Urbanisation and its impact on property development in Malawi

Welcome to yet another exciting debate on MAKNET online Platform.

Urbanisation is impacting on our everyday life. congestion in the cities as more people are coming to the cities to attempt to have a better and modern life.

Poor housing and crime as frustration of reality of town life sets in most of immigrants

if we look at area like Mbayani, Mtandire who is to blame.....

can something be done

lets discuss

I will take on the city planners: The city planners have failed the nation in guiding the development of our cities in Malawi. They as custodians of plans should be at the forefront in stalling construction works that are not in line with the plans. At the same time, in all areas falling under the city metropolitan should be having readily dermacated plots, roads, power line and water pipes. If these precede construction the better. Lack of such services has lead to poor standards in our buildings. For instance, the construction that has taken place around Bunda Roadblock in Lilongwe, its as if there is nobody in the planning department of the city.

I think it is true that urbanization is on the rise. Everyone is looking for a better life in towns and cities. Unfortunately, lack of adequate resources like land and inadequate planning by city planners, makes it impossible to organize the newly urban migrants in the cities.

Poverty is what is making rural urban dwellers seek greener pastures in the cities. Unfortunately, the greener pastures just become another mirage when one moves to the city. In my opinion, I think the policy of 'urbanizing' rural areas like Nthalire, Neno, etc will mitigate some rural-urban migration. However, we also really need to ponder on how to help those who have already migrated and are living in squatter houses in town. As Peter Mawanga sang "amakhala ku Blantyre koma amakhala ..."

I also wanted to add to my previous comment to say does anybody have any statistical figures of urbanization in Malawi and Africa in general?

Developing rural areas such as Nthalire in Chitipa, Nambuma, Dowa and Neno would be a great idea if those area are really planned. For instance, one wonders what type of plans were instituted for Neno. You go and see the so called New bus depot does not even attract anybody to stay on than leave for blantyre and live in the slums. I also think we we are talking about all these planning we should be considering what our population censuses. I dont if any these people ( i mean planners take due cognisant of the population and its dynamics.

When Bingu was being sworn in in 2004, he had proposed a brilliant idea of setting up village factories, these need to be considered seriously without political undertones and connotation. Once people in the village have somewhere to seek employment there will be need for people trek to the few urban centres in enmasse. Now that tobacco industry is dying, which has been a greatest employer (indirectly and directly), we should brace for me people coming into the same few urban centres which are failing to handle the current population.

I agree that the City Planners are to blame, to some level. I will give an example of Soche Hill. when people were busy building and climbing the mountain, the City authorities were there and just watching. after years, they now start to say the people built in prohibited areas and they are now spending money to reallocate these families to South Lunzu.

I should think that if the City had clear and working city plans, the people encroaching into the prohibited areas, and flouting building standards of the city would be stopped at the very beginning.

In my last two postings I have unshamedly pointed fingers at city planners. This takes me back some months ago when I had visited Washington, DC USA. This visit made think that city like New York, Washington DC itself and many other were founded some four hundred years ago. You look at them all what you do is admire. Now Lilongwe which is less than 40 years old as a city makes one think that it was founded in the pre-historic era.

Having said that it high time the city planners took their plans off the shelf and sensitize both the city dwellers and the nation what is the plan for our urban centers. I am sure many will agree with me that we dont exactly know what the city plans are. In the introduction to this discussion there is a Lilongwe City Development policy which notes that 76% of residents live in the informal settlements within the bounds of the city. But what do that policy recommend to address that. Take it to the people let them discuss it and perhaps add a few recommendations.

This would also work easily if we had the local governments in place. These would be better placed to leverage between every other inhabitants and the fellow politicians. Though, we claim every human being is a politician but others are more into it than everyone else. Statements have constantly came out that leave politics to the politicians they will only need other people when it time for elections.

Those who have knowledge should also be able to provide it. Unfortunately, we do alot of politics the tabloids and newspapers better covers political commentators than most of the technocrats.

