 Thank you very much, Vernon. I think since we're a useful set of evocations as you call them, around how we can use some of your ideas around strategies for increasing economic density in your argument, that's what we're going to do with applicants. So what we're going to do is have a go-around of some initial top-of-the-mind thoughts from the panel we've got. I've been mentioning that we've got a very diverse and interesting panel here, and all of them, I think, will have different vantage points on the issues that have been raised by Vernon. Kate, I'd like to start with you. I must confess that I don't have a watch, and I left my phone in my handbag. So we're going to do this family style. If my shoe hits your head, it means... Okay, good. We've got a timekeeper who's more civilized. So Kate, we'll start with you. We'll do a go-around, and we'll just do it in a quick flow, and then get into more of a discussable role. Thank you very much, everyone. I've been briefed to talk about the informal economy. It was mentioned that the African informal economies have remained large despite rapid urbanization. Now, I want to point out first, the informal economy has not just remained large. It is being informalized. It's grown from 73% of the non-agricultural labor force around 2000 to 77% by 2017-2018. And this is the result of a combination of jobless growth and rapid population growth. Now, while some people are making it up as they go along in the way that one of our earlier speakers described, many of them have systems. Informal economies involve sectors, involve traders' networks, taxi associations, light engineering clusters in Kenya's Dua Kali, or Deepa computer cluster where people make and repair computers. So there's a lot going on in the informal economy, including training and supply systems, et cetera. West and Southern African informal economies are very different. Southern African informal economies are very comparatively small, 30%, 40% of the non-agricultural labor force. In West Africa, they're much larger, 70%, 80%, 90%, and also much more complex, much more diversified, much greater and more extensive systems. Now, the issues of connectivity and formalization have been raised as a way of connecting the informal economy into the wider urban system and the global economy. Now, I agree these are important, but they're important in terms of what they do, not just in terms of how fast they occur. Formalization creates, perhaps, new markets, digital apps and digital connections within formal activities, but there's a real risk in what's been going on of cosmetic formalization, which modernizes appearances, fancy markets, digital apps, et cetera, without actually transforming incomes, livelihoods, working conditions in ways that actually make people's lives better off rather than just prettier. There's also a disorganization of informal spatial arrangements in ways that make it more difficult for people to carry on livelihoods because the spatial structures and new buildings are not appropriate to what they're trying to do. With regard to connections, we have more digital apps, global value chains, handyman apps and taxi apps, et cetera, which tend to tap rather than enable the informal economy. They are inclusive of some, but they are not inclusive of the majority, and they tend to cherry pick the lucrative niches of the informal economy while leaving behind the vast majority who don't have the capital or the skills to be able to rent stalls by sufficiently advanced smart phones, et cetera, to participate. That means that these connections leave many behind, and formalization leaves many behind and where does this inciting majority go? And I'll stop here with a reminder that the inciting majority, and that's remember we're talking about 77% of the non-agricultural labor force across South Africa, that inciting majority are still there. And you will hear from them, both governments and investors, they will undermine the productivity of any urban investments if they are not integrated into the racial plan. Thank you. Can I go over to you? All right. So a lot of my research is really operating on a much smaller scale. We've been looking at a very specific neighborhood in Abizalabah, which is Mercado, for the past five years. And over the past few years, we've expanded the research to Kaya Koum and Yarsman. And we're particularly interested in African urban marketplaces because we believe they are the best predictors of where the city will be. I think the best way to understand where Abizalabah will be ten years from now is by carefully analyzing Mercado today. And I think the phenomenon which is extremely fascinating about Mercado is just the notion of collective ownership. The fact that these merchants were able to form cooperatives and build to them all themselves. So I think whenever a particular regime imposes certain constraints, let's say a certain local development plan, this collective ownership system allows them to be somewhat subversive while maintaining the use patterns that they've always had in that neighborhood. But when you shift this over to Kaya Koum, where the neighborhood was really part of the segregationist colonial policy to separate African Tanzanians from Indian Tanzanians and European settlers, in that case, the urban framework was really fragmented. So you look at blocks that were designed to have about 68 Swahili homes, single-storey Swahili homes. And now each one of those blocks are being developed into 13, 14-storey condos. But what is different from Mercado is the fact that in Kaya Koum, because they are owned by individual investors, they are primarily profit-driven. So you have a situation now where a lot of the residential units are actually being transformed into storage spaces. So in a competitive real estate condition, the residential units are being absorbed by the market on the ground floor. So I think that the most important thing when dealing with these urban conditions in Africa is understanding the ownership structures and how that can help us maintain a certain level of leverage, even when the structure is somewhat impressive. Thanks, Emmanuel. So