available in each settlement. In addition, they mapped the four larger boundaries of Kanda, New Town, Nima, and Mamobi (the four communities of Ayawaso East) – a total of 30 boundary maps.

Data entry team

Community Voice:

The data capture was the most important thing I learned. It is the first time I’m doing this. It’s a blessing in disguise for me because I didn’t know something like this would help me. We have been doing profiling and mapping but we hadn’t been doing the capturing, so it was a new thing. I didn’t think we would do this but we did! It’s a lot of work and good. The data capturing will help me because it can help me draw a map on my own. I can teach my brothers and friends who are near do it and when I’m not there. They can help continue the process.

– Terry Otu, New World International Savings Group, Nungua C5

Community Voice:

When I came I was feeling shy and afraid to do certain things. The first day she (Anni, SDI Secretariat) taught me how to use the tablet in capturing and I used it for 2 days. The second day I was perfect! I was on the field recording, but was told to come and do data entry. I thought it was something big and I couldn’t do it. But when I got here my colleagues were here and they welcomed me. I needed an account and was going to use my facebook, but they said I could have an email. They said I can use my date of birth or something to remember to make my own email. I never thought I could have this. They showed me how to create an email address. Terri was entering the services but then Anni said it was my turn. I could type though my speed was slow, but she said I could make it and to take my time. It is now pushing me to learn more. This will not be the end of my learning. I want to plan to buy a computer for myself. I’m very happy.

– Rhode Allhassan, Federation member from Ashaiman

Rhode Alhassan capturing data

In the next few months the data team of the Ghana federation will continue to refine and deepen its learning in order to most effectively and efficiently roll out profiling and mapping to rest of AMA as well as the remaining six Metropolitan Areas of GAMA. No doubt the data and information collected will be a huge feat for the Ghana federation and the SDI network, but more importantly will provide the communities with the tools and information to engage and dialogue with their local authorities around service provision, security of tenure, and possibilities for joint slum upgrading.

Community Voice:

Our work in LSC 2 [Lands Services and Citizenship 2 – National Urban Development Program funded by Cities Alliance] is going to bring a lot of issues and skills into the Ghana federation of the Urban Poor. Since we have been doing profiling and enumerations, it is only the support office that normally captures the data. But now we see that the Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor is improving by capturing our own data that we collect in the field. We are hoping that these few people we have trained, that they will train more people to come on board. Because this won’t only be Accra but will be in other regions and we need to bring people on board to have those skills.

We have trained a lot of people, and we are learning how to engage with the sub metros and the city itself. Before the support office gave letters to the city, but now we [community members] distribute the letters and after distributing the letters we go there to follow up. We sit with them and we told them what we want them to do to support us in the community. Our plan is to use the information to engage the municipal assemblies for the development of the communities and services they are lacking. So we use the information in order to advocate to the assemblies.

Another big achievement is towards the AMA. It has now opened its doors towards Old Fadama for the Ghana Federation and People’s Dialogue and SDI to enter. This is a big achievement! For the past 14-15 years they didn’t do that. They don’t even what to hear our name. But now they open their doors and anything they want to do, they call federation and People’s Dialogue and they are asking the communities advice on how they can come in and do development here. They need more advice from our support office and the federation. If we are able to sign the MOU with AMA it will be the biggest achievement. The mayor himself came out several times to do a press conference saying he has demolished Sodom and Gomorrah but Old Fadama is still staying and Old Fadama is going to stay forever. So that is the message he is saying  – we grabbed that message and are going to use that message in order to push him to sign the MOU so we can also be partners with them to see how we can get the security of tenure. When we get the security of tenure, we have achieved the biggest thing. We can then come together to figure out how we can develop this place with nice affordable houses for the people. Now that these people opened their doors, it’s an opportunity to us to also move in.

– Baba Fuseini Al-Hassan, Tungteeiya Savings Group, Old Fadama

Strategic Learning Around the Power of Data: Ghana Profiling Learning Exchange

By Anni Beukes, SDI Secretariat 

“We have been dreaming about this exercise for five years. We really appreciate the effort of this exercise. This has been a wonderful exchange.” – Haruna Abu, Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor

When does data transform into power? More importantly, when does data transform into the kind of power urban poor communities can use to leverage their authorities for development? SDI supports the collection of community-led data collection and supports federations and their communities in the collection and documentation of this data. These documents become an asset for negotiation with city-governments and their compiling is becomes an opportunity “to learn [and] to mobilize” communities towards what SDI, President Jockin Arputham, refers to as “self-development”[1]. Collecting data and sharing the experiences and challenges around this empowerment process is key to SDI’s network wide support structure.

The Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor (GHAFUP) and their support NGO, People’s Dialogue on Human Settlements (PD) played host to the third learning exchange around SDI’s global city-wide settlement profiling project during December 2013. The city of Accra is one of the strategic learning centres around this project along with Harare, Mumbai, Kampala and Cape Town. Alongside being a centre of economic power on the Gold Coast of Africa, Accra is also home to one of possibly the most famous slums on the African continent, Old Fadama – under almost constant threat of eviction and the Amui Dzor Housing Project, among other.  This housing project collaboration between the local federation and UN-Habitat’s Slum Upgrading Facility (SUF) is “a demonstration housing project which currently provides decent accommodation for 31 slum families at the heart of Tulaku community within the Ashaiman Municipality of the Greater Accra Region.”

The three days of the learning exchange saw fierce engagement around the demarcation of settlement boundaries – whether these do or should follow administrative boundaries or the organic boundaries of the local community, on the ground boundary and services mapping, as well as a hosting of the federation, focus group and its guests at the Shukura Chief’s Palace, in the settlement of Shukura where the profiling exercise took place. Prior to the focus group the local federation, in a process which can span weeks, mobilises the local community and their leaders (traditional, savings and women’s groups, market queens, youth leaders, etc.) and co-ordinates among all these schedules a date for the focus group. The focus group, based on the standardised SDI Informal Settlements Profile, led this time by PD Executive Director and SDI Board Member, Rabiu Farouk, may be considered the highlight of the profiling exercise. In an effort to extend learning around the efforts required and challenges of conducting the focus group and wider profiling process, the Ghanaian Federation had put Rabiu Farouk to task to lead the focus group. The director embraced the challenge, in the process also highlighting some of the key challenges a standardised process can present in context where the particular has long been the focus. “I learned a lot, you thought you were punishing me, but I learned a lot!” he remarked at the end of the exchange.

“I finally saw myself!” – Katana Goretti , National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda (NSDFU)

As the sun was setting on the third day of the learning exchange and fellow federation members from Sierra Leone, Uganda, India and host Ghana, SDI secretariat and Santa Fe Institute staffs were weary from the previous longs days of on-the-ground mapping, profiling and presentations, Katana Goretti, national leader of the Ugandan federation was in high spirits.

“This was what I have been waiting for. I finally saw myself.” Katana’s words not only humble, but also lend perspective to the wider reasons for SDI federations’ data collection activities.  Earlier that afternoon, the Santa Fe Institute, SDI partner in our global project to standardise and aggregate our slum/informal settlements profile data,  showcased the first wireframes of a web portal which would host, on a global map, the around 7000 profiles of city-level data collected from across the network in the course of this project since December 2012. With a steady, but definite shift in development focus in the last years from a country, to an increasingly city-level focus, the struggles of the poor for livelihoods, access to land, but also their efforts to engage their own development has also strikingly come back into focus.

The importance therefore, of seeing the urban poor, hearing their voices and highlighting the context of their everyday struggles and victories, are brought sharply back into focus again too. In the recently published People’s Voices Brief, released for UN Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, OWG 7, the importance of “creating healthy urban environments…[along with] efficient and affordable services for all, [as well as], the importance of social transformations that are taking place in rapidly growing cities…and the empowerment of urban populations” were highlighted. Drawing on the recent report of the MY World survey in which “people accord a high priority to ‘access to clean water and sanitation’ regardless of their education level, which is commonly used as a proxy for income”, the Brief further argued that despite the daunting prospects megacities are perceived to pose, “the higher population density gives governments the opportunity to more easily deliver essential infrastructure and services in urban areas at a lower cost per capita.” It would appear then, that in the very spaces where local governments once attributed their major development challenges, their new development opportunities reside.

