An emotional expression by Emelia Arthur, Deputy Regional Minister of the Western Region of Ghana, describing the typical picture of sharp contrasts between ...
An emotional expression by Emelia Arthur, Deputy Regional Minister of the Western Region of Ghana, describing the typical picture of sharp contrasts between elite areas and slums in African cities. In her key note on fair urban development she argues that it needs an urgent response to this pervasive urban misery. It involves a historical understanding of the technological, economic and political drivers of urbanisation; the allocations of spatial, infrastructure and service resources that have characterised it; and the social, cultural and political contests it has fuelled. Proponents must take a class position in favour of the urban marginalised. In Ghana as in most of Africa this in practice means recovering space from foreign investors that historically dominated urbanisation. This in turn requires mobilisation of the marginalised towards a rebalancing of political power and unleashing of latent communal creativity.
As a means of promoting this change she suggests – among other measures – population participation via simple planning and cheap communication tools. As a result, an effective distribution of the population in a city as well as a fairer distribution of urban resources for all can be achieved. But the most important precondition is a strong political leadership to ensure and foster this change.