"Across the world, cities are struggling to provide critical infrastructure and urban services to support their burgeoning – and, in some cases, unrelenting – growth. The Districts Municipality rethinking thinking and adapting policies and processes based on shared best practices, creating new models for infrastructure financing and operation of city services and involving citizens and end-users in the urban-services industry transformation." says Miyelani Mkhabela
Can South African District Municipalities adapt their policies and processes so to be institutions dedicated to developing sustainable infrastructure?
Delivering critical infrastructure and services to urban environments and piloting new models of infrastructure financing, development and operations is the primary solution to reduce urban influx in the eight metro municipalities.
Urbanization is one of the key megatrends driving global economic growth. Cities are already home to more than half of the world’s population, and it is estimated that, by 2050, this percentage will grow to two-thirds.
Because 70 percent of the population will live in urban areas by 2050, cities have a great opportunity to become unique hubs for services that fulfil the promise of inclusion and better social and economic opportunities for all. However, unplanned or mismanaged development and the increasing impacts of climate change and social conflict can put severe pressure on urban systems, unleashing long-term stresses on basic components and exposing weaknesses to the disruptive impacts of multiple shocks.
Mpumalanga and Limpopo can relieve the urban squatting through building two cities each province and have necessary urban infrastructure and services, Universities, Economic development Zones and provide enough entertainment for communities to have enough recreational activities.
The Local Government Turnaround Strategy was introduced as a government programme of action and a blueprint for better service delivery aimed at responsive, accountable, effective and efficient local government. Five focus areas aimed at fast-tracking implementation of the strategy have been identified. These are Service delivery; Governance and Accountability; Financial Management; Infrastructure Development; Fighting Corruption. District municipalities play a coordination and support function for local municipalities in their area.
The role of citizens in all communities is to activate the Municipal Structures Act of 1998 to provides for ward committees to: prepare, implement and review IDPs, establish, implement and review municipalities’ performance-management systems, monitor and review municipalities’ performances, prepare municipalities’ budgets, participate in decisions about the provision of municipal services, communicate and disseminate information on governance matters.
A resilient city is prepared to absorb and recover from any shock or stress while maintaining essential functions, structures, and identity as well as adapting and thriving in the face of continual change. Building resilience requires identifying and assessing hazard risks, reducing vulnerability and exposure, and lastly, increasing resistance, adaptive capacity, and emergency preparedness.
Resilience responds to shocks and stresses brought about by rapid environmental, technological, social and demographic changes, which can be caused by natural phenomena (flooding, earthquake, and epidemics), anthropogenic hazards (oil spill, radiation, system breakdown) or socio-economic crisis (political and social conflict, terrorism, economic crisis).
These shocks and stresses can affect one or multiple urban systems, such as food networks, energy grids and urban transportation, with possible spillover effects on the city-region territory. Yet, such interaction and interdependence of urban systems can be leveraged to take advantage of their co-benefits and complementarity, and realize synergies in the broader context of sustainable development.
South Africa’s 257 municipalities spent a total of R101.3 billion in the second quarter of 2019 (April to June). This is the first time that quarterly municipal spending has breached the R100 billion mark. The R101.3 billion is R15.3 billion more than what was spent in the first quarter (January to March), representing an increase of 18 percent.
To give an idea of how large R101.3 billion is, imagine if this amount was equally distributed across the entire South African population of 58.8 million people. Each person would receive roughly R1 720. This is how much it costs municipalities to provide services – such as water, electricity and sanitation – to millions of households across the country every three months.
Data gathering, data analysis and scientific knowledge are a valuable source of information for local and regional governments in designing and assessing their resilience strategy. Collaboration between scientists, data analysts and policymakers is essential to evidence-driven, databased urban resilience planning and decision-making.
The growing availability of data provides significant opportunities for urban planning and design. Planning for resilience requires methods of working with data and systems which can be easily translated to decision-makers to develop evidence-based, replicable practices, and easily-communicated scenarios that can inform the resilience planning process.
To do this, local and regional governments, the research community, and the private sector have increased collaboration and strengthened partnerships to develop systems for environmental analysis, predictive modelling and planning support using data collected from official channels, as well as crowd-sourcing. Some of these systems not only inform the planning process but can also be used to provide real-time and vital information to citizens in the case of emergency or disaster.
Decentralisation is a context-driven and country-specific process. The level and type of decentralisation in a country will determine the mandates and financial resources that local governments, both rural and urban, have to address specific issues. Improved and inclusive urban governance and greater resilience to climate-induced shocks should be part of broader governance reforms in countries, particularly local governance and development planning.
Improvements in public participation, transparency, accountability, responsiveness and equity are required for local governments in urban areas to respond more effectively to the challenges posed by climate change. More effective responses to climate change challenges in urban areas require better coordination among sectoral departments that deliver climate-related activities and urban governments. Such a whole-of-government approach will enable a more comprehensive response to the multiple challenges posed by climate change.
