INAUGURAL KEYNOTE ADDRESS  DELIVERED AT THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH OF THECENTRE FOR URBAN-RURAL LINKAGES IN AFRICA  (CURLA)



 

              By
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Held on Friday 13th December 2023 at
University of Nairobi, Kenya
University of Nairobi Towers, Chandaria Auditorium  
 
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UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI 
                         
1 Professor Elijah Njuguna Ndegwa is specialist of regional human settlement planning. He served as Associate Professor of Planning at the Department of Urban and Regional, University of Nairobi, before moving to Kenyatta University in 2018. E-mail: endegwa544@gmail.com. He earned his PhD from University of Nottingham, UK after attending his Masters and Bachelor degree programmes at University of Nairobi.  
 

SALUTATIONS
Your Excellences, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good afternoon.  
I thank the almighty God for giving me the opportunity to witness the launch of this Centre for Urban-Rural Linkages in Africa here at the University of Nairobi  
I want to thank most sincerely the Executive Director of UN-HABITAT for giving her blessings to the establishment of an African Regional Centre for Urban-Rural Linkages here at the University of Nairobi. I would also like to thank the UN-HABITAT team led by Dr Remy Sietchiping, which has worked tirelessly with the University of Nairobi team to make the Centre for Urban and Rural Linkages in Africa a reality.
I thank the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nairobi, Professor Stephen Kiama for his unwavering support of the idea of bringing this centre to the University of Nairobi. This is also in recognition of the ViceChancellor’s support to the Nairobi University team, which was led by Professor Isaac Karanja Mwangi. This team, comprising Faculty Members from within and outside the Department of Urban and Regional Planning; as well as the immediate former and current Deans of the Faculty of the Built Environment and Design – Professor Robert Rukwaro and Professor Lilac Osanjo, respectively, has put in work which geared towards the establishment of this centre at the University of Nairobi.
UN-HABITAT IN NAIROBI
For me, the launch of this centre at the University of Nairobi is the actualisation of a dream I have had since 1976.
Let me explain: In 1976, I was honoured to be part of the Kenyan delegation to the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements that was held in Vancouver, Canada. Our delegation had one overarching interest:
To convince the global community to support Kenya’s bid to have UN-HABITAT. The UN Agency that was expected to come out of the UN Conference on Human Settlements is currently located in Nairobi next to UNEP, so that the two UN agencies could build synergies between themselves.  The rationality was that, if these two UN agencies, one dealing with the natural environment, while the other dealing with the built environment were located in close proximity to each other, then the two UN agencies would generate policies and programmes which could facilitate the development of human settlements where people live in dignity and prosperity without undermining the integrity of the natural environment.
Soon after that assignment, I joined the academic staff at the University of Nairobi in 1978. My hope at the time was that the presence of UN-HABITAT in Nairobi, would facilitate Kenyan institutions dealing with the built environment to build institutional bridges with UN-HABITAT. This was so that policies generated in the UN-HABITAT Governing Council meetings and from research carried out by UN-HABITAT would allow for the participation of the University of Nairobi in both policy dialogues and capacity building in the field of human settlements. That however did not happen.
Now that the Centre for Urban-Rural Linkages in Africa has finally been established to the University of Nairobi, opportunities have been created for the University of Nairobi, working with UN-HABITAT and other universities and research institutions in Africa. This will play a pivotal role in the search for and development of new paradigms to guide human settlements planning and development. As the first regional institution to be established by UN-HABITAT on building the synergetic and symbiotic linkages between Urban and Rural areas in Africa, African countries will be expecting that through this centre, UN-HABITAT will assist in developing synergetic relationships between urban and rural areas.
 
GLOBAL SOUTH CONTRIBUTION TO THEORY
Writing about the contributions of developing countries in theory development, Bjorn Hettne noted that the first remedy in challenging and hopefully dismantling dominance of the global North in planning theory and planning practice is the establishment of counter-institutions in ‘liberated zones’ for critical and independent intellectual work. It is my hope that this centre will play a role in bringing together researchers, policy makers and planning professionals in search of best practice solutions for rural-urban linkages.  
 