I will check them and post the statistics in my subsquence post

if we look at urbanizasation using a problem tree analysis. the causes include poverty; mindset (that urban life is better than rural-not always the case), increasing population thus increasing land pressure for cultivation leading to migration to urban, poor value from agriculture related production and other predominatly rural economic activities and lack of access to social ameneties like hospitals, schools in rural areas.

the effects are miriad including public health concerns in addition to those mentioned already by my coleagues in their posts. Communicable diseases spread fast, sanitation is poor and crime rate is high.

if we looked at the causes and formulated objectives that would address them, then we ably could identify relevant authorities for each objective. So to conclude, we need to identify all possible causes scientifically to be guided on who should do what. Whether we should slow down urbanization rate by concentrating on developing rural areas (which is still urbanization any way) or we should address the challenges in informal settlement areas. Suffice to say informal settlement areas are often illegal settlements so expecting city assembly to bring order is supporting illegality. The harsh but appropriate action may be to demolish the buildings.

Tdamalansambo, I think the problem tree analysis on the causes of rural-urban migration you have highlighted is quite enlightening. Being an urban dweller myself I find the causes given being very applicable even to me.

Everytime I visit my home village I am at pains to stay there for let's say just two days. Nearest hospital is about 14km, there is no electricity, not even mjigo (people are still drinking unprotected water from a river). Its pathetic. Now do you expect this young generation to stay in such kind of a rural area? Certainly not! I therefore strongly support the 'urbanization' of rural areas but then there should be proper planning not haphazard planting of buildings as lamented by Kuthemba on the case of the bus depot in Neno.

I therefore once again feel that city planners in towns like Blantyre are just on the receiving end of a problem whose root cause is abject poverty in the villages. Unfortunately, social projects like the fertilizer subsidy program are facing challenges such as shrinking donor support.

You have the right to blame the city planners if you are convinced they are not delivering to the expectation of the city citizens. Now sitback and ask what has been my responsibility in as far as demanding above mark services from the planners? . Moreover, what answers do you have as to why planners are delivering shody outcomes despite spending huge sums of public money? How about the politics in Malawi which keeps squeezing the planner to a tight corner while the public which expects the helpless planner to deliver sitback in their laurels and watch the situation? Planners deliver when they planning with the people unlike planning for the people, I mean planning is a participatory process and we expect the public to save us from the jaws of the politician through their active participation. If people live in the slums and sitback thinking, ok, we are poor and we are supposed to live like this, the planning process will not help them much because the decentralization development paradigm has been preaching demand driven service delivery. We are in this shaming situation together, planners and the public.

Chaotic urban development in my opinion is due to influences from 3 main stakeholders in our society; citizens, planning authorities and the politicians.
Prior to 1994 people undertook developments based on guidelines that had been set up by the planning authorities. On attainment of multi-party democracy there has been a total disregard of the planning regulations by the citizenry. The argument has been that you cannot discourage people from developing which I think is unfortunate. In this chaos the citizenry have been aided by politicians who have wanted to either gain cheap political mileage or they are hoodwinking the general population by benefiting from the chaos. We have seen areas that were previously reserved for future city expansion disappearing under the shade of ugliness! As for the main urban centres the politician and wealthy members of our society have taken advantage to create buildings and developments that are more of 18th century developments! The planning authorities are so riddled with corruption that the duty of development control is as good as being non-existent. In cases where development control rules have been enforced one finds a lot of political interference in all of them.
Blantyre and Lilongwe as cities do have urban master plans which were supposed to govern how the cities should grow. Unfortunately like most policies in Malawi the plans of these cities have gathered so much dust that a whole new planning exercise need to be undertaken. Around 1997 Blantyre city Assembly had an urban master plan project undertaken funded by the World Bank (Ithink!). The plan had an implementation schedule that has never been adhered to. The same I am made to understand is the case in Lilongwe where an urban plan was prepared in the 1980s and has now been completely abandoned. In both of these cases the available plans have been overtaken by what is happening on the ground that we need complete new plans to correct the situation. I once read of the plan of New York as a city this was done some time in the 1800s. the current town layout has in large part developed as it was planned.
So developing a new policy is well and good however we need to sort out this that prevents our various planning offices from functioning effectively. First off politicians’ interference needs to be put in check. I know this is easier said than done but as long as we have politicians threatening development controllers from undertaking their work, we may as well forget any effective planning policy. Secondly the anti-corruption enforcement need to be seen to be effective so that if citizens have complaints or reason to suspect corruption any such issues will be attended to urgently and fairly. Finally the planning authorities need to come out to the public to educate us on the various planning policies in place. It is only when people are empowered with knowledge that they may effectively contribute to overall urban centre growth.

