ACCRA, July (ANA) - The need to make cities and other human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable are among the key issues being debated at the 2018 Sustainable African Cities conference taking place in Accra, Ghana, this week.
Professor George Gyan-Baffour, the Ghana Minister for Planning, told the opening day of the conference on Wednesday that the theme of "debating current challenges and exploring future pathways" was timely.
"We have all agreed, and rightly so, to make our cities and indeed our human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable," he said.
"How we do it is up to us and this conference is the right forum to generate the relevant ideas and strategies for policy-makers to ensure that we march towards 2030 with smart and innovative ideas in the hope that no city and no urban or peri-urban area will be left behind in this forward march."
Around 60 experts from all over Africa, and elsewhere around the world, are in Accra to look at issues such as Just and Inclusive Cities, Integrated Urban Development Approaches, Rental Housing in Urban Africa, Modelling Future Cities, Urban Water and Wastewater Management, and Informal Markets and the City.
Baffour said the Ghanaian government has fully embraced the Sustainable Development Goals and was poised to build and maintain sustainable cities and communities in line with SDG goal number 11 which centres on sustainable cities.
"This conference is in line with our desire to domesticate the global goals and align them with our national development agenda to provide a strong foundation for sustainable development in Ghana," he said.
"Though Goal 11 of the SDGs explicitly emphasises sustainable cities and communities, it directly or indirectly is linked with other social and economic challenges such as poverty, inequality, energy access, access to health care and education, access to water, sanitation, and other issues relating to most of the SDGs."
Baffour said that the concept of sustainable cities was not new to Ghana. "However, progress in building sustainable cities has been slow.
"It has been estimated that in major towns and cities in Ghana, 22% of solid waste and 97% of liquid waste are not properly disposed of while 37% of inhabitants of major cities do not have access to piped water."
He added that according to the UN-Habitat, the housing deficit was estimated at around 1,7 million as of 2015.
"It is in recognition of these challenges that the President's Co-ordinated Programme of Economic and Social Development Policies focuses on four major areas aimed at promoting the sustainable, spatially integrated, balanced and orderly development of human settlements," he said. "And providing adequate, safe, secure, quality and affordable social housing and private housing solutions."
The conference is being jointly hosted by the Ghana Academy of Sciences and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, in conjunction with the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The conference is also supported by the Network of African Science Academies (Nasac) and the Academy of Science of South Africa (Assaf).
- African News Agency (ANA)