There is a growing interest in how the global south will contribute to planning theory, planning practice, policy dialogue and in the development of human settlements where people live in dignity, have access to secure means of livelihood and where people live in harmony with one another and with the environment. These are some of the research areas where the Centre for Urban and Rural linkages in Africa can engage with relevant stakeholders in search for solutions to problems facing Africa. This constitutes building human settlements where people will identify as their home and where symbiotic linkages between urban and rural areas will be strengthened.  
 
URBAN-RURAL LINKAGES
UN-HABITAT has defined urban-rural linkages as:  
non-linear, diverse urban-rural interactions and linkages across space within an urban-rural continuum, including flows of people, goods, capital and information but also between sectors and activities such as agriculture, services and manufacturing. In general, they can be defined as a complex web of connections between rural and urban dimensions  
This scope of urban-rural linkages has been accepted by many governments in Africa. For instance, the Government of Kenya, in her (1970-1974) Development Plan, recognised that symbiotic urban-rural linkages are critical drivers of national and sub-national development processes. To achieve that goal, the government launched a Growth and Service Centres Policy. This was intended to encourage government ministries, the private sector and community groups to channel their investments towards designated urban centres. It was with the hope of creating opportunities for improving livelihoods for people living in the urban centres and those living in the hinterlands of designated urban and service centres.  In the 1979-1983 Development Plan, the Kenya government noted that rural life could not be complete without towns any more than towns could not be complete without access to the countryside. That became the objective of Government policy; to promote the growth of a number of towns to a large enough size so as to provide people living in such urban areas as well as those living in their hinterlands, with commensurate facilities, amenities and opportunities.  
 
However, in spite of the high expectations that urban-rural linkages would benefit both urban and rural areas, there are few success stories from Africa where synergetic and symbiotic linkages between urban and rural areas have been developed. In African countries where national and sub-national governments prepare development plans every five years or so, the Centre for Urban and Rural Linkages in Africa can explore possibilities of collaborating with such governments so that the centre’s expertise can be placed at their disposal.  
 