In a time when the focus also turns towards “smart-cities”, SDI is poised at a peculiar, yet exciting intersection. On the one hand we still rely on carefully curated datasets, but we cannot resist the demands of a “big data” world if we are to cement our position as one of the largest depositories of data of the urban poor. SDI federations’ Know Your City Campaign is a global campaign for grassroots data and inclusive partnerships with local governments.  From collection, to capture, to analysis, we are simultaneously exploring technologies along the lines of those presented by Santa Fe Institute during the course of this project and Ghana exchange. The excitement around the smartphone-app technology to capture GPS-co-ordinate points was tangible. Mobile technologies like these, when tailored to the needs and capacities of local communities would enable faster, more accurate capture and return for reporting for communities. The technologies SDI is exploring should bring communities closer to their data and not alienate them. Drawing on the insights of “big data” gurus, Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier (2013), we agree that the “the real revolution is not in the machines that calculate data but in data itself and how we use it.” As SFI team member, Jose Lobo reflected on both Haruna and Katana’s excitement around the exchange, “it’s energizing to see the process and the people collect data and get excited about the power of data…seeing the process of profiling have helped our understanding. We would not be able to do what we’re doing with this project, without seeing what the community does.”

Turning Waste into Profit: Ghana Visits Cape Town’s Recycling Programme

By Chantal Hildebrand, SDI Secretariat 

As part of their initiatives to improve the sanitation situation in the slums of Accra, Ghana, a delegation of four members of the Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor (GHAFUP) – Haruna Abu, Janet Abu, Imoro Toyibu and Naa Ayeley – participated in a learning exchange to Cape Town, South Africa to learn more about the waste management initiative underway in the settlements of Cape Town. Painting a picture of the waste and sanitation situation in the slums of Accra, Ghana, Janet Adu, a member of GHAFUP, described the discarded plastic bags and other trash littering the narrow pathways of Ghana’s slum communities, adding to the already poor sanitation situation. To begin addressing this issue, GHAFUP and People’s Dialogue Ghana began brainstorming about waste management programmes that will clean up the slums while simultaneously generating income for the Federation.

The Blue Sky Solid Waste Management Company is the business side of the waste-management facilities. The initiative operates out of the offices of Sizakuyenza, a small community based NGO that originated from the FEDUP health network’s cleaning programme. Starting as a small initiative, with volunteer slum dwellers sorting waste for a small income, the initiative has grown into a completely self-sustaining programme with about 400 volunteer community trash collectors, or waste pickers, from various informal settlements across Cape Town who sort through waste to collect recyclables.

The sorted waste is then collected through the initiative’s mobile buy-back programme in which two pickup trucks manned Blue Sky drivers pick up the collected waste from various settlements around Cape Town, paying the pickers cash upon pickup for their recyclables. After another sorting at the Blue Sky Solid Waste Management facilities, the waste is sold to buyers and recycling companies.  Using the profits made from these business transactions, the Blue Sky Solid Waste Management programme pays the pickers for their trash collection, salaries for the workers that run the company while also revolving the remaining profits back into the programme to sustain it and maintain its facilities. 

Over the two-day exchange, the Ghana delegates focused their attention on the business side of the Blue Sky Solid Waste Management programme: observing the market opportunities in waste collection and recycling, meeting with local pickers in the Bengali community, learning waste sorting techniques and how to build relationships with recycling companies. The days were split into two sections: 1) interactions with the buyers and learning the market and 2) interacting with the pickers and how this activity has helped slum communities around Cape Town.

Day 1:

Day one of the visit fell on the day Blue Sky Solid Waste Management meets with buyers to sell the recyclable material that the pickers collected throughout the week, giving the Ghanaians an opportunity to learn the values of various recyclable goods. As explained by Mr. John Mckerry, team leader at Blue Sky, certain companies are looking for certain types of waste, which is why it is so important to look at the market opportunities in your city before beginning a recycling program. This way the federation can be well informed on what types of materials companies are looking for in order to generate the most income. 

Following a lively discussion inside, Mr. Mckerry and Mr. Gershwin Kohler, the project consultant for the Blue Sky Solid Waste Management programme took the group on a quick tour of the Blue Sky Solid Waste Management facilities. They described the structure of staff and participants in the programme and identified the various types of waste collected and how it is sorted and its value (per kilo).

After the tour, the Ghana delegates joined Mr. Mckerry, Mr. Kohler and two of the of the Sky Blue waste collectors. Together the group visited waste companies such as S.A.B.S., where the Blue Sky staff negotiated and sold the collected and sorted waste. Through these interactions, the delegates were able to witness the market opportunities for recyclable goods in South Africa and compare these prices to the Ghana values.

