Kisumu promises mix of serious talk and downtime

Africities Summit

From left Kisumu Governor Anyang' Nyong'o with his Kisii counterpart James Ongwae on February 19 , 2021 at Delta Corner, Westlands ahead of the Africities Summit 2021  


Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group

Four weeks to the Africities Summit, the host city of Kisumu is bristling with excitement and anticipation, with good reason.

Approximately 10,000 visitors are expected to converge on the lakeside city, drawn there by a continental summit that happens once every three years. About 6,000 of them will be foreign delegates keen to join in a discourse about African cities and how they are evolving into a truly unpredictable future. The other 4,000 will be exhibitors at a gigantic exhibition centre and service providers to ensure that the guests do not lack for anything.

Many have been skeptical whether Kisumu could handle such a large influx of people even if it is the third largest city in the country. Well, the city is prepared in all aspects. It has been for a while. Significant investments have been made in infrastructure and work is still going on to complete roads around and near the Mamboleo ASK showground, where the event will be held. The major streets are spruced up, as they have been for many months, thanks to work done by the County Government of Kisumu.

Huge investments

The huge investments made to improve the port infrastructure – expanding the airport, creating a link road between the airport and Mamboleo, etc – stand in proud testimony of a city confident of its future. It sits at a vantage point as the node head to East Africa’s largest blue economy opportunity. Above and below the water beside which it nestles are transport, fish farming, sports and tourism opportunities waiting to be exploited given the right incentives and investment enablers.

The Africities Summit is a confirmation of this. Governor Anyang Nyong’o successfully bid to host this summit for many reasons, including the fact that he wanted to showcase its opportunities to the business world and also test its capacity to handle the pressure that comes with playing in the big league.

It is these pressures that will be discussed in the many forums that will be held in the plenary and breakout sessions scheduled over the next five days. At the heart of the conversations will be reflections about how the intermediary cities are evolving as they prepare – deliberately or unwittingly – to house the majority of African populations a decade from now.

Decent shelter

Will they be ready to provide decent shelter to the millions that will be living there, given the growing mismatch between the amounts of resources being put into housing and the number of houses needed annually? In Kenya’s case for example, the desire to provide 100,000 houses a year has remained unattainable, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

This pressure will be felt more in what is now called intermediary cities – towns that are not capital cities – which currently number about 1,500 in Africa and will house the majority of urban inhabitants in the coming years. More people put pressure on availability of water – an increasingly scarce resource across the country; availability of food in a sustainable manner given the uncertainties and challenges in the food supply systems on the continent, on availability of opportunities to self-employ or be employed, etc.

Already, poverty levels in most urban areas are pathetic, leading to significant insecurity. Large populations of urban dwellers are increasingly being forced to live in marginal or slum areas that deny dwellers basic living facilities. The pressure to plan urban areas and allow for deliberate growth is now intense in many of these cities, pointing to the anomalous resource-allocation situation from the national government to local authorities.

There will be a session to discuss the merits of decentralisation of political power and redistribution of resources to local governments. Experiments like Kenya’s devolution, which created 47 counties, will be discussed and learnings derived. Consensus so far is that there really is no alternative to encouraging regional, state and county governments.

Undoubtedly, there will be calls for increased resources to be allocated to these units. We expect that there will be equally emphatic calls for probity and sound management of those resources. Regrettably, African leaders at all levels of government have not been exemplars of uprightness and integrity. But that does not mean that such bad governance manners should be tolerated.

Kisumu will be providing an opportunity for the conversation to continue. But delegates will miss out on a vital dimension of this very vibrant city if all they do is huddle in conversations at the Mamboleo venue and not venture out to embrace its humanity. Its culture. Its food. Its hubris.

The writer, a former Editor-in-Chief of Nation Media Group, is now consulting. [email protected];             @TMshindi)