Additionally our resource allocation does not reflect what we want to achieve as a nation. For example we overpay politics at the expense of rural development. Why do we allow a group of people to decide their own salaries? This is why Malawi remains largely a "political business entrepreneurship" for the lazy and crooked. There is need to change our constitutional guidelines over OPC and parliament particularly on resource allocation. We may save some resources that way that we can employ to enhance rural development.

A link to statistics on urbanisation.

http://www.afribiz.info/content/urbanization-statistics-for-african-coun...

Iam waiting for more information from UN Habitat. I will circulate and post once i hear from them. But this could give you a picture

I want to agree with Precious to some extent that though Planners may have good plans for development of the cities...political interference is a also aproblem in our country. I know of Area 51 in Lilongwe which was designated to be an industrial area and people were chased out of that area. Howver around 2009 elections people were given a free way to build in the same area. In the same, i want to agree with Kuthemba that local governemnt especially the absence of local councillors has costed us alot. some of these things would have been put in check and information flow would have been easier between aouthorites and citizens

We need home grown policies on planning. I think the problem is that planning for a long time has been defined from the outside experience. We are living in different economic spaces. The spirit of planning will remain but the nature of planning has to be different. I think its not the question of standards but misplaced standards - we need cities for Malawians where they can live happily, BUT they should in NO way be in the west. They should be in Malawi. The problem of slums is there because the cost of compliance to planning standards is high than a large population can afford. Again, if chances arise for the poor people to benefit, rich people take advantage of the situation to benefit from the projects. Examples are there- Manja and Kameza area in Blantyre. We need to be human. Planning only will not work when we take advantage of opportunities available for the less privileged .