TWO HERITAGES OF TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT SCENES IN AFRICA
There are two heritages that are considered as having accounted for the territorial development today. First, is the colonial heritage, with the second one being the ‘African indigenous’ heritage.  
Colonial Heritage
As the colonial enterprise penetrated and permeated Africa some of traditional periodic market centres were adopted as administrative centres from where colonies were administered. It is clear that colonial powers were interested in development strategies that enabled them to extract highest returns from Africa for their mother countries.
Missionaries also established centres in Africa from where they could evangelise Africans. The colonial administrations and missionaries built community facilities such as health facilities, schools and established places of religious worship from where missionaries passed on to Africans, values and ways of life that they considered to be superior to what Africans had. Young Africans who excelled in reading and writing in the language of missionaries and colonial administrators were taken to schools and universities in missionaries’ and administrators’ home countries to be exposed to greater appreciation, understanding and learning of the missionaries’ and administrators’ Great Britain.
In her book, “How the Other Half Dies”, Susan George noted that ‘elites’ who were trained in Europe and American universities, were often exposed to experiences that made them believe that western civilisation and its development models and lifestyle were the best; so that when the trainees returned home, they continued to champion, as aide-de-camps, the adoption of western lifestyle and approaches in nation building.
Africans who were, trained abroad were considered to have mastered colonial administrators’ and missionaries’ mission in coming to Africa. They were recruited and charged with the responsibility of continuing and extending horizons of colonial administrators’ concerns for maintenance of law and order and in extending development activities to areas that had not been fully reached by the time African countries gained independence. I am aware that there is controversy as to whether what was left behind by colonial administrators in particular, and what was passed on to African elite during the transition from colonial rule to independent African countries is what has continued to guide planning and development of human settlements in Africa. Perhaps, this is an area that the Centre can explore
Indigenous African Heritage
A question that can be in the mind of each one of you is: “What can the centre draw from Indigenous African heritage in fulfilling its mandate?” l speculate that answers to this question by each one of you will vary. The variation will depend on your respective world views on account of equally varied experiences, perspectives on Africa’s post-independent development history, education and socio-economic background, among others.   
Overall however, after taking over the state power from former and receding colonialists, many founding fathers of African nations desired to take their newly independent African nations back to their African roots for philosophical and ideological inspiration on how to build their independent African nations.  
For instance, Minogue and Molloy5 have reported President Ahmed Seko Toure of the Republic of Guinea to have told his people at independence that:
Each must return to the cultural and moral springs of Africa, reintegrate his own conscience, and re-adapt his thoughts and action to the values and conditions and interests of Africa. The economy must rediscover its African personality. Laws must also be formulated on the basis of the African personality (Verify quotation).  
In Tanzania President Mwalimu Julius Kabarage Nyerere believed that success in building a new Tanzanian nation required Tanzanians to go back to Africa roots, draw on the African spirit of family-hood i.e. “Ujamaa”; the values in which individuals and communities working together provided and really deepened a basis of African socialism. After all, the individuals working on their own and within social groups in their communities strove for the greater good of their society.
In Kenya, President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, mobilised Kenyans to come out and build a new Kenya nation through his call of “Harambee”. In “Harambee” spirit Mzee Kenyatta extolled the value of “all Kenya pulling together” as they worked to build the new Kenya nation as their forefathers always did when faced with a heavy task because they believed that in unity there is strength.   
In Senegal, President Léopold Sédar Senghor advanced the view that African traditions, offset by the progressivism of Western socialism, would ensure a strong Africa and that African way of life transcended the past to the present and that building of African nations ought to have adopted open approaches to new ideas to inform development and change.
 
In Uganda, President Milton Apollo Obote embraced what he called “The Common Man’s Charter” in his quest to move Uganda’s socio-economic development orientation away from capitalism and towards socialism. The aim was to bring about equity between the developed urbanised regional territories in the south and south-west Uganda and marginalised rural communities in the north and north east.  
Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda embraced a national-socialist ideology that he called Zambian Humanism. He combined planning for centralised development organised around state control and three
African values, namely: mutual aid, trust and loyalty to the community. Writing about Zambia’s African socialist ideology, Henry S. Meebelo points out President Kaunda underlined that Zambian humanism:
 
“…centres around the importance of Man – Man in the rural areas as well as in the urban areas; indeed, Man everywhere.”, emphasising “…the concept of man-centredness like Zambian humanism itself, has its origins in Traditional African society… African village way of life as paragon of social organisation which modern Zambia would emulate… We have got to translate it to national level”
The founding leaders of African nations believed that adoption of African traditions applied at the national and sub-national levels was the best foundations for building emerging independent African nations.  
 
