Searching for cities without slums

With rural-urban migration on the increase in Malawi, eventually, worsening levels of slums in the cities, can Malawi ever achieve a city without slums? As the country joins the rest of the world today in commemorating World Habitat Day, EPHRAIM NYONDO writes.

Joseph Nahere, his wife and three children live in a one-roomed shack in Manje Township, some kilometres from Limbe in Blantyre. The two slits in the wall that serve as windows are covered with sacks—there is hardly air being let in.

In the hot season, the tin roof that covers the shack heats up, turning the Naheres homestead into a furnace. Yet the discomfort does not end there.

Everywhere you turn, there are pools of stagnant foul liquids stuck in dugouts. The stench from rotting garbage and a mass of foul odours hangs over this highly populated township.

Electricity is a luxury they can ill afford. To draw water, the woman of the house has to make several trips to the nearest public kiosk 200 metres away, every day.

That has been Nahere’s routine since the family moved to Manje three years ago. The family has no bathroom or toilet of their own and rely on the goodwill of a neighbour.

Despite the challenges of living in the underbelly of Blantyre City, Nahere says he is happy to have a roof over his head.

“I used to pay K600 (US$9) for this place when we first moved here five years ago. Today, rent has gone up to K 2 000 (US$31). It is tough to find a house in Blantyre if you earn the little money that I do as a domestic security guard,” he says.

When it comes to the wretched existence of the urban poor in Malawi, Manje is just the tip of the iceberg and includes unplanned settlements such as Chilomoni, Ndirande, Chirimba, Khama and Mbayani in Blantyre; Chikanda and Mpondabwino in Zomba; Kawale and Mtandire in Lilongwe and Masasa and Ching’ambu, Zolozolo in Mzuzu.

According to Siku Nkhoma, executive director for the Centre for Community Organisation for Development (Ccode), the Naheres are among the over 70 percent of the urban population in Malawi who live in substandard housing which come with little or no social amenities.

She says the substandard houses can best be described as hovels, but insists that there are no slums in Malawi on the scale of Kibera, the biggest in Nairobi and home to over one million of the city’s 2.5 million slum dwellers.

“In Malawi, we do not necessarily have slums. What we have are informal settlements where people live in slum-like conditions: with poor access to housing, sanitation and water,” she says.

These informal settlements come in two forms depending on the nature of their planning. For instance, there is what the Ccode calls traditional housing areas (THAs). These are planned areas where people rent small, dilapidated housing. Many families share poor social amenities in housing areas close to areas of work, which tends to push up the cost of rent.

According to Nkhoma, settlements like Mchesi and Kawale in Lilongwe, Zingwangwa, Bangwe and some parts of Ndirande in Blantyre and Zolozolo and Chibavi in Mzuzu, fit this bill.

He explains that by contrast, there are unplanned areas where people live informally like in Chinsapo and Mtandire in Lilongwe, Mbayani and Manje in Blantyre, and Ching’ambo and Area 1B in Mzuzu.

“This is where most urban poor people live in Malawi. These places are usually congested with little or no amenities,” says Nkhoma.

In an interview earlier this year, Mtafu Manda, a researcher in urban housing and a lecturer in urban development at Mzuzu University, argued that the movement of people from rural to urban areas is growing at an alarming rate. The urbanisation rate was estimated at 4.8 percent in 1998 and about 6.7 percent after 2000, making Malawi one of the most rapidly urbanising countries in the world.

“The rapid growth of the urban population,” says Manda “is attributed not only to high rural–urban migration, but also to the tendency to extend urban boundaries to bring peri-urban areas within the purview of ratable area.”

This wave of urbanisation has been accompanied by high demand for housing.

Nkhoma advances that with high rates of urbanisation, informal settlements have grown exponentially as they become areas of choice for many and the cities are not able to cope with this demand.

“There is a lack of investment in the area of shelter provision for these people by the State. These informal settlements have grown and the awful conditions have become almost an acceptable form of housing for the urban poor,” she says.

Although such informal settlements are the only hope for many, they are a scar on the face of the country’s cities; an eyesore which town planners would gladly raze to the ground. But if recent indications are anything to go by, attempts to provide the urban poor with decent but low-cost social housing have not been successful.

But is there anything that can be done to reverse the situation?

John Chome, UN Habitat’s programme manager, argues that is possible for Malawi to have a city where the Naheres can live comfortably.

“Government needs to recognise the urbanisation of poverty which is manifested in slums and put in place the appropriate policies to address this,” he says.

Chome says for a long time, we convinced ourselves that poverty had a rural face and the city was an island of affluence.

“We need to accept that urban poverty is real and this recognition will enable  resource mobilisation to support sustainable urbanisation and urban poverty reduction in Malawi,” he says.

But to achieve this, Malawi needs a two-pronged approach, underlines Chome.

“We need to improve the conditions in the existing slums through slum upgrading. There is need to regularise existing slum settlements and improving access to basic urban services and infrastructure such as water, access to health, education and local economic development,” he says.

Then there is need for slum prevention measures.

“This requires appropriate policies and actions that enable for forward planning and investment to cater for planned urban expansion rather than reacting to urbanisation,” reasons Chome.