Eng. David Luyimbazi, the Deputy Executive Director of KCCA, says this partnership is to focus on solving major challenges facing the city including building urban resilience in slums/informal settlements and integrating the informal economy.
Kampala Capital City Authority-KCCA has partnered with
United Nations Development Programme-UNDP to support in solving urban
challenges in the city. The public is invited to participating in suggesting solutions to the city's myriad problems.
Addressing journalists at the KCCA headquarters on Tuesday, Eng. David
Luyimbazi, the Deputy Executive Director of KCCA, said this partnership is to
focus on solving major challenges facing the city including building urban
resilience in slums and informal settlements and integrating the informal
economy.
He explained that the rural-urban migration that is
happening at a high rate and limited
investment to upgrade the critical infrastructure in the city has led
to people opting for slums and informal settlements.
According to assessments by KCCA, Luyimbazi stated the rather obvious fact that, “People in
these areas have limited access to health care, good education and all manner
of opportunity”.
Besides transforming informal settlements, he added this is to also solve
the challenge of digitalizing the informal economy.
“Not being able to access financial
institutions forces many of the informal workers and businesses to rely on
exclusively highly risky informal short term lenders which exposes them to high
interest rates, which is a major problem that keeps people permanently in
poverty,” Luyimbaazi said.
He added that the challenge will also look at how to protect the
vulnerable by providing them opportunities to get out of poverty.
// “Cue in: We believe that…
Cue out: … face in Kampala.”//
Innocent Fred Ejolu, a representative of UNDP and the Head
of Partnerships and Innovation, said about 80% of the economy is in the informal
sector with a big problem of youth unemployment, housing deficit, traffic
congestion, vulnerability to disasters among others and this challenge is aimed at
tackling these issues by engaging the stakeholders who are most affected by encountering them.
// “Cue in: Sometimes the…
Cue out: …in the city.”//
He said their target is the business sector, civil society, and farmers among others so as to discover more challenges and implement innovative
solutions.
Luyimbazi invited all residents and citizens of Kampala to
drop their proposals and ideas that have a high impact and low cost
interventions that easily can be
implemented to boost the informal sectors in Africa.
// “Cue in: Solutions can include…
Cue out: …context of COVID-19.”//
Ejolu noted that this partnership will be driven on the
theme dubbed “2020 multi city challenge” starting today and it will end on December 13th, 2020.