now we're going to go over to the other side Thank you. Thank you. So I will try to talk a little bit about what are we doing in Sylabs. The problem we are trying to solve it, the urban aspect of Sylabs, and finally what's happening now in Sylabs. So when I founded Sylabs three years ago, I was just trying to solve my own problems. I had two entrepreneurial experience before Sylabs and it was very difficult. I struggled a lot before filing and after that I realised how much I was and the entrepreneurs were very isolated from all what they need. I mean clients, partners, mentors and certainly other entrepreneurs. So I wanted to create space, a space where entrepreneurs can get out from all other problems and get out from isolation. So this was the beginning. Today we are working on all the problems that are not really related to startups and entrepreneurs. For example, we discovered these problems during the journey. For example, we found out that recruitment was a very, very big issue for young businesses and for corporate as well. So we created services about that. On the other side, we discovered that technology wasn't used as widely as it should be in the country. For example, I don't know for other cities, but in Algeria for the most people, Internet is just social media and the catalyst website. So we tried to help people, to create people to explore more things on technology and to create something about it, create value about technology. So we are trying to learn from all this on a daily basis to create something and to have an optimal impact. I think I need to talk a little bit about open. Because I'm in open, yeah, I'll be very quick. So the open aspect of CELARVES, the first one was location. We need to be located in somewhere where we can get people. So we are very sometimes we are located in downtown and nearly because we can have bus station and metro station and we can be accessible. And the other part of being downtown I think is very important is inclusion because we could have space in very fancy neighborhood where we can meet with embassies and people for it. But I think it would be, have been away from our purpose which is gather on auto-coronauts. I will get quick think about what's happening in Algeria. There is a lot of good things happening. For example, the worry of Algeria, the governor of Algeria create a big project to start Algeria Smart City. And I think we need just... And actually I trained to implement local innovation on the management of the open of Algeria. And I think it's very, very good because we can prove by fact how smart innovative businesses can affect the daily life of city. Thank you. Thank you for having you all sprint along. Thank you for doing this. We'll come back into this discussion. We've had a minute talk to us about money. Yes. Different kinds of money. I've learned when you attend these conferences there's two important things outside of the innovations. One, the city. Secondly, the cocktail. I've seen it before. Missed the City 12 but I managed to sneak into the cocktail to keep my interest at 100%. And in that half hour that I was there I managed to actually meet the landlord. And there was a question I asked him about the genesis of Algeria itself. I was informed it's rich history of this country. And what I learned is that in 1886 there was a merger of different in the kingdom together which was obviously confident that I would give you a research and I thought I would. I want to dive into the aspect of funding the genesis of a city is kind of informed where we are from a funded perspective. And I'll give about three or four examples. If you look at a city like San Francisco that was essentially built upon the gold nothing to liberate the first one up against the price. And after that there was a form of structure that came out of the case. If you look at Johannesburg quite similar then if you come to cities like Potap or Nigeria there was a preliminary structure of administration and then after that post-1912 into the 50s it was discovered by the way. So there's a blend between the aspect of administration and who the powers are and then the research. So there's a confidence of research on one side and the politics of the other. I'm from Kampala which essentially was the colonial capital that was maintained and as far as I know we have not struck gold, we're not far away. But what you have is a large catchment area of consumers. I think it's been about two and a half million people right now. And from the perspective of capital that's being invested in our country or city for that matter there is a strong trust towards the consumption side of capital. And again you talked earlier about the constraints that come with timelines and expectations to turn around the capital very quickly it is not the right form of capital for long term planning for the city. So we need to move away from consumption certainly to the aspect of production which goes back into your aspects of pension reform your tertiary institutions your education system vocational training et cetera et cetera. So the dimension around capital needs to balance the attractiveness of FDI but certainly tap into local capital that can essentially move beyond the horizon of private equity that really stops it around seven or eight. So I just want to touch quickly on the point you're making about the informal plan it is the economic plan that's set in South Africa but I want to distinguish between the two more seconds. The aspects of the formal arts are being able to produce as opposed to being able to consume. So the opportunity that is looking at the informal protocol they'll make forms they'll watch football they'll probably use it on the right but the aspect of production itself is something that we really need to talk about. Thank you. So we've been talking about capital and I think we're going to talk about some key things about FDI. So my area of expertise is what China is doing in Africa and I thought it was like this your mind might go immediately to the infrastructure side on the investment side because it has just as much if not more of an impact on