Much has been discussed at a wider scope and perspective. The local authorities are obviously shouldering the blame by default.
Our City Councils are way under-capacitated to handle the influx of people coming into urban areas. For example, Lilongwe city council has less than 3 qualified and experienced planners if my memory and experience serves me right. Most of the staff working in development control do not have substantive planning background or completely irrelevant fields. The same applies across our major cities. Paradoxically, new planning graduated from our reputable high learning institutions such as university of Malawi and Mzuzu University, land in the oblivion of joblessness after their intensive 4 year studies. Something is glaringly amiss in our local authorities.
Against most observations, one thing I would recommend our city councils is that they have realised their incapacitation and they have tried to create an enabling environment to larger degree for multiple players to support them in several ways i.e. water and sanitation in various informal settlements. I was even moved to see the Head of State going to Mgona informal settlement in Lilongwe on this year's World Water Day. It somehow clicked in my mind that these settlements are informal on paper but they are formal on wider perspective and our general social fabric. We also have to realise that politicians get most of their votes in such settlements compared to other reputable locations. Sinking one borehole by a politician receives a lot of praise from such poor communities compared to putting a tar mark road in Area 18. It is therefore impossible for technocrats (city planners) to wake up one day enforce planning regulations, especially when demolition is concerned.
Since our planners do their plans in offices without involving the poor urbanising communities, such model of planning had and will never work in Malawi. For example, if poor communities were involved in the planning of Lilongwe city, they would question planners why they are allocating a minimum of 15m x30 m plots while the poor stay on even smaller yards. As that is not enough the planners would be questioned on the price and people occupying Traditional Housing Areas, which normally go to the well-to-do individuals. If such a forum for such a planning discussions existed before, we would see our planners allocating reasonable plots to the people according to their needs and incomes. But it surprising that though approximately 80% of town dwellers operate from informal settlement, no city employee go to work for the aforesaid percentage of people trekking within the bounds of our urban areas. Apart from THA plots that practically do not go to the poor, it is a shame that our cities up to date have no zones for poor migrating households. Normally, city officials are reminded by NGOs on the roles they are supposed to do as a local authority.
My last point is that the all our City Councils do not know their boundaries even though the can show you on a map and give you specific coordinates. I am saying this because of multiplicity of landlords within the city boundaries. Chiefs and villages headmen claim the very same pieces of land that fall within boundaries of our city assemblies. Informal planning is in the hands of chiefs…and surprisingly its very simple and cheap to get land and build from the chief than the rigorous and expensive city assembly process. Imagine where would a poor person from Chemusa get an architect to design them a house to meet city assembly colonial adopted by-laws. The architectural fee would be equivalent to the value of his or her proposed development. By now our cities would have consulted the poor and develop standard architectural plans that would be given free of charge to those who want to build. But since our city assemblies want scrutiny fee, such initiative cannot be taken…forgetting that they can recover the fee in ground rates.
Realizing the incomes of Malawians especially in informal settlement, they would have trained and sensitized the people on how to construct incrementally (Occupy the house as you are building it). But since our planners want to stick to British standards in Malawi, they will not allow you to occupy a house before they issue you with certificate of occupation. But practically that’s what landlords are doing in informal settlement. They build one shack, when that shack is occupied, they build another one to maximise profits and that is how dense environment come about in informal settlements. The challenges can be reversed and solved if planers hide their mikanjo (university graduation gown - a quote from Victoria Chaiwalika- an informal settlement dweller) and wear a human face to discuss their plans with poor urbanising populace. A common win-win situation can come out and development enforcement can automatically be decentralised to members of the poor settlement.
In conclusion, informal settlements can be a history if planners fully understand the complexity, challenges and needs of their city residents which in most cases are at par with their bible- the Town and Country Planning Guidelines. I would therefore request planners to develop guidelines that work for Malawi not Britain. I would also request our local authorities to solve multiple landlordism issue and own the land that falls within their bounds.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I was passing through a very very low cost housing area today fondly called 'Federation' on the Limbe-Soche Hill-Manje road in Blantyre. Despite being low cost I was impressed that the houses are well lined and evenly spaced such that even a bird eye view from afar shows a well planned location. Now the question is: why are plots in areas such as Mbayani, Chilobwe just haphazardly demarcated? I start to point fingers at the ones who allocate plots. Is it city authorities or who? Why did proper planning happen at 'Fede' and not Mbayani, Manje, Chilobwe etc?

Just a thought.

Nice observations that I cant afford to quash but agree with the following observations too.

Just as I would not want to defend the planners, we have very little law enforcement when it comes to property development, so the problem is not on the planners alone but probably the whole institutional setup.

Secondly, our cities are very small, by being small I mean the boundaries were set a long time ago, you might be surprised to note that Bunda Roadblock is in Lilongwe Rural. Even Chisapo and Likuni are in Lilongwe rural yet thats where development is going.

just a quick note Ruth on the Angelo Goveya (Fede) area thanks for noting that for once a poor people's community that is planned. We have gotten flake for poor people living there but am glad you noted that poor people have a proper planned area. Will write more on the back ground and your other questions later this evening

At least we seem to be agreein that there is lack or no better ways of enforcing the law as noted by maxmaida. I will go back to the planners, they themselves are the custodians of the bylaws and they should be planning on how they can enforce the law. For instance, when street vendors were taken out of the streets, it was up to the councils to continue enforcing that whether with the help of the police or not. Police are supposed to be called when theings get out of hand. Well, that may be a topic of its own at some point.

