Service - Leadership in Government - Issue 75

S
cities
Post-Covid
recovery for
African cities
It is known that the de facto urban development
model in most African cities is deeply
unsustainable and fundamentally unjust.
Current policy and governance models are
unable to address large-scale precarity
associated with informal employment
and slum living conditions.
By Professor Carlos Lopes and Professor
Edgar Pieterse, University of Cape Town
The Covid pandemic has exposed how these preexisting
conditions make the urban anchor points of
African economies extremely vulnerable to the impacts
of enforced lockdowns, social-distancing measures and
large-scale emergency responses.
Since most urban dwellers rely on modest daily
incomes in the nooks and crannies of the informal
economy, not being able to trade, move about, socially
interact and exchange is effectively a sentence to
destitution. Years of steady progress on various socioeconomic
indicators can be reversed in a blink of an eye.
Policy discussions on post-Covid-19 recovery offer
an opportunity to review this course and, critically,
transition toward sustainability. It is an opportune
moment for city leaders, civic movements, enlightened
firms, think tanks and allies in national governments
to advance a green urban agenda that can address
spatial inequality and social cohesion. Such a movement
should be part of a structural transformation policy
aiming for green industrialisation, based on renewable
energy production and investment in sustainable
infrastructure. What does this mean practically?
Widespread energy access through renewables
The most severe binding constraint on African economic
development is the lack of access to electricity. More than
60% of African households do not have access to reliable
and affordable electricity. Many African governments
remain wedded to fossil fuels through exports of crude,
which represent 40% of the total continental exports,
and a byzantine tax system that subsidises oil in the
pump. There is an unprecedented opportunity to switch
to renewable energy sources and construct value chains
that are entirely rooted in African soil and oceans.
With the leadership of the African Development
Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission
on Africa (UNECA), development finance institutions
are gearing up, but we need stronger demand from
African governments and cities, supported by coalitions
capable of directing the enormous demographic and
urban pressure building up towards a low-carbon
economy. Covid-19 offers a unique opportunity to
scrap subsidies for fossil fuel consumption and
drives home the need to urgently replace commodity
dependence in this field.
A post-Covid-19 recovery agenda will give priority to health and equity concerns that
call for the establishment of truly integrated, affordable, safe and predictable options.
___ __
Large-scale investment
in ICT infrastructure,
with widespread
accessibility, is
a vital enabling
system for inclusive
transitions in other
infrastructure sectors.
16 | Service magazine