Mr. Gershwin Kohler discusses the value of glass recyclables. 

Day 2:

Waking bright and early on a Saturday morning, the delegation met with the Bengali community where community pickers had begun the work of collecting and sorting waste. As explained by Mr. Kohler the day before, “their job is to collect garbage and they focus on what they want to collect.” Some participate in the programme once in a while to generate some extra income for themselves and their families; for others this is a full time job, picking and sorting daily in order to make as much profit as possible. Furthermore, there are some people who choose to only collect one or two types of waste (e.g. plastic bottles and newspaper), while others collect and sort whatever types of waste they know Blue Sky might be interested in. When the sun has reached its highest point the pickers’ day of work is complete, though there are some dedicated individuals who will continue through the afternoon.

Upon collection by the mobile buy-back truck, the pickers’ collections are weighed separately to determine payment  – paid by the kilo for paper, crushed glass, cardboard, plastics, etc. or paid by each whole plastic or glass bottle collected. Pickers are informed of the different rates for each type of waste collected and the importance of sorting waste before collection. Each individual’s collection is recorded to maintain accurate data collection and minimize conflict between people. Pickers are then paid for their collection, no matter how little or big the amount collected.  

Mr. John McKerry describes the process of collecting, sorting and selling recyclables. 

Providing a job opportunity within the slums of Cape Town, the waste management programme motivates people to participate as pickers to sustain their livelihoods; however, this programme has also helped clean up the slums, creating a cleaner and healthier community environment. Simply put by Mr. Kohler, “[slum communities] become reverse supplier of raw materials.”

Throughout the exchange, the Ghana delegates brainstormed the aspects of the Blue Sky programme that would be applicable to their planned project in Ghana. This is not the first waste management programme for GHAFUP. Having started a waste project in Old Fadama, the largest slum in Accra, the Ghana federation has already begun to address the slum’s sanitation and waste issues. Thinking on a larger scale, GHAFUP began planning how to scale up the project in Old Fadama and create an income generating aspect of the programme in order to sustain the project and add to the general funds of the federation.

Using the lessons learned from the Blue Skye Solid Waste Management programme in Cape Town, the Ghana delegates took ideas from the process used in Cape Town to adapt to their situation in Accra. As stated by the team in their exchange report, “the system of waste management [in Cape Town] is different from Ghana because they buy the waste from the household/pickers.” 

The Cape Town programme’s mission is to mobilise slum communities around recycling and waste collection, demonstrating the benefits of clean communities and how participating in this programme can help generate income for individuals/families.

According to the delegation, GHAFUP is planning to manage and run the solid waste management programme as a service for slum communities in Accra, where federation members act as pickers, from the picking and waste collection to building relationships and selling to recycling companies in the Accra area so as to generate income and sustain the project.  The funds from this project can also help finance some of the federation’s other activities if possible.

Following Mr. Kohler’s advice to “start in your on house”, the Ghana delegates plan to begin the project amongst themselves. Collecting, sorting and recycling materials in their own households, GHAFUP will begin mobilising and educating other slum dwellers around recycling and waste management. While doing this, GHAFUP members will begin researching the recycling industry in Ghana; identifying the waste that has a market – keeping in mind that the market values will fluctuate – and beginning to build relationships with potential buyers. However, the main outcome highlighted by the Ghana team was that the exchange “encouraged [GHAFUP] to act as a community on waste management,” which is the main lesson the Ghana delegates plan to share with their fellow slum dwellers in Ghana.

“Learning From Those Who Have Walked the Path”: Sharing Learning from the 5 Cities Programme

Community members and government partner from Harare, Zimbabwe talk about their experiences with the 5 Cities Programme. 

By Chantal Hildebrand, SDI Secretariat 

Following the first two days of site visits and walkabouts in Mtshini Wam and Langrug, the final day of the 5 Cities Seminar consisted of country and municipality presentations and discussion in the City of Cape Town government building located in the heart of the city.  Unlike the first days’, which focused on sharing the Cape Town partnership, projects and overall experience, the final day’s schedule was dedicated to learning from the other 5 Cities around Africa.