And Siku has just mentioned of a community which seems to have been developed following a certain plan. What that means is that people are ready to develop areas as long as there are given the plans. Time that takes for authorities to intervene is also of essence. Therefore, they should be have shorter turnaround times in dealing with development activities.

From the discussions, I find the issue of enforcement of physical plans coming out strongly. Do members think that it will be possible to bring sanity in areas like Chilobwe Mbayani, Kaliyeka etc? i.e to redemarcate the plots and let people build again or what can be done? Who could be the key stakeholders and what could be their roles?

Yes the question what we should do now is a million kwacha (dollar?) problem. In my opinion, redemarcating plots in Mbayani, Chilobwe, Kaliyeka etc will just bring in a myriad of problems. This will instantly turn into a hot political issue and politicians will instantly capitalize on it. We already know how relocating vendors in the interest of having cleaner cities is such a politically sensitive issue. Thus I feel that the mistake city planners made in not demarcating the plots in the first instance, haunts them now to feel helpless. It is my opinion therefore that all areas that will be designated for housing soon should be clearly demarcated now to avoid the situation the city authorities are in. But just demarcating plots should not warrant selling those plots at extorted prices. Why should a 30 by 30 plot cost a damn MK500000 quid as it the case somewhere? I hope we have city planners here in this forum who are listening to us mere mortals of Nyasaland on this forum. Or will MAKNET take what we are saying here directly to the powers that be?

Just thinking aloud.

@Ruth.....MAKNET will synthesize all the contributions and come up with a Policy brief. But you are right...let me try to get a city Planner to come and comment. what i have seen is that experts in the subejct areas mostly donot want to speak out. fear of unknown. yet we are a democratic country.

we know the problem at hand as most of my colleagues have highlighted in previous comments. problems like adopted town planning systems, poor economic activities with limited base for improvements, poor agricultural harvest faced with global warming threats, .......in short we are facing the crime of poverty here.

the question is what have we done or what can we do to ease the pain.
some times when i see places like area 18 in lilongwe, nkolokosa, soche east, chitawira, naperi, chinyonga etc and other planned residential townships i wonder really what happened to these kinds of housing projects. you will be amazed that these houses were built more than 30 yeas back in the 1970s to accommodate our urban dwellers. now we are fighting to occupy these limited house, building fences and extending these houses within their confined plots with no respect to annoying the neighbors just to meet our extended families.
if only these kind of housing projects were still alive problems like ndirande bangwe, kawale, chilobwe etc etc would be non existence.
one solution to the current problem of slums in our urbanized cities would be by ensuring land tenure issues. people would be motivated to develop their plots if they are assured of land ownership.

The recent heavy rains have also caused much havoc in most high density areas where houses are built in a make-shift way. We have witnessed houses falling and killing people in Mbayani, Chilobwe in Blantyre and other places in other cities. This problem of rapid urbanization surely needs to be addressed. The sooner, the better! Belated New Year greetings to all!

The issue of illegal urban settlement can be traced back to the dawn of multiparty system in 1993/1994 when most citizens mistaken democracy with the lawlessness. People could settle wherever they wanted and erect business structures along the main roads. It became very difficult for the Town Planners to enforce compliance for fear for being part of the previous regime. Having said and done as per the above, we as a nation have experienced the drawbacks of leaving people to do what they wanted. Good examples included increase in cholera cases in the late 1990s in Blantyre and Lilongwe illegal settlements coupled with increase in urban robberies as some people had no other options to earn income but only through criminal activities.

I will now try to contribute to the specific questions on this topic below:-

1. To What extent is Malawi moving towards the direction of rectifying the problems of urbanisation?

Malawi is doing considerably well in trying to redress the current problems by coming up with plans to relocate some illegal settlers like the case of Soche Mountain in Blantyre. The settlers were allocated a land in South Lunzu and the exercise was supposed to have been completed by 31.12.2011. It has however stalled perhaps due to financial hiccups. I hope it will be finalised in 2012. Some NGOs are working tirelessly in Lilongwe especially near and around Nsaru area to provide clean and portable water.

