African poor to share on Gates' $10m

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will provide US$10 million to the nongovernmental organisation Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI) to support the urban poor in Africa, Asia and Latin America to take action to improve their housing, water and sanitation.

It is the first time a major US foundation has made a significant investment to address urban poverty in these regions. The grant is also unusual in that it will go direct to grassroots groups that gather under the umbrella of SDI, enabling them to improve their living conditions and their capacity to negotiate with governments to secure rights to land.

In addition to acting as the intermediary for funding, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) will provide academic support for the national programmes.

Sheela Patel, chair of SDI's board says: "This grant is to build the capacity of poor communities to demonstrate to their municipalities, governments and international development agencies that self-organised communities of the poor are partners in addressing urban poverty. This assistance will help to build local dialogue and locally sustainable solutions."

To date, these grassroots groups have built or upgraded more than 200,000 homes (see table below). Worldwide, however, about a billion people live in slums or shacks, most of which lack safe water and toilets.

This work urgently needs to be scaled up. The urban poor are tired of waiting for governments to meet their needs. They are ready and willing to improve their living conditions but need financial support to do so.

"It is the poor who will change the city's living conditions," says Jockin Arputham, president of SDI and founder of the National Slum Dwellers Federation in India. "This grant to SDI from the Gates Foundation has enormous potential to show how cities can work for the poor as well as for the rich."

The grant will be channelled over three years into The International Urban Poor Fund, which SDI manages in association which the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

Funds from this grant will be used to support the activities of federations of informal savings groups formed by slum or shack dwellers to collectively save money and improve their neighbourhoods by securing tenure, installing toilets, improving water supplies and in some cases building houses.

Improving the physical infrastructure is half the battle. The urban poor need the security that comes with knowing they have the right to live where they do. It is easier to negotiate with governments to gain these rights if officials can see the improvements the federations have made, especially as they are usually cheaper and of better quality than anything local contractors can build.

"This fund is a breakthrough for slum dwellers to achieve their dreams and the opportunity to do things themselves," says Rose Molokoane, chair of the South African Federation of the Urban Poor and an SDI board member.

National and local governments in countries such as Brazil, Malawi, Namibia, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand and Zambia have recognised the role of the federations and have worked with them as partners in urban development. But more often than not, governments see the urban poor as problems rather than part of the solution.

"Most governments and aid agencies still pay little attention to urban poverty," says Diana Mitlin of IIED's Human Settlements Group. "And when they do, it is to finance professionally designed programmes that struggle to address this problem at an appropriate scale."

"With this funding, the Gates Foundation is sending a much-needed signal to such agencies to rethink their approach. This funding will greatly increase the scale at which the national federations can operate and will support the growth of new federations."

The foundation's grant to SDI is part of the Special Initiatives portfolio of its Global Development Program, which works with motivated partners on focused strategies to increase opportunities for people in the developing world to lift themselves out of hunger and poverty.

Special Initiatives grants allow the foundation to fund compelling, specific opportunities to advance development and to learn about new approaches that can inform and improve the strategies and grant-making of the Global Development Program.

The foundation will also share results and lessons learned with a wide variety of institutions-including municipalities and national governments responsible for urban poor communities-in order to showcase how the poor can become active partners rather than beneficiaries of aid.

"We are pleased to support Slum/Shack Dwellers International and the Urban Poor Fund," said Charles Lyons, director of special initiatives at the Gates Foundation’s Global Development Program.

"This grant will allow SDI to expand on its proven track record and demand-driven model and develop new, innovative ways to give the urban poor effective voices in their communities and nations."

Is Fast Tracking EAC Political Federation tenable?

Rwanda and Burundi officially joined the east African Community in July 2007 but the two countries still have to settle some issues to progressively move with the rest of the member states. There is need to harmonize domestic issues and convincing their legislative body to ratify the treaty; the issue of Political Federation is at its peak. Rwanda and Burundi like their counterparts are supposed to consult their population about Federation about the process. The time table had been already drawn by the former three countries but I believe with Tanzania not supporting fast tracking and with new two countries on board the time table is more likely to be altered. Consultations are likely to take wide range but mostly focus on asking the population which may include Private sector, academicians, politicians, local government, parliamentarians, business sector and the civil society including women and youths on whether to go political federation by expressing fears and opportunities, and what form of federation we should have and as well as time lag for the federation. Also issues of the qualifications and term of office of the president and other central government officials is likely to be top on agenda, how much power should be left to federal states and how much or which powers should be surrendered by federal states to central government.

