Nairobi

The Government has announced an ambitious Sh880 billion project that hopes to settle at least five million people living in informal settlements. This is welcome news given the fast spread of slums in virtually every urban centre.

But this is the easier part of the equation. The harder bit is the practicality of it, and whether the country has the financial muscle to undertake the project.

As President Kibaki noted, such an endeavour requires support from donors, and rightly so. Perhaps that was why he chose to make the announcement at the UN-Habitat Governing Council meeting in Nairobi.

There can be no pride, whatsoever, for a nation or its leadership to walk around with a begging bowl, especially over issues that are well within its power to resolve.

The so-called informal housing is euphemism for slums, which sprout adjacent to where a decent residential estate stands. This, on its own, is a confirmation about the unequal nature of this society, and the inherent failures in urban planning.

Slum growth betrays the mass poverty that continues to debilitate the various sections of our society. After all, no one would choose to live in housing without running water or electricity, as is the case in most slums.

But the ultimate challenge in urban housing is rooted in failure to evenly provide infrastructures that would encourage citizens to remain in rural areas.

There is need to reassess policies that perpetuate these social inequities and breed slums in urban centres. The alternatives, as it is proving, are a lot harder and more expensive.

Source: The Nation http://allafrica.com/stories/200704180941.html