2. Have we as a country recognised this as a challenge in our midst?

Yes. The Land redistribution policy was meant to attract landless people to relocate to the rural areas because some have gone in town due to lack of land to cultivate on. Secondly the Urbanisation of Rural Areas through the Urbanisation of Rural Growth Centre to create trading centres in the rural areas has assisted some youth in villages to stay in the rural areas. There is however need to provide more civic education that life in town is too tough. Providing more business opportunities in the rural areas can encourage the youth to desist from trying their lack in the cities when they have no formal education and skills to survive.

3. What about policy framework after the review of the MGDS?

Government of Malawi through the state broadcaster should launch campaings of sensitising the youth of huge insocial justice available in the urban cities whenever income levels are too low. Programmes of sensiting the youth on the percentage of prisoners emanating from the rural areas should be propagated. Government and stakeholders should undertake studies of finding out what structures and amenities can encourage rural resetlement. Stakeholders should undertake a concrete research to find better ways of producing building materials which can suit the rural areas to improve lives of the rural masses.

Economic activities in the rural areas should be enhanced. These include rural electrification programmes and commercilisation of agriculture through viable irrigation schemes to promote production. What could be the use of maize apart from human consumption? What about promoting livestock production through increase in the maize production with a target of exporting meat products? Can we develop biodiesel through maize and save substantial forex but at the same time create jobs for a lot of Malawians?

The rest of the questions can be addressed from the solutions to the first three questions above.

The issue of illegal urban settlement can be traced back to the dawn of multiparty system in 1993/1994 when most citizens mistaken democracy with the lawlessness. People could settle wherever they wanted and erect business structures along the main roads. It became very difficult for the Town Planners to enforce compliance for fear for being part of the previous regime. Having said and done as per the above, we as a nation have experienced the drawbacks of leaving people to do what they wanted. Good examples included increase in cholera cases in the late 1990s in Blantyre and Lilongwe illegal settlements coupled with increase in urban robberies as some people had no other options to earn income but only through criminal activities.

I will now try to contribute to the specific questions on this topic below:-

1. To What extent is Malawi moving towards the direction of rectifying the problems of urbanisation?

Malawi is doing considerably well in trying to redress the current problems by coming up with plans to relocate some illegal settlers like the case of Soche Mountain in Blantyre. The settlers were allocated a land in South Lunzu and the exercise was supposed to have been completed by 31.12.2011. It has however stalled perhaps due to financial hiccups. I hope it will be finalised in 2012. Some NGOs are working tirelessly in Lilongwe especially near and around Nsaru area to provide clean and portable water.

2. Have we as a country recognised this as a challenge in our midst?

Yes. The Land redistribution policy was meant to attract landless people to relocate to the rural areas because some have gone in town due to lack of land to cultivate on. Secondly the Urbanisation of Rural Areas through the Urbanisation of Rural Growth Centre to create trading centres in the rural areas has assisted some youth in villages to stay in the rural areas. There is however need to provide more civic education that life in town is too tough. Providing more business opportunities in the rural areas can encourage the youth to desist from trying their lack in the cities when they have no formal education and skills to survive.

3. What about policy framework after the review of the MGDS?

Government of Malawi through the state broadcaster should launch campaings of sensitising the youth of huge insocial justice available in the urban cities whenever income levels are too low. Programmes of sensiting the youth on the percentage of prisoners emanating from the rural areas should be propagated. Government and stakeholders should undertake studies of finding out what structures and amenities can encourage rural resetlement. Stakeholders should undertake a concrete research to find better ways of producing building materials which can suit the rural areas to improve lives of the rural masses.

Economic activities in the rural areas should be enhanced. These include rural electrification programmes and commercilisation of agriculture through viable irrigation schemes to promote production. What could be the use of maize apart from human consumption? What about promoting livestock production through increase in the maize production with a target of exporting meat products? Can we develop biodiesel through maize and save substantial forex but at the same time create jobs for a lot of Malawians?

The rest of the questions can be addressed from the solutions to the first three questions above.