text: COVID-19 is very much an urban disease. What does this mean for the world’s fastest urbanizing region, Africa?
  The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing the interdependence and vulnerability of our world. As we know, the dissemination of the virus had two major causes: international air transport and proximity of human interactions (including in public transport). COVID-19 is therefore very much an urban disease. According to UN-Habitat [i], around 95% of the world’s population diagnosed with the virus lives in urban areas, particularly in large agglomerations. The head of UN-Habitat, Maimunah Mohd Sharif, notes that the pandemic “has brought into sharp relief some of the fundamental inequalities at the heart of our towns and cities.”
  What does this mean for the world’s fastest urbanizing region, Africa? The continent today is home to 1.35 billion people, 43% of whom live in urban agglomerations. The UN projects that this number will double in the next 16 years, with Africa’s urban population reaching 1 billion by 2036 [ii]. At the moment, more than half of these urban dwellers (around 300 million) live in slums characterized by overcrowding, lack of basic services, and precarious housing structures.
  African governments and citizens are today facing head-on the risks posed by the pandemic in African cities (slums as potential transmission hotbeds) as well as the consequences (reduction of employment opportunities and food shortages in poor settlements). This article proposes alternative approaches for providing housing and public transit, revitalizing the economy, and feeding Africa’s urban poor during and after COVID-19.
  Urban density is, in general, advisable. Adequate density and compactness are a commitment of UN member states (adopted at the Habitat III Conference in October 2016) as higher density minimizes costs of urban infrastructure and prevents urban sprawl. Despite slums’ overcrowded conditions, most have relatively low density compared to high-rise buildings that could provide density without crowding. But because urban densification increases housing prices and health risks, an acceptable trade-off has to be found – particularly at a time of increasing transmissible diseases.
  Physical distancing is particularly challenging in slums where people live and work close to each other and where social solidarity requires frequent interactions. Complete lockdown measures in urban areas are not easily enforceable. But many African towns and cities are implementing curfews as well as measures for wearing face masks and more frequent hand washing. In spite of multiple constraints and thanks to vigorous awareness campaigns, in most cities inhabitants are doing their best to respect these safety precautions.
  What can urban planners in Sub-Saharan Africa learn from the COVID-19 crisis? The answer is certainly not to simply get rid of slums (as recently done in Nairobi’s Kariobangi area, where 5,000 people were forcefully evicted earlier this month [iii]). Reducing overcrowding would instead mean promoting more adequate housing solutions, more efficient services, broader streets and larger public spaces. This would require proactive urban policies and well-targeted public subsidies supporting the kind of projects initiated by several African municipalities in the 1980s, that focused on “sites and services” and slum upgrading. It is time to revisit these approaches.
  African governments should also encourage the development of more balanced networks of cities, and of “mega-regions” combining cities and towns of all sizes and agricultural areas. Today, although only 14% of Africa’s urban dwellers live in in cities of more than 5 million inhabitants (compared to 54% living in agglomerations of less than 500,000 inhabitants) [iv], most private investment remains concentrated in the largest agglomerations. More public investment (including in health facilities) and fiscal incentives to bring in the private sector are also required in secondary cities, which have their own share of slums.
  The pandemic has revealed how much cities depend on essential workers and how much these workers depend on public transport (essentially buses and mini-buses in Africa) to reach their jobs. Use of public transport unfortunately presents high transmission risks for urban workers.
  Increasing mobility (local, national, and international) has been a feature of globalization for three decades. Is it possible to go back to a more local form of economic development – and if so, how? The on-going digital revolution could enable a new form of “soft mobility.” Governments and companies could reduce the distances between workplaces and residences, encourage teleworking whenever possible, and strongly promote commuting by biking and walking. Substantial changes in land use and zoning regulations would allow a spread of working units into residential areas, shorten commuting times, and reduce the need for public transport.
  As several Western cities (such as Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London, and Seattle) are already doing, African cities can create or enlarge walkways for pedestrians and designated lanes for two-wheelers (bikes, electric bikes, scooters, etc.), separated from motor traffic. Thousands of Tunisian citizens demonstrated recently (with their bikes) to obtain such facilities. The current crisis offers a golden opportunity to promote these autonomous, healthy, and non-polluting means of transportation. Hopefully such measures will remain in place and be generalized in the post-COVID-19 era.
  Today’s international division of labor has included relocation of the most productive industries to Asia and the concentration of the digital economy in a few high-tech hubs, essentially in the USA and China. But the pandemic is pushing experts to consider economic reforms that can help “re-localize” industries, reduce territorial and social disparities, and move towards a more local and equitable form of “glocalization.” In Africa two additional priorities have emerged for economic recovery and revitalization: making the case for debt relief (see the article in this series from Prof. Danny Leipziger) and supporting the informal economy, discussed below.
  The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates 71.9% of non-agricultural employment in Africa is in the informal sector (78.6% for women, 67.7 % for men) [v]. This sector provides crucial livelihoods to the most vulnerable and even for the lower middle-class. But people working in the informal economy lack social protection and support mechanisms if they lose their livelihood. They have no safety nets nor alternative incomes. They often lack disposable cash and cannot stockpile food. At the moment many of them need public assistance, in cash or in-kind, to survive. According to a sample survey of five slums in Nairobi conducted on 22 April, 81% of residents had already suffered complete or partial loss of their jobs and income due to COVID-19 [vi]. And even in slums, rent still comes due at the end of the month.