these questions not just of urbanization, productivity production employment skills, the future of youth and so on then even infrastructure does in my opinion. So over the last few years that we can see we've carried out a very large scale research project where we've actually gone out and visited more than a thousand Chinese firms already operating in Africa and what we found from that were several surprising things. So first of all Chinese investment is the fastest growing and already one of the largest sources of investment private investment into Africa but beyond the size what is important is also the composition of this investment what sector is it going into and unlike other sources of FDI the third of the Chinese firms operating in Africa today are in manufacturing that is very very unique as the other speakers have pointed out throughout getting that manufacturing share up in cities is critically important for the future of work in Africa as well as the future of how these cities evolve economically and socially. So the other thing that's really surprising about what Chinese investment in Africa is doing is the impact on market modernization so this question of innovation we were very surprised to find that half of all of the Chinese firms operating in Africa have actually introduced a new product or service into their African market and a third of them have introduced a new technology and this is being done in business models that are already selling so this is not donor based this is not socially motivated capital this is purely private capital finding ways to bring innovation in a sustainable way into their markets now very quickly let me switch to the infrastructure side because obviously Chinese money Chinese firms are already the largest providers of financing but also the largest builders of large scale infrastructure in Africa today but what I want to focus us on is large bridges, roads these sorts of projects that are on the news all the time because we all know about those I want to focus our attention on special economic zones because I think that is the urban form that is most critical most complicated and best illustrates these complexities of this dynamic between investment infrastructure and the future of urbanization in Africa what's been alluded to is that in China of course special economic zones are the urban form that has most encouraged the development of a middle class people's movement out of poverty encouraging people to work in manufacturing and so not surprisingly Chinese efforts in Africa have also repeatedly tried to develop and help African firms develop and also have Chinese private capital develop special economic zones what I'll just say in the last minute is that it is extremely mixed with years been successes and has not so far at least really encouraged the sort of constituted long rated economic activity that rises to global productivity levels now Hwasa here in Ethiopia may be the emergence of an exception to that but it's fascinating that the Chinese themselves have not quite figured out how to do in Africa at least yet what it has done so far in China you've done that and you're worth a lot of the entrepreneurial it's actually really interesting to listen to Ricardo talk about capital and investment you remind me so much of the men that built America I think some of us have actually watched a series about that most of America let's be honest was built on efforts of entrepreneurs people like Carnegie people like Ford Kampala and I run an enterprise we recycle plastic we collect plastic waste and we make affordable eyewear just like what I'm wearing and we also make affordable building materials like interlocking blocks with a long time plan of providing low cost housing so what am I trying to say here is that all the things that you mentioned are actually intertwined raising capital stepholders in city castle and building cities everything is intertwined together with startups entrepreneurship and business so a little bit of my experience most people at all in the capital are raised from my for my business I have raised from outside of Uganda so people from the US people from Australia are investing in my business when I walk to Uganda they don't understand what I'm doing which is actually really surprising if we're going to build our country if we're going to build Africa we need to see the opportunities second thing is I see I mean there's been legacy systems being built by city councils and all different stakeholders here they've given a lot of opportunity to legacy businesses people that have improved their business right however they're not listening to the real way of doing things and I think innovation we're driving the face of innovation young people are driving the face of innovation we're not looking for grants or just a competition we create a competition and somebody wins a prize we want revenue we want to be given an opportunity to get revenue so when we start building we want to be part of that and I think that's exactly what I want to reflect the most about today thank you I want to blow up a little bit on what I've said we're going to talk this morning that Africa's African cities have closed the doors to international business I don't think so and now after a process which is the ongoing of FDI was the best we look at these the infrastructure and quickly evaluate if actually these paradigms that run on perfected FDI organizations are still valuable in producing good results and it's privilege of the researchers which I am one in those kind of situations and so we have actually looked at the spatial imprint that has been left by such a lot of zones and as to a part the research took us from the margins of the EU in Bulgaria, Turkey actually following the thing straight into Andes where a company had just recently relocated to from Turkey where wages were rising and shipping so Andes became a new destination in fact for another of the companies around the world it's very very impressive how the European government was responding to this with a structural century plan effort for installing an effort of infrastructures for