After brief opening remarks from Cape Town Mayoral Committee Member for Utility Services Shehaam Sims thanking all the delegates for the participation in this conference, the delegation from Ghana was given the floor.  Through the 5 Cities Programme, the collaboration with the municipality of Ashaiman and the Ghana Homeless People’s Federation has made significant strides in terms of innovation around sanitation. Based on a common goal of providing toilets and waste management services to slums in Ashaiman, an area included in the Greater Accra region, the municipality and communities have come together address this community priority. As stated by the government official, Mr Anass Atchulo, this partnership has led to some significant changes in policy, with the creation of an informal settlement-upgrading department in the city of Accra is underway. Adding to Mr Atchulo’s words, Mrs Janet Abu, a community leader from Old Fadama settlement in Accra, mentioned the importance of community’s involvement, stating that without their initiative and work none of these projects could be realised.

Following Ghana’s presentation, Mr Costly Chanza from the Blantyre City Council, shared the challenges and successes experienced during the formation of a partnership between the Municipality of Blantyre and the Malawi Homeless People’s Federation. Proving that all slums are decidedly unique, the slums of Malawi are rather peri-urban, with low densities and characteristics reminiscent of a rural villages. As it was explained by Mr Partick Chikoti, a member of the supporting NGO in Malawi, “We cannot plan like the communities of Langrug or Mtshini Wam because the nature of our slums are completely different [with structures made out of home-made brick and cement]… so we find our own way of planning.” This is where the City comes in, sharing their technical support and advice to help the community implement projects such as sanitation units and drains. Similar to Ghana, the outcomes of this collaborative work has led to both the communities and city planners advocating for the creation of a human settlements planning section of the municipality to further meet the needs of the slums in Blantyre.

Continuing to share other experiences, the Zimbabwean delegation highlighted crucial lessons learned through the 5 Cities programme and the realities of creating partnerships. Through the partnership between the city council of Harare and slum dweller communities, the weight of responsibilities the city is faced with in terms of providing for its people has been lifted with the help of community-run initiatives. Mr James Chiyangwa from the city council of Harare shared that the communities “provide back-up systems of services that the city has failed to provide [to slum communities].” In turn, the city provides technical assistance, equipment, and advice to the communities in terms of planning. This collaboration has led to crucial changes in policy, including incremental buildin, which have been adopted as city policy, and the creation of a finance facility for the funding of slum upgrading to which both the governments and communities contribute. Drastically changing the mind-set of the government of Harare from the pervious belief that slums did not exist in Zimbabwe to beginning to recognize the existence of these settlements and finally to creating a working relationship between these two parties, this partnership allows these previously unseen informal settlements to take an active role in improving their living conditions and participating in local governance. As Mrs Sekai Catherine Chiremba, a federation member from Zimbabwe, summed it up, “we are planning with them, not them planning for us.”

The Uganda delegation finished the round of presentations adding their striking work in sanitation, water and waste management in multiple settlements in Kampala and across Uganda. With projects focusing on these central issues facing slum communities (along with the collaborative work between the community and the city), the KCC (Kampala City Council) has asked the National Slum Dwellers Federation in Uganda to submit a proposal of how the city can scale up current community-run sanitation and solid waste programmes. This achievement, along with the joint-work teams made up of the community members and city planners, has graduated the federation of Uganda to “a key ally [of the KCC] in terms of the processes geared towards improving the living conditions of slum communities,” (Mrs Sara Nandudu, federation member). This status has also been replicated in other municipalities where the federation and communities have begun partnerships with local governments.

Sara Nandudu of the National Slum Dweller Federation of Uganda. 

Although there are notable achievements that have been realised through these partnerships, it would be unrealistic to omit the challenges. All the delegations (including those from Cape Town and other South African cities) mentioned similar challenges, including:

1. Slow results – as mentioned by multiple delegates from Uganda, Malawi, Cape Town, Ghana and Zimbabwe the processes are slow and the work takes time which can lead to community and municipal frustration and tensions;
2. The struggle faced by many politicians and technocrats to learn how to do planning the way it is done by slum communities – as explained by many city representatives, planners do not learn how to work with or like the community, so the way communities plan does not follow the guidelines and procedures that the planners are taught. This can cause clashes between the two and can obstruct the progress of projects;
3. Federation creating strong relationships with some departments in municipality while other departments are reluctant to participate in the partnership;
4. Confusion of roles and responsibilities within municipal departments;
5. Disagreements between federation members and municipality of how to proceed with the work;
6. Strains due to lack of funds.

