•There are efforts to curate the growth of new urban centres.
•The leadership of Nakuru County has also done well and enabled the town to acquire city status.
Image: ANGWENYI GICHANA
The journey to urban growth in Kenya is a mixed bag.
On the one hand, we are still stuck on the traditional approach to development that favours centralised planning while also embracing devolution, which under the County Government Act requires decentralised urban planning.
There are efforts to curate the growth of new urban centres, but the expansion of old towns faces challenges such as property grabbing and lack of investment in the infrastructure sector.
Many of our urban centres remain construction sites with unfinished infrastructural projects, misplaced apartments, and office blocks.
There are in a perpetual state of constructions and demolitions, defying many basic human rights provisions in the constitution and international conventions that the country is a signatory to.
Few things stand out this year for the country; development of the country progress report on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including on SDG 11- sustainable cities and communities which seeks to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable and the need to address challenges that hamper the realization of UN’s 2063 Agenda.
The second will be the fact that the country and more specifically, Kisumu city, will be hosting the 9th Africities Summit in April.
Africities is the United Cities, and Local Governments of Africa's (UCLG- Africa) flagship pan-African event held every three years in one of the five regions of Africa. It focuses on the need for Local Africa to learn, promote and present a new approach to sustainable development.
The theme shall be, “The role of Africa’s intermediary cities in the implementation of the UN’s Agenda 2030 and the African Union’s Agenda 2063″.
It could not be more benefitting than to have Kisumu city host the Pan-Africa summit.
The leadership worked towards making the city a candidate by ensuring the town is thoroughly cleaned, organized and some work going on to amplify it after it won the rights to host the summit.
Hopefully, the city will maintain the efforts and be the focal point for the Lake basic region, encourage others to follow suit in terms of urban growth, and include sustained interventions to attract not only investors but tourists to the region.
There is huge potential for conference tourism in Kisumu and neighbouring counties, and actually, the Western Tourist Circuit needs to be exploited.
The leadership of Nakuru County has also done well and enabled the town to acquire city status. I am sure one of the requirements is focused interventions and targets on improving urban planning, improved services to the people and respect to basic human rights.
Kenya has four cities- Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, and Nakuru. The country also hosts the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (N-Habitat-) that works to improve lives in cities, towns, and communities with huge technical expertise.
The media should be at the forefront highlighting the events at Summit, show best practices that other towns can borrow from and more importantly, market it as an investment destination for investors and tourists.
The only way to ensure that urbanisation becomes sustainable is by encouraging a more plan-led approach to development.
We need to plan for and build homes for the increasing numbers of people, ensure that cities do not descend to chaos, and adopt innovative ways and approaches in our urban planning because well-managed cities can help drive economic growth and innovation.
A thorough follow up of the county Development Integrated Plans and provisions of urban centres and municipal towns policies must be followed – and media, through its watchdog role, should ensure this is achieved.
Kisumu has a huge potential, and the least the media can do is to show these opportunities during the summit.
The national and county governments are expected to proactively share information on the plans around the summit, make elaborate communication plans and allow journalists access strategic information that will enable them to work on in-depth and informative stories.
It is an interesting time. Let us make the summit a big success.
The summit presents a huge opportunity for the country on the global map of international diplomacy, marketing, branding and work on the recovery interventions being done amid the Covid-19 pandemic.