discrimination of those global goods this very company that we follow has in fact now is moving on to put in a hassle because the wages are rising and they're looking for another sort of opportunity to make those profit so I'm worried, definitely worried about this sort of development impatient capital mentioned this morning sort of predatory behavior of these businesses and their kind of traces indeed from the factory with the danger, I'm not saying all but the danger of leaving these global factories sort of highly sensitized it is developed at the expense of the rest of the city it adds to it does not improve the structural fragmentation of the city and it's not anchored it doesn't anchor the global value chains in production at worst within distinct places and existing structural systems of the city so I would argue for two points for much more local pushing for more local resource based approaches which actually provide these kind of linkages including linkages to over constructed cities or urban informalities that Manuel's been researching looking at these enclaves they are far apart from the city mostly outside the shape of the satellite cities and they are creating sort of densities which we should worry about because they are densities that are densities for the few mostly for the rich they may create traps so instead of density I would actually in centralities I would propose a counter paradigm of polycentricity and this is exactly where European cities are moving towards we are thinking of decentralizing the cities we are looking for qualities of the periphery dispersal of functions new forms of lift work arrangements across the city and more longer in centralities shape they take so I am with Emmanuel that we should be much more looking at other kind of working with the city that includes constructed neighborhoods and think about instead of building visions that are at odds with the city that we have built on the sort of the vibrancy of the city that there is so thank you all for your generosity accomplishing the rapid fire round and I think what we'd like to be now and I don't even know how much time we've got for a quick round table conversation about 10 minutes for it and maybe you can just see that there is an upgrade in the country a number of people that take our raise we want more attention in our relations that we face right so we are thinking about how in case people have to act at all outside because we are not mobilizing internally we are also acknowledging that we have to mobilize what is internal and internal workplaces are the solutions they are being built in and there is a lot of different people and if we go to work we have to some extent what we are also reminded by one of the articles that there are some sort of sort of acts of real economies and that's not to evoke innovation and that's the future of future economies and innovation driven our ecosystems perhaps are not strong enough and well aligned enough we talk about where actors are we have the ability to mobilize resources where we need them we understand our ability to leverage external actors in ways that are beneficial I assume not only to introduce innovation but also enable the emergence of innovation so any one of my eight questions that I'm opening up is subject to everybody if I were there what you suggest to me what kind of policy directions could I take that begin to acknowledge your space, capital, people all that has been told about it would actually enable enable what is happening as opposed to being unfortunate and I raised this specifically in a long position earlier this day about how often the instincts are to develop new infrastructure to do new things and bases out there rather than to really concentrate including the enormous cases and the efforts and the amount of spread that people are already making so not just saying the young people that have had a thought we are really able to do what they are trying to do so do you give me some advice for what specific things we could be doing to consider it differently that would lead to any representation that we understand this is part of what I'm asking I think part of the issue is that we are suffering from a lack of imagination when it comes to representing African cities so I feel like we always end up resorting to the same pie charts when the most interesting parts of these cities are their strategic invisibility basically there are ways in which people choose to not make their strategies visible especially for outside audiences in order to maintain leverage so I think we need to come up with more robust and complex ways of representing cities whether it's the language or the drawings or the pie charts we need to find other ways of building value systems from within because the tendency is always to superimpose the value systems that are imported from elsewhere and I understand this doesn't necessarily apply to the entrepreneurial questions but I do think when we're discussing the rights of the city and when we're discussing issues of porosity and exclusivity then we need to represent the cities with more complexity The diversity of models I assume are scarred by the figures written in on the issue of ownership versus owner you are also not surprised it has 90% private ownership that's exactly why everybody is a tenant and so you talked about collective ownership models and maybe those are possibilities maybe not in Nairobi but just this idea that there are contradictions between these things but Vernon you wanted to come in here I just have a comment I mean nobody's talked about education In school we train in African cities more than that Friday is not pretty and the question is what's happening on the ground in terms of education programs there for kids to if I look at the attendance rates in Africa they break a lot of 13 year olds in school but they won't even be able to grade children that's not a very good so I'm just saying human capital is out there to talk about this but I know you've mentioned this so you want to come in here the amount of education is key I think when we had reforms in our education system there was very