Institutional investors, national governments and local communities are increasingly promoting investments in climate action and sustainable development. However, a serious gap exists between the amount of money that can be profitably invested in these projects and the current investment level.
The Local Economic Development (LED) approach towards economic development that allows and encourages local people to work together to achieve sustainable economic growth and development, thereby bringing economic benefits and improved quality of life to all residents in a local municipal area. LED is intended to maximise the economic potential of municipal localities and enhance the resilience of macro-economic growth through increased local economic growth, employment creation and development initiatives within the context of sustainable development.
The LED programmes provide support that ranges from developing and reviewing national policy, strategy and guidelines on LED; providing direct and hands-on support to provincial and local government; managing the LED Fund; managing and providing technical support to nodal economic development planning; facilitating, coordinating and monitoring donor programmes; assisting LED capacity-building processes aimed to achieve economic growth and creating jobs to reduce poverty.
Infrastructure development is widely recognized as a critical enabler of economic activity within and across national borders. Well-planned and structured infrastructure projects are a prerequisite for regional integration. But preparing infrastructure programmes to attract private investment can be a complex and demanding challenge, especially in the African context. This challenge is particularly acute in Africa due principally to a shortage of appropriate capabilities and capacities. While there is abundant private-sector interest in financing bankable projects.
South African District Municipalities must adapt to the Principles of Success for Infrastructure Project Preparation and be institutions dedicated to developing sustainable infrastructure in South Africa through improving project preparation, working to increase the number of viable, well-prepared, investment-ready infrastructure projects.
The International Finance Corporation estimates the climate investment potential in emerging markets at about $29.4 trillion (IFC, 2018). Such untapped potential is due to a shortage of projects that are robust enough in terms of bankability to be accepted and funded by financial institutions or the private sector. In other words, funds for Impact developments and climate projects are often available and investors are ready; the missing ingredients are bankable projects.
A bankable project is not just profitable – it quantifies the projected positive outcomes, such as social or environmental benefits, and has clear mechanisms for implementation and evaluation. Too often local governments have limited financial literacy, which hinders their capacity to build projects attractive for investors and insurers. Similarly, the latter tend to place little importance on the specific needs and characteristics of local governments, effectively creating a working barrier.
Financial institutions and investors must adapt to new forms of financing if they wish to take advantage of the current development agenda. To ensure capital reaches places where it can have the greatest impact – both financially and socially – investors must combine traditional bankability criteria with the long-term objectives of the state and community leaders, better understanding local needs and capacities.
The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs aims to build and strengthen the capability and accountability of provinces and municipalities. This includes: continued hands-on support through the established system and capacity-building programme, focusing on critical areas such as integrated development planning, local economic development (LED), financial management, service delivery and public participation; evaluating the impact of government programmes in municipal areas, enhancing performance and accountability by improving the quality of reporting on the Local Government Strategic Agenda and improving the monitoring, reporting and evaluation of capacity in local government; and coordinating and supporting policy development, implementing the strategic plans and monitoring and supporting service delivery.
A revised believe in the public and private sector is that most organizations as operated today will be unsustainable in a world of ever-advancing smart technology and changing in the human capital of the competing nations expected to collaborate with South African government. To remain viable, most organizations will have to achieve not only higher-level technological capabilities but also higher-level human cognitive and emotional performance.
To do that organizations will have to overcome challenges at both the organizational and individual levels. They’ll have to replace outdated operational practices based on hierarchy, silos and elitist leadership models; reduce groupthink, and learn how to simultaneously operate both efficiently and innovatively.
Their human workers will have to excel at doing the higher-order thinking and emotionally engaging value-add activities that the technology won’t be able to do well. That will require human beings to excel at managing their egos and emotions and to be excellent hyper-learners.
South Africa needs new criteria for the political local government leaders as they can be unconsciously pulling the country’s potential to develop more attractive municipalities in the rural communities and also add cities or metro municipalities to at least twenty, to assist in reducing the urban squatting at City of Tshwane, City of Johannesburg, City of Cape Town but adding City of Nelspruit, City of Polokwane, City of Ehlanzeni, City of Kangala, City of Vhembe and City of Mopani.
This kind of organizational and personal transformation in the age of smart technology requires an inspirational and aspirational new story about what it takes to achieve personal and organizational success. A story that if operationalized can lead to the highest levels of human performance in concert with smart technology. I believe an Idea Meritocracy is such a story.
An Idea Meritocracy is an environment in which the best idea wins determined by the quantity and quality of the data conducted with a high level of management practice and reflective leadership.
This article was written for IOL by Miyelani Mkhabela a founding director and capital markets strategist for Antswisa Transaction Advisory Services
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