Total cost
$325,000
Partners
Ministry of Local Government
Lilongwe City Assembly
Blantyre City Assembly
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
United Nations Human Settlements Programme
(UN-Habitat)
Background and objectives
UN-Habitat technical support assisted
the Government and related agencies to establish an Urban Agenda 21 national
programme and through it to start addressing urban poverty. Specific
input was to bring in the Sustainable Cities Programme approach with the
aim of formalizing Sustainable City Programmes for the city assemblies
of Lilongwe and Blantyre. The Malawi Urban Agenda 21 project will
enhance the capacity of communities, the Lilongwe and Blantyre city councils
and NGOs to plan and manage urban environments, facilitate the development
of urban networks, strengthen capacity for policy analysis and formulation,
establish an urban database to increase access to information about low-income
urban areas and disseminate best practices. In addressing urban environmental
problems, the concerns of women will be given particular attention, as
the majority of the affected urban poor are women.
Activities
The project will concentrate on two communities
in the cities of Lilongwe and Blantyre. Specific activities include
identification of community-based organizations and important community
leaders, organization of training in leadership, community organization
skills and participatory planning methods, support to community action
planning elaborated by the urban networks and implementation of specific
interventions. Preparation of a database, the establishment of mechanisms
for updating the database (including preparation of city environmental
profiles), facilitation of a policy dialogue through the urban networks
and communities, facilitation of the development of a national urban strategy
and its implementation to support local authorities and communities are
priorities.
Results
Well-established community-based networks
in each of the cities. A community-based planning approach for addressing
local environmental development issues, city environmental profiles for
Lilongwe and Blantyre, training of personnel in the local authorities to
support community action planning and implementation of locally articulated
projects and contribution to the preparation of a national urban strategy.
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