much a quantitative metric that was driving kids in school take the boxes and then have a cocktail after recently in the context of a more globalised economy where we're looking to substitute imports there's got to be there's a reversal to the template where technical skills combined with contemporary approaches to education education is being driven I think there's a blend between the private sector and the public sector I'm currently working with a couple of investors who are developing an STI in a career capacity a science tech innovation hub that is going to try and change the script somewhat on these teenage kids who we need to drive the next year innovation like Brenda is doing so it's a process I think it starts there but again the capital is typically available it does not have a generation so we have to apply our minds how better to raise our economy it's very important what you mentioned about education and specifically education that's aimed at improving particularly manufacturing and technical skills for people to be able to work in the factories that are actually coming up secondly I think we also need to be careful not to just copy paste solutions and I think that's something that needs to be I know there's something that works in different countries they wouldn't be able to work in a compiler we need to take care of certain intrinsic challenges and appreciate the differences and the cultural differences that actually make us who we are and then that's how we can build our cities so I think I would actually broaden the conversation from education to skills and those two things in developing country context can actually be quite different so if you look at the history of how countries that have industrialized and developed sustainably have done it they have not done so in the first phase by reforming education systems they have done so by creating mass employment where workers can plug in even though they are not very educated and then they can rise they can become part of global levels of productivity businesses and then their kids get formally educated at the high school or college level right and so I think it just underscores the need that African cities have to actually attract the sort of investment in manufacturing and industry that actually allows workers who today by and large are not primarily high school or college educated at least not in the real sense even if they have the diploma to plug into productive systems and then that starts the gear wheel turning towards skills development and also towards the future generations of being more formally educated and I think that leads me to this notion that when we talk about innovation I think there is often a conflation with invention and with technology and I would emphasize innovation with a small eye which is how do you become more productive how do you do things faster how do you get to that global level of competitiveness and productivity right it's about methods it's about these unsexy kinds of innovation rather than about inventing stuff or digitizing stuff so I was curious what your thoughts were on Irene's reflections on trying to make the technology as a modality of work so of course in your research you've reflected on the complexity of these informal value chains the cluster that does happen specialization and so and I'm curious whether you thought that there's conversation to be had about not, if you all disagree those systems that you study and document and the possibility of converting that into formats that look something like the economy's own model or not and whether that echoes what you're talking about about a more policy-centric set of nodes where this kind of economic generation can happen so I was just curious from your research point of view of the data whether there's a compatibility or whether the model that the Chinese have kind of really in some ways effectively in the Chinese context whether that can be appropriated in some way in the African context and maybe answer some of the questions that the Chinese have been talking about against in Africa Thank you I think the special economic zone has some potential but it's also problematic for a number of reasons one, it is a node of labor and formalization and a lot of people who are coming out of school systems in African cities they're not looking to be low-value labor in a special economic zone they're actually looking for something a bit more meaningful and I think they're the class level of work provision that constitutes meaningful employment for different classes of people it's absolutely critical Young graduates don't want to be workers, lowly workers in manufacturing activity or informal workers at the bottom of a value chain they actually want to move into higher tech or managerial positions the sorts of things that a few of our speakers have promoted and I think that these kind of startups are great for creating higher level jobs or supporting these kinds of groups rather than creating space for the Ubers and the international types of fancy startups to come in there are other people highly trained as well, highly skilled who are informal occupational groups the taxi drivers who have road knowledge and mechanical knowledge, the computer cluster workers who can build and repair shoemakers, etc who have all kinds of skills and who actually want to be doing those things who can be supported through systems, there are apprenticeship systems, highly developed in West Africa God, I used to have a brilliant Swami magazine system where they've supported upgrading, technical upgrading within informal light engineering systems all of these things have been run down for the last several years the Jua Kali system in Kenya can use significant assistance in the investment in technical upgrading rather than just being displaced by some kind of new quiz digital things and putting these people at the bottom of a value chain so I think what planners need to focus on more is engaging with the imperatives of creating meaningful work and what that means and that means not just flashy start-ups who are very useful for creating more high value jobs and