As Mrs Melanie Manuel summarised it − using a metaphor coined by Ms Rose Molokoane comparing these partnerships to marriages, “husbands and wives always fight…like we do in our partnerships… [Now we must think of] how do we enhance our partnership? How can we make this marriage work?”

It was agreed that the best way to answer these questions is through trust. Borrowing the phrase of Mr Chinyangwa of Zimbabwe, “without trust you cannot move forward.” Both municipalities and communities must learn to trust each other through these relationships. However, for this to be successful it is essential that these partnerships be inclusive, where slum dwellers are involved from the planning stages through implementation and finally into evaluation. Without community participation throughout the process the work is not sustainable. As Patrick Magebhula said, it is essential to have “community involvement, not just leadership…this is what is needed in order for projects to succeed.” 

Following the presentations of the visiting countries, the podium was opened for the representatives of municipalities outside of Cape Town, including the city of Johannesburg, Buffallo City and Nelson Mandela Bay Metro. 

These presentations included little mention of current or future community participation or partnerships. Programmes already in place in many of these cities demonstrated a separation between communities and their governments, treating the slum dwellers as solely beneficiaries rather than key partners in upgrading initiatives. When questioned about this fragmentation, some of the municipalities mentioned their perception that the informal communities are disorganised, making it hard to work with them and appealed to ISN and CORC to help these communities mobilise.

Lutwamma Muhammed of the Ugandan support NGO. 

In concluding the conference, Ms Rose Molokoane posed a final question to the municipalities: “What are the critical issues that we would like to do with communities?” This brought up the topic of sharing between municipalities. Mr Lutwama Muhammed, from the support NGO in Uganda, shared that the municipalities’ presentations talked “more about what they are doing in terms of projects rather than describing how they learn from one another.” The invitation to these South African cities was extended in order to encourage learning and spark future plans for exchange visits and learning workshops. Ms Molokoane extended this invitation further by sharing a vision of these five cities (Buffallo City, Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay Metro, Cape Town and Stellenbosch) becoming the examples of a national level 5 Cities programme for South Africa. 

The ending reflection brought up key points to address upon delegates’ return to their own cities and to discuss in future 5 Cities seminars. These subjects included:

• Discussions of how the pioneers who work with SDI can help share the core practices and support other cities who show interest in creating inclusive processes;
• Need to capacitate communities to create their own partnerships or, as Trevor Masiy eloquently stated, “communities need to learn to speak for themselves.”
• Begin looking at the structural issues of why we have slums and the root causes of their existence;
• Considerations of other forums for these discussions and exchanges (such as the South African City Network);
• How to ensure that agreements made in these forums and conferences will be realised on the ground;
• And finally, the importance of scaling up and bringing these discussions and initiatives to city-wide and nation-wide levels.

Ms Molokoane tied off the three-day 5 Cities Seminar with these final words, “Let’s not only look at building projects, but building ourselves, taking care of ourselves, and making our lives better.”

Partnering with the City of Cape Town in Mtshini Wam: Day 2 of the 5 Cities Seminar

Community members showcase model homes in Mtshini Wam. 

By Ariana K. MacPherson, SDI Secretariat 

The second day of the 5 Cities Seminar kicked off in Mtshini Wam, a settlement of roughly 200 households located in the greater Joe Slovo Park area of Milnerton, Cape Town. The day focused a lot of attention on the change that is possible through re-blocking, or blocking out, a community-led upgrading methodology that reconfigures a community’s layout to transform tiny passageways, dangerous and impassable, into wide walkways with courtyards where children can play and women can hang washing to dry. Shacks upgraded with fire-retardant material face each other, providing added safety for families who can now find shelter from the Cape’s sometimes harsh conditions. 

A wide walkway and upgraded shacks in re-blocked Mtshini Wam. 

Mtshini Wam was founded in 2006 when settlers occupied open spaces of a government-funded housing settlement in Joe Slovo Park. Though the Western Cape Anti-Land Invasion Unit responded with threats of demolitions, The South African National Civic Organization (SANCO) and Informal Settlement Unit (City of Cape Town) were able to prevent evictions. 

