By Edward Dankwah
Accra, June 5, GNA – Mr Martin Adjei Mensah-Korsah, the Minister for Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development (MLGDRD), has urged the various Municipal, Metropolitan and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to champion the urban development agenda within their jurisdictions.
He said Ghana’s urbanisation trajectory post-2010 had seen several interventions that cut across sectors within the urban space.
The Minister was speaking at the opening ceremony of the two-day 2024 Ghana Urban Forum (GUF) held in Accra on the theme: “Nurturing Roots, Growing Futures: Combining Policies and Partnerships for Urban Resilience and Transformation.”
The Forum since 2009 has served as a collaborative platform for various stakeholders within the urban space to share knowledge and experiences as well as deliberate on important urban development issues while proffering solutions that are aligned with national and international frameworks.
Mr Mensah-Korsah said they encouraged stakeholders to take ownership of policies focused on urban development to effect change and transform urban areas.
He said urbanisation presented many opportunities that had the potential to change the face of development.
The Minister said a major challenge to urban development as a country had been intersectoral collaboration and coordination, where the urban space saw many players including utility providers, telecommunications, roads and building infrastructure, and services including transport and health care.
He said the Ministry was charged with the mandate to promote and ensure good governance and balanced development at the local level enabling them to champion through laid down strategies, actions and partnerships to improve the living conditions of about 56.7 per cent of urban dwellers.
Mr Mensah-Korsah said the United Nation’s Agenda for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 identified sustainable urbanisation as one of the key priorities for global development.
“The adoption of the New Urban Agenda in 2016 had engendered national and local governments around the world to embark on a transformative path towards making SDG11 a story of the past,” he added.
The Minister said the government’s determination was reflected in the mandatory and periodic global and national reports, which showed the significant progress being made in urban spaces.
Madam Madhu Raghunath, Practice Manager at the World Bank, said Ghana was at a pivotal stage of urbanisation, where more than half of its citizens lived in urban areas, putting enormous pressures on service delivery, access to land and housing, and transportation, among others.
She said cities generated more than a third of Ghana’s GDP and were key to attracting talent and private capital, however, Ghana needed well-functioning cities and livable cities to usher the path towards a middle-income country.
The Practice Manager said cities had to be resilient in the face of climate change by preparing for the future onslaught of climate change as we were beginning to see increased intensity of natural disasters all over the world.
“And cities where most of the population are getting impacted by these disasters, were not really what we saw in Accra a couple of years ago, where a huge flooding event basically flooded nearly most of the cities,” she added.
She said the World Bank had also been engaged in the urban sector for the past three decades through analytical support in areas related to basic infrastructure improvements, flood protection, municipal revenue management and strengthening land administration.
“We continue to provide technical and peer-to-peer support to cities and government on a wide-ranging topic as well as through sectors such as urban transport, water supply and sanitation, environmental management, social protection and private sector development,” she added.
She said Ghana was setting a vision for its policy, which would be approved very soon, adding that some of these areas would make Ghana more livable and resilient.
GNA