deserve support but they're not going to employ the bulk of the informal labor force and again we're talking about roughly 77% of the non-agricultural labor force. Second of all the Chinese involvement which I think has been highly useful and productive but if Chinese involvement means that Chinese firms are moving into small-scale manufacturing and moving into retail trade they're displacing a critical area of job creation in Africa which is not going to end well. I think China has a huge role to play in job creation technical upgrading infrastructure etc but it's really important as Tandikam Kandawiriya has said over and over again China has a plan for Africa it is absolutely vital that Africa have a clear plan for China so we're going to suit up into the floor but I won't hurry maybe to come back in on this and also just throw in the fact that of course in the last month or so China has adopted a new framework for urbanization in China that I think there's a recognition that the Chinese urban model is unsustainable from an economic and from an environmental perspective and I'm always curious why there seems to be a very sophisticated discussion about the vanity within the Chinese context it's a space when Chinese invests a while in Africa to invest in urban form and what's the scope to have a joint discussion as the Chinese sort of machine tries to grapple with these questions to have those discussions in the African context as well because of course the interdependence and the connection is only going to strengthen over the next couple of decades so after our range response we're going to open to the floor so as you can imagine this is a very wanting form and opinionated audience so there's going to be many takers so if you can have your question sharp and prepared we will then take a round of questions from the floor so what I want to bring into this discussion is the understanding of how it is that you build manufacturing centers in general and this is outside of the experience of just Africa just outside of the experience of just China if you look globally at where manufacturing has moved over the last two centuries it's always been through a combination of having labor a labor pool that's relatively cheap locally but then the seed of a foreign investment that has the technical and practical know-how of knowing how to run factories at the productivity frontier globally now the issue of manufacturing in Africa today is that it's subscale and it's far from in general far from that productivity frontier globally so it's serving local markets it's not generally competitive for export right and so what it means is both of those things the demographic explosion here means that there is that labor pool but it needs the seed of investment with that know-how in China itself China did not have this it also had that seed two generations ago from Hong Kong, from Taiwan, from Korea, from Japan right and now Chinese investors are going out and one of the places it's landing is in Africa but it's not the only place they're going to Southeast Asia they're also going to Bangladesh all over the place and so one of the questions for Africa is can Africa receive, win as large of that share of that technical know-how that innovating with a small eye that knows how to run factories at that global frontier to employ these masses of people from the demographic explosion the factories already operating here is that there is no issue of job creation locally 95% of the workers in Chinese factories today in Africa are local there is no other way to run a globally competitive manufacturing business there just isn't and so again I pose the question for Africa as how do you attract how do you create the right urban forms how do you have the right policies and the right financing to attract that next wave of manufacturing highly productive industrial investment I'm so tempted to respond because you know when you made the comment about San Diego Paloira and Africa had been planned for China I can't help but think that maybe first need a plan for ourselves because you're talking about what being geared up for manufacturing from international market I'm not sure we produce enough for our domestic markets for being able to address the problems you have before worrying about other ones but I think let's open up to the room and I think the way we'll do this is take a set of five questions I hope you're not the one running around the mic go to stand up and signal so we'll try and take a set of questions so the first five hands that pop up there's one over here Edgar I see two at the back there should we do that and we'll try and do a few rounds so please short sharp questions either general or directed to somebody specifically even short sharp answers or responses good afternoon everyone my name is Amir Al-Mando I'm from San Diego I think mine is more a sentiment as much as it's it's something that will take the answer that is when we look at it in terms of Africa nobody has really talked about how the island wants to be the core at the center of activities which ideally have a significant amount so for example if you look at it in terms of how we position cities the government wants to be the ones running the power running the waste management running the water but ideally when we look at it if the government remains to be a regulator and enforcer the citizens uptake these services and the providers providing these services would see a great inclusive role for example one practical example practical example okay so that was a nice test run so you make your point thank you very much my name is Denami Mbarou and I'm with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa leading the work on urbanization my question is thank you very much to the panelists and speakers excellent round of interventions you've all spoken about productivity job rich urbanization and how to transform urban economies for improved economic growth but also for improved social indicators my question is how do you see this playing out in a context where there are some serious disconnects between economic and spatial planning at the national level