A common philosophical thread running throughout colonialism-independence interphase era in the new African nations, was the nurture and inculcation of principles governing the practices in the roles and functions of the members within indigenous African family. “Family Spirit” and community political, social and economic ethics – all encased it in African communalism and focusing on elevating African socialism into a the driving force in nation building and development. The new independent government of President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya was, perhaps, the most bold of all. The government formulated a formal policy, to nationalize the family spirit and community political, social and economic ethics in the “Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965 on African Socialism and Its Application to Planning in Kenya”.8 The sessional paper says this about working together as members of a family in nation building: 
“Mutual social responsibility is an extension of the African family spirit to the nation as a whole, with the hope that ultimately the same spirit can be extended over larger areas. It implies a mutual responsibility by society and its members to do their very best for each other with the full knowledge and understanding that if society prospers its members will share in that prosperity and that society cannot prosper without the full cooperation of its members”.9  
Looking at how benefits of economic growth are shared in many African countries it appears the tradition of mutual social responsibility is not guiding leaders in sharing of benefits of economic growth. In Kenya, under the 2010 Constitution, and within a devolved governance system, measures have been put in place to ensure that all Kenyans can share the benefits of national economic growth.   
Significance of the Centre
The Centre for Urban-Rural Linkages in Africa that has been launched today can spearhead research on why African traditions and values such as integrity, honesty and hard work as sources of sustainable livelihood and as pillars of nation building do not appear to appeal to a new generation of African leaders. The Centre can carry out research on how traditional Africans designs in settlements planning and development of individual homestead and villages have not be can be adapted in the planning and development of neighbourhoods and housing estates in African cities and urban centres to reflect the face of Africa. This can be an area that the centre can explore with a view to finding out how African values can be incorporated in the planning and development of African cities and urban areas. It is clear, from demographic trends in many African countries that majority of Africans will be living in cities and urban areas by 2030 and beyond.  
 
URBAN-RURAL LINKAGES IN SUSTAIBALE DEVELOPMENT
The awakened interest in urban-rural linkages after a 20-year lull (1985-2005) brought the urban-rural linkages debate to the fore of human settlements policy debate and global practices deliberations within the United Nations especially UN-HABITAT. It also attracted research by University scholars focusing on the urban-rural divide perspective famously called the urban-rural dichotomous spheres of socio-economic development and settlement patterns.10 Each of the two was perceived as distinct sphere from the other. This dominant view was spiced with views on rural areas as resource hinterlands of nodal market places, small and intermediate town that planners, development managers and policy makers strive to placate regional planning; the preponderant contradictions in urban-rural relations.11 
                         
A “Sessional Paper” formally, communicates official government policy to bide politicians, professionals and technical officers working in Government, and citizen on subject(s) particular sessional paper covers. In Kenya the “sessional paper” was known as “White Paper” before independence in 1963.
KENYA, REPUBLIC OF (1965:4) Sessional Paper No 10 on African Socialism and Its Application to Planning in Kenya. Nairobi: Government Printer. 
See FUNNELL, D.C. (1988). Urban-Rural Linkages: Research Themes and Directions. Geografiska Annaler.
Series B, Human Geography, 70 (2) 267-274
MUTIZWA-MANGIZA, N. (1999). Rural-Urban Linkages. Habitat Debate, 5(1), 5-6; TACOLI, C.  (2002). Changing rural-urban interactions in sub-Saharan Africa and their impact on livelihoods: a summary. London: International Institute for Environment and Development; and
TACOLI, C. (1998) Rural-Urban Interactions: A Guide to the Literature. Environment and Urbanization 10(1), 147166. 
See TACOLI, C. (1998). Bridging the divide: rural-urban interactions and livelihood strategies. London:
International Institute for Environment and Development.  
SATTERTHWAITE, D. AND TACOLI, C. (2003). The urban part of rural development: the role of small and intermediate urban centres in rural and regional development and poverty reduction. London: International Institute for Environment and Development.  
 
The conference on “Urban-Rural Linkages Approach to Regional Development” organised by UN-HABITAT in 2005, not only rekindled stalled debate on Urban Rural linkages but this time round UN-HABITAT stayed away from the age-old urban-rural divisive “dichotomy”.12 The focus was, however, on how urban-rural linkages can bring mutual benefit to both urban and rural communities.  
This shift happened mid-way in the implementation of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (2000-2015). The adoption of the New Urban Agenda (NUA) at Habitat III – the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development providing the framework for implementing 2015 sustainable development goals (SDGs), the successor to MDGs; underpinned the urgent need for bringing the urban-rural linkages in their functional as well as tangible reality, to bear and play a role in the multi-levels of spatial organisation, multiple sectors of resource use and development as well as multiplicity of stakeholders that characterise human society today. This has placed Urban-Rural Linkages right at centre of development and sustainability discourses. Now, more than ever before, the “hits” and “misses” of the United Nations and African countries came to an end with the launch of the Centre of Urban and Rural Linkages in Africa which we have just witnessed.  
  
