DFID’s #LiveCityHack at Habitat III, Quito

Jinja Mayor Majid Batambuze challenged experts at Habitat III to come up with innovative ways for his city to implement the UN’s New Urban Agenda.

Hosted by Rubbina Karruna, Cities Adviser at DFID, the session was designed and facilitated by ICED urban team to explore the proposition that African secondary cities can act as linchpins of regional development, supporting equitable and inclusive growth and job creation.

Located along the Northern Corridor linking a number of East African Countries, Jinja has enormous potential to become one of Uganda’s most important economic centres. The event investigated the range of economic development perspectives necessary for Jinja to catalyse inclusive economic growth such as the informal economy, community groups, private and public investment, economic planning and connectivity.

Inspired by Mayor Batambuze, lively debate ensured from the floor. Ideas included:

• Agro-processing: Maximizing the use of neighbouring productive land and raw agricultural production surrounding Jinja to develop its agro-processing industry can help create economic growth locally and also stimulate job creation for informal workers.
• Sustainable tourism: Emphasis on managing environmental impacts is critical when considering opportunities for developing the tourism sector in Jinja, particularly around how natural resources could be managed to ensure sustainability while developing these tourism assets.
• Industrial development: There was support for development of better managed industrial parks and creation of a ‘one-stop shop’ to provide business support and adequate infrastructure for nascent businesses and SME development.
• Developing the ports and Lake Victoria regional logistical infrastructure: Due to the proximity to Lake Victoria and the River Nile, Ugandan goods could be exported from Jinja via water-based transport infrastructure at lower costs, to supplement the current heavy dependence on road transport. This can help enhance regional connectivity and further encourage trade between Uganda and its East African neighbours.
• Mobilising communities and the informal sector: Engaging with and integrating local communities and the informal sector in local economic development planning is critical, especially as most of the current economic activity in Jinja is within the informal economy.
• Land and housing: Land use policy can help the creation of a low-income housing market in Jinja to compete with the draw of Kampala. More integrated land use planning across the greater Jinja metropolitan area can help with long term infrastructure planning on developing key transport corridors needed in the municipality.

The inspirational mayor and interactive session format resulted in a number of enriching ideas for Jinja. The ICED facility will continue to support DFID’s role in taking forward the New Urban Agenda, and translating ideas such as these from the ‘Live City Hack’ into innovative, next generation urban programming.

If you would like ICED support to run an event like this, or to know more about how we can help you, please get in touch with us on iced.programming@uk.pwc.com