you talked about Africa having a plan for itself many African countries today have plans for themselves they do have national development plans we're seeing a serious resurgence of national development plans and that's where the priorities are decided that is where the questions around job rich growth economic transformation productivity etc. are addressed urban is not there so the way that we're thinking about urban right at the top in our national business strategies is disconnected to how we're thinking about economic priorities thank you very much hello everyone my name is I'm a student I'm a researcher at Lagos Urban Network my question is about scale I'm based on the first presentation the framing presentation there were two pie charts showing 78% of African rural economic activity has been urban culture and 20 to 30 in the urban culture so and it's quite specific if urbanization is taking place in the urban environment and there is this population growth I'm not sure the consequential effect on the rural environment but what capacity of the rural areas what capacity the rural areas have to produce for the increasing population in urban areas so in a sense what I'm asking is who fits the city of the future thank you so we're going to go in the interest of equity to someone on that side with no hands okay so this here I'm leading a small company in Berlin I have a question regarding urbanization in itself and the role of digitization I think we look at urbanization as something as a force of nature that comes to us whether we can and should digitization in the context of urbanization in a way that we can balance between the centers and the rural areas from a perspective thanks so your hat is stunning you have to speak thank you my name is Masbun-e-Ara I'm a full member of part of the three-house political standard nobody invited me I invited myself to this place because I have a story to get regarding this part of the world I was wondering if maybe I should wait for the part of the world sorry I was wondering if I will tell a story now or wait until tomorrow on the politics of urban finance so we come to stories now and for this part excuse me I want to talk about this part okay so tomorrow we've got a session dedicated specifically to the research on Ethiopia so I think that would be the perfect soft reading of our presentation thank you sir and welcome so we're going to have to close the okay but there's one very discipline and we haven't given this cohort a chance I'm Jackie Klopp from Columbia University about land I was shocked to see the statistic of 90% of Nairobi's land in private hands I don't know how you would find that number given the high levels of irregularity and frankly elite informality in the way that land is allocated in Nairobi and from an urban planning perspective if 10% of your land is in private hands then your city is unplanable and ungovernable far more than that for space for the industrialization for affordable housing for utilities for streets so I guess that means Vernon is first on the block to respond let me respond to two things what about its services in the rural area and the large fraction seemingly large fraction of people living in towns really that are in agriculture in terms is first of all we think of the rural sector in other countries the non-agricultural part is really serving the rural sector and instead there's really nothing there in the rural sector in terms of the development of the rural sector there are all the issues of transport and getting goods to market and getting better technologies and utilizing technologies better using fertilizers and having your day it's a whole mess of problems this is an urban conference so we really didn't get into that but it is a huge issue on Nairobi I was trying to make a point that 90% of land includes doesn't include roads and stuff like that or public places this is for businesses residents commercial activity the slums house is about 30% of the population most of that is not private land but some of it is the disconnect is and maybe I didn't emphasize that enough whatever you want to call it this 90% figure was achieved in a very corrupt fashion that a lot of people without ownership and that is a big issue for quality of wealth looking to the future I think maybe a place to touch on this comments about the spatial the disconnect between the economic lands and the economic realities and spatial plans I imagine you do I'm not going to speak just to say to the panelists from an airtime point of view this is probably your last comment before we have to close for lunch so you may want to respond to whatever questions you wish to but also make your final statement in this round no pressure so in that case let me do it differently I think there was a specific question around urbanization digitization but Abdullah maybe would like to comment on this one so maybe we can start with you on the last round so I think the question came from the back here around do we see any possibility in terms of the trends around digitization as opposed to some of the sectors that you might be engaging with for how the kind of productivity we have in the other regions yeah thank you actually it's related on some point which Green that talked about it when we try to talk about digitization and technology we use to have some example from Europe or from America we try to create Silicon Valley in Algeria so in Kavana and I think it's its own way because actually it's very the local it's very different from what's happening in Europe or in America and I think the second point is even in Africa there is big difference between Al Jibs, Al-Salam and Johansbo we are working with a lot of other technology hubs in Africa we are part of Africa and believe me it's very different what they are doing what they need and what we are doing so of course we need to learn from others we need to learn from Europe from America, from other continent but there is big work to do to adapt what they are doing what they have as input what they have as result to have an impact on our cities so we need to adapt to have some vision to have some