As we wait for the consultations we need to refocus on past and see why did EAC collapse so that we do not repeat the same mistakes. Looking back there were three major factors that led to the collapse of the cooperation. These are Intra-community political differences, differences on sharing the benefits from the jointly owned services and lack of policy to redress the situation and low participation of civil society and private sector in the running and decision making of the community. The question today is have we addressed these issues and we are not sure that the same mistake will not be repeated. As the political leaders are supporting the Top –Down approach of federation is Political federation first and this will facilitate other integrations, is this genuine, do we have precedence that we are following or we are just driven by excitement.

I want us to explore critically the reasons put forward for fast tracking federation and the time framework and see if it is realistic.
Meaning of Federation
Political Federation means a compound of polity uniting constituent units (federal states) which includes Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi for EAC and a general government each posting powers delegated to its people through constitution.
Political Federation will mean one border, one federal government with a new name, federal anthems, flag, federal court of justice, federal legislature to mention some. We shall have one central government while the current governments will be federal states. The federal states will surrender some of their powers and functions to the central government.

Economically, a federation implies one Central Bank, Common Currency, Custom Union, one capital market (stock exchange centralized).

We have two approaches to Integration or union top-down approaches and bottom-up approach. The first one is commonly known as Kwame Nkrumah’s approach. Political Integration is a tool that brings about integration in other spheres. He urged that “Seek ye the first the political kingdom and everything else shall be added onto you”

The other one is that of bottom-up approach which is known as functionalism. This one assumes that integration is promoted piecemeal through gradual process as to build a web of functional relations in different areas such as trade, investment, infrastructures, culture etc. He advanced that political with this arrangement political federation brings a logical culmination of integration process from below.

The current EAC is taking the two approaches, however of recent emphasis has been put on the first one. The target has been 2010 as the year to have achieved Political Federation. This came after the three East African Head of States (Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya) in 2004 felt that the rate at which federation was moving was very slow and therefore needed to quicken it. They formed a fast tracking federation committee. The committee findings included recommendations such as compression of current stages of Custom Union, Common Market, Monetary Union and Political Federation, an overlapping parallel integration and immediate establishment of East African Federation.

With the entry of Rwanda and Burundi into EAC, there is need to provide enough time to harmonize their internal policies and procedures to that of EAC, sensitize their population about EAC and Political federation. The time frames looks too short for the new entrant to do this and therefore unrealistic. Even the former three EAC members’ population is not fully aware of political federation and therefore we must allocate time for mobilization and education rather than jumping onto it.

Back home to individual member states there are issues to first settle down such as issues of relationship between domestic bodies and the central EAC bodies. Take an example of relationship between EALA and national legislation. Their relationship has not been smooth; EALA makes regular reports to national legislations for discussion and domestication but rarely do national legislation debate EALA reports, this is probably because the domestic politics is inward looking and therefore take precedence. So we need enough time to creating a good working relationship of different institutions nationally and regionally.

There is still political differences in the current EAC members eg domestic deficits, internal problems and thus not easy to forge a political federation. We need time to harmonize this, thus gradual process of integration may allow the opportunity to settle our differences.

I believe that there is need for building a block approach to integration rather than rushing to it. This means making sure that Custom Union works first, then to converge to economic policies, cross border investment and ultimately to Political federation. The political environment is not ripe yet, so we better not rush it.

Normally when any one is to implement a new policy, he looks at the past and where else the policy has been successful to analyse its worthiness and application. We do not have a successful precedent anywhere in the world where Political Federation preceded economic integration. This calls for a critical thinking before action. This does not mean that we can be the people to begin it, if so we need to involve all stake holders in consultative meetings to agree on way forward. These meetings may take two years as minimum. Imagine the fast tracking committee was commissioned in August 2004 and submitted their findings in November 2004, a very short time to have gathered views of all stake holders.

I think the fast tracking political federation is politically driven but we should focus on the entire interests of our citizens rather than few individuals. We need a step by stepe intergration, get economic rights then politics will follow. Probably this will change the Tanzania’s former position on federation. We should not be over ambitious like Nkwame did. Ofcourse political federation is very good but we need not to rush it.