Mtshini Wam settlement expanded and continued to grow. Households in Mtshini Wam depended on water and services from the formal RDP houses, paying up to R50 (USD $6) a month for water. When Mtshini Wam asked the City to provide them with service delivery, they were told this could not be done because the settlement’s density was too high and there were no access roads. Greg Exford, Informal Settlements Manager for the City of Cape Town, said during his welcoming remarks on Wednesday that, “This area was, per capita, so dense that under normal conditions the City would never have been able to make it work.” 

In 2009, responding to a lack of services and the challenges they had faced in trying to work with City, community leadership from Mtshini Wam approached the Informal Settlement Network (ISN) for support. “Prior to re-blocking, the settlement was very dense,” said community leader Nokwezi Klaas, “There were no passageways and when there were fires it was virtually impossible to get into the settlement. All the toilets were on the outskirts and there were only three water taps for over 200 households in the settlement.”

Local community leader Nokwezi Klaas describes her work in Mtshini Wam.

2009 was the starting point of a partnership between the Mtshini Wam community, CORC and ISN and the City of Cape Town. To date, this partnership has allowed the community to carry out a settlement-wide enumeration and re-blocking process, install chemical toilets and water taps, and upgrade their shacks using durable, fire-resistant material. Both the City and the community agree that this would never have been possible without a strong, dialogic partnership.

Representatives from ISN, including Western Cape coordinator Mzwanele Zulu (pictured on far left) and the City of Cape Town, including Greg Exford, Informal Settlements Manager for the City of Cape Town, were present at the gathering in Mtshini Wam on Wednesday. 

“This project will go down in the history books of human settlements,” said Mr. Exford, “It shows what can be done when the community works together with partners in government… In order to make government work for informal settlements, we have to fuse the conventional with the unconventional, otherwise it’s not going to work.” 

Councillor Ernest Sonnenberg, the Mayoral Committee Member for Utilities Services, echoed this point, stating that, “Unless you physically take the community with you and ask them how we are going to achieve change together, you are going to get nowhere. In this way, you can find the synergy between what is demanded and what is feasible.” 

Luthando Klaas, another community leader and supervisor for the Mtshini Wam technical team, described some of the more technical aspects of the upgrading process in Mtshini Wam. There are seven teams, made up solely of community members, responsible for different aspects of upgrading. These include a technical team, gardening team, carpentry team, cleaning team, compacting team, demolition team and a building team.

Mr. Klaas describes the various aspects that influenced the design process for the layout planning of the settlement. “When they started the design process,” he says, “one of the important things was to see how to improve services and improve safety and security so that police and emergency vehicles can come into the community and the community can feel safe in their space.”

In addition to this, he describes the sometimes-challenging process of negotiating with the community about the size of structures. During the enumeration, it became apparent that the size of structures varied considerably from one household to the next. In order to make adequate space for each household, community members agreed that no structure would exceed 20 sq. meters in size, allowing those households occupying the smallest shacks (some under 5 sq. meters in size) to live in more comfortable, livable spaces. This willingness to sacrifice individual gain for the benefit of the whole community is something that is quite understandably nearly impossible without a community-led process. 

Mr. Klaas spoke confidently about the community’s plans for the future, stating “we don’t want to be in shacks forever.” Members of the technical team showcased housing models that illustrate the community’s hopes for permanent, brick houses and their determination to continue upgrading their settlement. Klaas emphasized that, “it does not end with iKhayalami [upgraded] shacks. The community was able to move from wooden shacks to safer structures, and now they want to continue to move up to more livable structures for themselves – brick houses.” 

Following these presentations by the community, the group of roughly 100 participants had a chance to walk around the settlement and witness the change made through the processes of re-blocking and upgrading. Wide walkways give way to courtyards where clothes hang to dry and kids play under their mothers’ feet. Each cluster contains between 10-15 shacks and is built around a courtyard, sharing a communal vegetable garden that grows everything from spinach to dill to tomatoes. Shacks without adequate exposure to sunlight are lit with low-cost solar lights made from a plastic soda bottle filled with water and bleach. A community member welcomes a few others and me into his home so that we can see just how much light one of these bottle-lights can provide.

A community member from Mtshini Wam describes his solar-powered light to another community member from Zimbabwe. 

Community leader Nokwezi Klaas shows a community garden to a community member from Ghana. 

