Sharing experience on wars and Health pandemic disruption on National Urban Policy formulation process in selected countries: Haiti, Mali, DRC, Cameroon and Guinea

Rapid population growth presents all kinds of challenges to African. It is estimated that half of the African population will live in cities by 2050. This is one of the reasons why governments are more and more interested in Urban National Policy (NUP), to better manage, coordinate and plan the development in the country. UN-Habitat has support over 18 African countries in developing and implementing NUP, but each context is different. For instance, countries such as Mali and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been facing armed conflicts which exacerbate the urban-rural migration and increased the gaps between the urban and rural areas. For instance, DRC has more than 39 million people living in cities. In 2030, the country will have at least eight cities with 1 to 5 million inhabitants and one city, the capital city Kinshasa, with more than 10 million. In Mali, the urbanization rate in 2019 was 40% and in 2030, the estimation is that Bamako, the Capital city will concentrate over 28% of the total urban population of the country. In Mali and DRC, land tenure security, management of natural resources and protracted conflicts had led to the influx of refugees from the conflicts-prone zones to cities leading to challenge managing urban social services and infrastructure while compromising the trajectory of implementing urban policies. Even though Mali has formulated a NUP in 2014, and DRC has an urbanism decree since 1957, a subnational policy(SNP) emerged as a tool to address local challenges . The sub-national urban policy provides a framework to articulate horizontal and vertical coordination and integrate the various aspects of land tenure, climate change, health crisis, migration, natural resources and conflict management all in the urban-rural continuum at local level. Andalusian Agency for International Cooperation (AACID) has financially supported selected sub-national authorities to develop and implement their urban policies. Some tangible projects in respond to COVID-19 were implemented in support to sub-national authorities. The health crisis, compounded by the armed and natural resources conflicts had disrupted NUP process and implementation. More specifically, to mitigate the effect of the Pandemic on the countries and to build the country resilience, a Covid-19 component has been added to the sub-national-urban policy in Mali and DRC. It is therefore important that ongoing NUP processes be reactive and proactive enough to address ongoing, emerging challenges such as health crisis, natural hazards and armed conflicts, and climate change: Future urban policies shall be designed and implemented for agility and resilience. This side event will share experiences and practices on designing and implementing sub-national urban policies that respond to the dynamic of multiple crises. Lessons learnt can therefore be used for ongoing NUP elaboration projects. Haiti will learn. The Urban rural linkages will also be discussed