PATHWAY THE CENTRE CAN TAKE IN FULFILLING ITS MANDATE
Now that the centre has been officially launched, African countries can be expected to fully support the Centres’ operations for a number of reasons. Here I mention two that come to mind.
  
First, the centre can expect support from African countries because there are high hopes that UN-HABITAT has established the first regional centre to study urban-rural linkages in Africa. Institutions that have interest in gaining better understanding on how synergies in the urban–rural nexus can contribute in anchoring socially dynamic, economically productive and environmentally sustainable. Understanding the forward and backward linkages in urban and rural territorial development processes can be enhanced by teaming-up with the CURLA for mutual benefit.  
  
Secondly, the centre can count on Africa to provide researchers and field stations where CURLA can conduct research to test applicability of different theoretical propositions in the development of human settlements in Africa. This can be expected to create opportunities for CURLA as it interacts with policy makers and other professionals working in the built environment. Such professionals include city and municipality engineers, city and municipal managers, natural resource scientists, practitioners in the planning industry, experts in the humanities, investors and other stakeholders.   
 
Although CURLA is not a teaching unit within the University of Nairobi in the conventional understanding of teaching departments, it is within the UN-HABITAT mandate, as a centre of excellence for evidence-based knowledge generation through research on urban-rural linkages. As a centre of knowledge generation and skills impartation on urban-rural linkages to policy makers especially those whose mandates include development of policies on how synergetic and symbiotic relationships between cities, municipalities, urban centres and the rural areas can be achieved.  The centre has to move fast but also with due diligence in building multi-disciplinary teams to ensure that policy briefs and planning guidelines by researchers and
                         
RODER, W. (1973). Growth Centre Theory and Village Development. South Africa. Journal of African Affairs, 3(2), 110; MOSELEY, M.J. (1974). Growth Centers in Spatial Planning: A Volume in Pergamon Urban and Regional.
Oxford, UK: Pergamon Press.
ERTUR, O.S. (1984). A Growth-Centre Approach to Agropolitan Development. Habitat International 8(2), 61-72; and GAILE, G. L. (1992). Improving Rural-Urban Linkages through Small Town Market-Based Development. Public Administration and Development, 12. 513-517. 
12 UN-HABITAT (2005). Urban-Rural Linkages Approach to sustainable Development. UN-Complex, Nairobi: UNHabitat.
experts are of the highest quality in order to build confidence in the centre across Africa and beyond.  
 
This centre can prepare modules for capacity building for policy makers, up-to-date territorial planning modules, as well as sustainable natural resources management modules that can be passed to professionals in the built environment, policy makers, policy analysts, natural resource managers and many other experts. This will enable all actors in the built environment to work together in search of sustainable and synergetic urban-rural linkages.  
 
Africa is happy that a decision has been taken in the UN-HABITAT to establish the first Centre for Urban and Rural Linkages in Africa. We believe that as this centre embarks on activities of its programmes, it will demonstrate to African governments that synergetic and symbiotic linkages between urban and rural areas are possible. Along the way, the researchers and experts will also underpin its contribution as a centre of excellence among regional and global institutions where research, capacity development, mentoring the youth and policy work strive to inform the planning and development of sustainable and inclusive human settlements.
 
Working together with stakeholders, the CURLA will equip with appropriate skills; policy makers, planners and other stakeholders in the built environment that will enable them to deliver innovative urban and rural linkages that are socially, economically and ecologically beneficial to the people living in urban and rural areas.   
 
I conclude with an English translation of the first stanza of Tanzania’s and South Africa National Anthems:  
 
God Bless Africa.
Bless its leaders.
Let Wisdom, Unity and Peace be the shield of Africa and its people.
 
I thank you for giving me opportunity to share these thoughts with you
 
 

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