Urban Planning for City Leaders - Cities Alliance

How to address informalityMobile phone applications can provide accessto banking for the informal sector. In someAfrican countries, more people have access toa mobile phone than to clean water, a bankaccount or even electricity. 102 Applications suchas M-Pesa, operated by Safaricom in Kenya,have opened up formal financial services tolower income groups and its 17 million userscan make money transfers and pay bills throughtheir mobile phones. This scheme has resultedin a fourfold growth of bank accounts since2007; 103 it saves households the monetary andopportunity costs of travelling to the nearestbank branch or paying through intermediaries,and improves revenue collection. Under theM-Pesa water payment system in Kiamumbi,just outside Nairobi, 59 per cent of householdswere reported to have used M-Pesa after fourmonths of the service being in place. 104Link formal and informalservice deliveryPartnerships between municipalities and theinformal sector can improve water supply andwaste collection, and generate employment.Access to potable water can be enhanced bypolicies that organize informal providers toensure distribution to poor settlements. Themunicipality of Cotonou in Benin joined forceswith informal vendors to operate 24 newly-builtpublic drinking fountains to deliver affordablewater, resulting in improved service quality.Solid waste management can benefit frommerging the informal sector workforce withpublic-financed facilities. Partnerships wherethe municipality provides infrastructure andequipment and waste pickers’ provide labourare common in Colombian cities. 105An Mpesa agent’s shop in Kenya© Mukami MwongoInformal water supply in a settlement in Myanmar© UN-Habitat/Veronica Wijaya93