Owning Our Urban Future: Urban-Rural Linkages for Balanced Regional Development in Africa A Uganda National Academy of Sciences Consensus Study Report Table of Contents SUMMARY ..............................................................................................................................iv INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................1 PROBLEM STATEMENT .......................................................................................................3 CONSENSUS STUDY PROCESS ...........................................................................................5 GLOBAL POLICY CONTEXT ..............................................................................................6 A FRAMEWORK TO ENABLE MORE VIRTUOUS URBAN-RURAL LINKAGES ...............................................................................................................................9 PART 1: PRODUCTIVITY AND LIVELIHOODS ......................................................10 Heterodox African Urbanization ...........................................................................10 The Urban-Rural Continuum ................................................................................13 Urbanization in Secondary Cities .........................................................................14 Urbanization and Informality ................................................................................16 PART 2: SOCIO-CULTURAL PERCEPTIONS ...........................................................18 Movement Through the Urban-Rural Continuum ................................................18 Perceived Urban and Rural Meanings ..................................................................20 Of House and Home ..............................................................................................22 PART 3: POWER AND ACCOUNTABILITY .............................................................22 Asymmetrical Governance Processes ...................................................................23 Hierarchy and Responsibility in High-Context Societies .....................................26 ENABLING CONDITIONS TO MOVE FORWARD .........................................................28 LAND TENURE SYSTEMS ........................................................................................29 REALISTIC PLANNING .............................................................................................30 HEALTH AND WELLBEING .....................................................................................32 POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS........................................................................................34 APPENDICES .........................................................................................................................37 APPENDIX I: TYPOLOGY OF VIRTUOUS AND VICIOUS RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES ...................................................................................................................37 APPENDIX II: EXPERT COMMITTEE STATEMENT OF TASK ............................39 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................40 WORKS CITED......................................................................................................................43 List of Acronyms AAPS Association of African Planning Schools AU African Union CAP Common African Position GSI Global Standard Institutions ILO International Labour Organization NIH National Institutes of Health NUA New Urban Agenda ODA Ofcial Development Assistance SAP Structural Adjustment Program SDGs Sustainable Development Goals SDI Slum/Shack Dwellers International SoT Statement of Task UN United Nations UNDESA United Nations Department of Economic and Social Afairs List of Figures, Tables, & Text Boxes FIGURES FIGURE 1 When questions of productivity and livelihoods, socio-cultural perceptions, and power and accountability are better incorporated into the policymaking process, it will help to enable virtuous cycles of urban-rural linkages and the more balanced regional development they entail. ...............................................................................10 FIGURE 2 This fgure shows the relationship between the urbanization rate (%) and the share of manufacturing and services in GDP (%) for 56 non-resource-exporting countries and 60 resource-exporting countries in 2010. The solid line is a linear ft for he data. Source: (Gollin et al., 2016). ...................................................................................................................12 FIGURE 3 Actors and institutions commonly involved in the process of urban governance. Aligning the interests of these various stakeholders around specifc issues is unlikely to follow a linear or easily replicable path (adapted from Devas, 2004, p. 25) .......................................26 TABLE TABLE 1 Examples of the distinction between institutional function and form and between "pre-modern" and "modern" forms of those institutions ...........................................................24 TEXT BOXES SUCCESS STORY 1 Informal-Formal Property Tenure System Linkages in Kampala, Uganda .......................................................................................................................................29 SUCCESS STORY 2 Revitalizing Planning Education in Africa with the Association of African Planning Schools ..........................................................................................................31 SUCCESS STORY 3 Exchange Visits to Mobilize Community Ownership in Nairobi, Kenya .........................................................................................................................................32 Summary Sub-Saharan Africa has been slowly urbanizing for many generations. Push factors like confict and rural poverty have sometimes driven the process; other times pull factors like better educational opportunities and higher urban wages have been the primary driver (Jedwab, Christiaensen, & Gindelsky, 2014). Over the past few decades, the rural-to-urban transition has dramatically accelerated. By many estimates, the region is now urbanizing at the fastest rate globally (Saghir & Santoro, 2018). Between 2018 and 2035, all 10 of the fastest growing cities in the world will be located in sub-Saharan Africa (Patel, 2018). As a result, by 2050 most sub-Saharan countries will have surpassed the tipping point where more than 50% of their populations live in urban areas (Ritchie & Roser, 2018). There will inevitably be diferences between countries, but the diferences will be more of degree than of type. Sub-Saharan Africa’s transition to the so-called “urban age” will be unprecedented in its swiftness. To help manage this unprecedented shift, the distinction between rural and urban areas is often a useful policymaking tool. Unfortunately, this distinction can also obscure the deep complexities and interconnections in the demographic, economic, and political shift that is taking place. In every country, urban and rural areas are interdependent to varying degrees, and rely on fows of individuals, capital, and information to sustain distinct ways of life (Mylott, 2009). In sub-Saharan Africa, where development policy has fuctuated between an overriding focus on either one or the other of these two categories, the linkages are particularly relevant for household wellbeing (Djurfeldt, 2012). The Uganda National Academy of Sciences therefore undertook this consensus study on the nature of urban-rural linkages in the sub-Saharan region, and how they can be best leveraged for balanced regional development. Urban-rural linkages can be defned as the economic, social, cultural, and political relationships maintained between individuals and groups in urban and rural environments (Ndabeni, 2016). Importantly, these relationships can often have distributional consequences, leading to a distinction that is frequently made between “virtuous” and “vicious” urban-rural linkages (Djurfeldt, 2012). In general, virtuous linkages refer to those relationship that contribute to a positive cycle of household accumulation and expanding opportunities across both rural and urban spaces (Djurfeldt, 2012). For instance, agricultural intensifcation might lead to increased rural incomes, which is used for some family members to attend school in urban areas, leading them to secure formal employment and remit earnings back to rural areas, leading to further agricultural intensifcation. Vicious linkages, by contrast, lead households to distribute resources too scarcely across urban and rural spaces, to the point that neither can successfully kickstart the process of accumulation and development (Djurfeldt, 2012). For instance, rural to urban migration might result in insufcient available rural labour, while at the same time urban migrants are unable to secure stable, formal employment. As a result, neither rural nor urban dwellers can leverage their comparative locational advantages, and both become trapped in cycles of poverty. Local, national, and regional policy contexts can help determine the type of rural-urban linkages that form, and the degree to which they reinforce vicious or virtuous cycles of development. Urban-rural linkages have received unprecedented attention in recent years with their canonization in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the New Urban Agenda