The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) and UN-Habitat have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at accelerating sustainable urban transformation across Africa.
The agreement was signed in Seville, Spain, by the President of the AfDB Group, Akinwumi Adesina, and the Executive Director of UN-Habitat, Anacláudia Rossbach, on the sidelines of the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), according to a statement published on the AfDB’s official website.
Under the agreement, the two parties will jointly develop action plans combining technical assistance, policy support, capacity building, and knowledge sharing for local governments in four key areas: urban governance, housing, municipal finance, and infrastructure development.
This MoU renews a previous collaboration agreement signed in 2006 between the two institutions in the water and sanitation sector.
The AfDB and UN-Habitat also plan to coordinate efforts to leverage major regional and global platforms to mobilize resources for urban development in Africa, notably the World Urban Forum and the Africa Investment Forum.
Convinced that financial markets can be better utilized to significantly improve city development, Akinwumi Adesina stated that “cities are engines of growth, and we must mobilize more private capital for their development, which will require a different approach from traditional public funding.”
For her part, the Executive Director of UN-Habitat emphasized that “urbanization in Africa can either be a driver of prosperity or a catalyst for worsening poverty and exclusion,” expressing hope that, through this renewed collaboration with the AfDB, cities across the continent can become engines of resilience, equity, and climate action.