All in all, the most striking thing about Mtshini Wam is the spirit of the community. They have transformed their impassable settlement into a neighborhood. There is a sense of pride and enthusiasm that is contagious, a reality which is evident in the inspired words of the city officials present at the gathering. 

After a morning in Mtshini Wam, the afternoon was spent in the chambers of the City of Cape Town government building. Participants were given the opportunity to discuss and reflect on their experiences in Langrug and Mtshini Wam. The afternoon session began with introductions by Vuyani Mnyango, a local ISN leader, and Mkhabela Estavao, a FEDUP leader from KwaZulu-Natal province. Mr. Mnyango began by describing the formation of the ISN in Cape Town and the steps that were taken to build a partnership with the City. 

“In 2011,” Mnyango says, “it was decided that the partnership needed to take action on the ground.” Today, CORC, ISN and the City of Cape Town are engaged in re-blocking processes in the settlements of Mtshini Wam, BBT Section of Khayelitsha, Vygieskraal and Masilunge.

Mkhabela Estavao describes South Africa’s Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP), a national network of women’s centered savings groups that, in partnership with CORC and ISN, mobilizes poor people to improve their lives. FEDUP was started in 1991 and is one of the oldest federations in the SDI network, having given birth to a number of other affiliates across the African continent. Membership currently sits at roughly 20,000, but Ms. Estavao emphasizes that this number does not even begin to capture the number of families that have been impacted by the work of FEDUP. For example, she states that over 80,000 families have received housing through the Federation’s processes. When FEDUP realized that they could have even greater impact by involving men more actively, ISN was formed.

Leon Poleman, Project Manager with the City of Cape Town, was next to speak. He spoke of his experience working with CORC and ISN on upgrading and re-blocking, of his inexperience planning for informal settlements and his initial skepticism at the somewhat unconventional methods already being implemented by ISN in Mtshini Wam when he arrived on the scene. 

“I come from a formal engineering background,” he said, “When you go to university and technikon, no one speaks of the design of informal settlements, or at least not in my time. So it was quite simple: In my day there were no informal settlements, and this re-blocking thing, we don’t know anything about it, so off you go! And back into our meetings we went to keep discussing how we go about this.”

But what Mr. Poleman quickly realized was that these unconventional methods were the perfect compliment to his formal engineering background, and that through working hand in hand with the community, they were able to find solutions that would have been impossible had the community not been involved. He concluded with a reminder to the other professionals in the room: “We have to understand that this is informal by its nature,” and that therefore, the solutions we find must speak to this informality.

Shortly after this, the discussion was opened up to comments and questions from the floor. Councillor James Slabbert, Portfolio Head for Human Settlements for the City of Cape Town, expressed a keen interest in learning more about the work being done in Langrug, and welcomed CORC and ISN’s input in utilizing their experience with re-blocking to provide input to the drafting of policy around informal settlement upgrading for the City. Mzwanele Zulu, ISN Coordinator for the Western Cape, was pleased to hear the City’s willingness to make re-blocking part of informal settlement upgrading policy, and urged the City to stick to its word on this point. Following the meeting, arrangements were made by CORC staff and ISN leaders to meet with Mr. Slabbert at a later date to continue these discussions.

Another issue that came to the fore during this session was the question of secure tenure for residents of settlements like Langrug and Mtshini Wam, questioning whether upgrading and re-blocking do enough towards this aim. Patrick Magebhula, national coordinator for ISN, confirmed that  “the reasons for upgrading is to allow people to live where they are now, so re-blocking is just another way to give people land tenure where they live.”

Greg Exford echoed this point, stating, “If we do upgrading [in our informal settlements], people are given security of tenure. If we do enumerations, as soon as we have that person on [the City’s] database, they have security of tenure.”

The meeting closed on a positive note, with a colleague from Zambia commending CORC, ISN and the City of Cape Town. “What you have achieved in Mtshini Wam is a huge achievement. This is a wonderful first step. Now how do we get other communities on board so that we can spread upgrading to more communities?”

This is the key question for the 5 Cities Programme. Earlier in the day, Mzwanele Zulu had expressed his eagerness to scale up the activities in Mtshini Wam to settlements across Cape Town. In Cape Town, thanks to a growing partnership with the City, this becoming more of a reality. Despite challenges and setbacks, experiences like that of Mtshini Wam is evidence of the promise these partnerships can bring when the community takes the lead.