By 2050, close to two-thirds of humanity will live in cities, according to the United Nations; more than half already does. That growth is concentrated in countries short of the time and the means to plan for it. Macky Sall wants urbanisation there to become an engine of development, and he has made it one of the commitments of his candidacy for the office of UN Secretary-General.
Growth that outruns services. Cities grow faster than their water networks and their schools. On the outskirts of Lagos or Kinshasa, a family buys a plot before any street reaches it, then waits years for a connection. About one billion people today live in precarious neighbourhoods with neither title deeds nor sanitation, and every extension built ahead of the infrastructure adds new families to them.
Cities and the climate. Through their transport and their buildings, cities produce the largest share of global emissions. They are also where those emissions fall fastest, when a public transport network replaces thousands of individual journeys and a well-designed building consumes half as much.
Planning before residents arrive. Reserving land and laying out transport and housing before residents arrive costs far less than catching up afterwards. The countries that planned their cities turned them into engines of growth, and those that let them grow alone pay the cost of catching up every year.
Supporting the Nairobi programme. The Secretary-General can support the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, based in Nairobi, and keep the city on the agenda of development conferences. Urban plans remain the business of states and municipalities. The Secretariat's voice carries weight on two decisions a mayor often takes too late: the layout of networks and the reserve of land.
A head of state's experience for cities. On urbanisation, as on his other commitments, President Macky Sall draws on twelve years as head of state and on the chairmanship of the African Union in 2022. The same experience explains the form of the vision statement filed with the United Nations, where the proposals (development conceived together with peace and security, a renewed multilateralism, a better-governed Organization) are written as obligations.
Africa at its heart, the world in its sights.
The United Nations' projections on world urbanisation and Sustainable Development Goal 11 are public. Read all public positions at www.mackysall.net