ideas from other cities and other countries but the adaptation work is very important so even for other project I need to do more collaboration between international entities between corporations between innovation communities to reach what we are doing thank you I can just come to you because you are next and to carry on on this point there is this question about the alignment between economic strategies and spatial strategies so for example what Kampala might be doing what capital is doing and what entrepreneurs are really trying to do do you want to use that as a lead into Europe I was a little bit interested in the gentleman for example I think ultimately any economy go to government to this infrastructure the roads, the water before privatization of electricity there is an aspect of decentralization around electricity with many grids et cetera but it depends on the way you are we have a project in northern Uganda for an international park but low and behold the railway that we need to evacuate products from that case away from the site so we are having to dig deeper to extract capital to fund that gravitation on the other side you have I think everyone must follow the story about Amazon looking for a second city for the HQ and it's been a game show type drama where all these 20 and 40 type channels have been going and presenting their credentials to a court of judges we don't have that plan so ultimately it's going to take a little bit longer until the time it becomes a giant like Amazon so that you can sort of pontificate and choose where you want to be but just to have in summary just two closing remarks in terms of what Ethiopia is doing I think the industrialization opening up to the merge between the government, the province of in addition to the something that we are learning of is inter-industrialization here that is employing locals and ultimately it's time for the rest of Africa to wake up and smell the coffee so to speak we should know that it's a marathon course on the agave coffee thank you actually let me jump to Brenda and we can close out with Uganda all together and you want to build upon this you also mentioned specifically the role of the municipality in some of your dealing with the local council so maybe you also want to comment yeah correct, again it takes me back to the gentleman from Zambia he mentioned a really really important point and he said look let the government let the authorities do what they need to do and then they enable the private people to do what they need to do I mean speaking for instance in Uganda KCCA has created a recycling plant I'm still here to understand what they want to do with that plastic if they are willing to give it to me but the truth is we are already doing that as well I don't know if they are aware that there are private people like us doing this but it would be nice to create synergies I mean I do two to three tons of plastic a week I recycle and I manufacture cool stuff out of so if they could work together with people like us it would be something weaker and just pulling at those synergies and doing something greater together I think this is the line with the strategies that's absolutely right you're pitching to say something so let's get you there about the right spatial planning response I have a feeling that the moment the situation is what the approaches are very polarized either and I include myself in this people argue for micro strategies clearly that it's not also not enough but there's a certain tendency I think of falling in love with the grand gesture and to solve everything and that often takes the shape of actually reimagination of the city altogether because the existing city is just too messy to be off hold so I would argue somehow maybe for a kind of mesoscale escaping into the middle ground it's a world of this dilemma where we need to sort of deal with the reality of a very polarized fractured city and somehow reconnect these kind of bits I think it's absolutely welcome but they need to engage at the moment they're getting too easy to deal out there the infrastructures where they can come and go I'm not an economist so I can look at it from the same level of point of view it shouldn't be armed to build huge parks to see people not think about housing because it burdens the infrastructure afterwards they have to be at the expense maybe of time time efficiency and so on and so forth it has to be going towards and I think leaving this sort of infrastructure together boiling to romanticize about the kind of informality that also maybe less grand gestures maybe planning that is less formal more about managing curating these parts so now apparently down to two minutes so it's going to be really lightning I think we've got Kate, Emmanuel and Irene and actually it's great that it's the three of you in terms of your close out comments we'll then close out here because are you all talking different strategies speaking of fractured we need different approaches whether it's mobile, different ones for the manufacturing of the middle class and different ones for whether it's factory responsive so just go closing for us shockingly I actually agree with what Philip just said about the meso level an integrated approach which connects to what the first speaker said about the government wanting to be at the center of everything government's house strategies for development transport strategy, sanitation strategies housing strategies and it's important for investors and this kind of fora to engage with their strategies rather than disrupting them by pushing their own agenda engage with and enable government strategies to develop cities that they know within budgets that they know they have to work with in a balanced and integrated way partly because the governments have an integrated view I thought the other speakers commented about who are going to feed these big cities this is not just about cities it's also about rural development the governments are the only publicly accountable system the private sector is not publicly accountable so governments need to be at the center of these things but one other I think core issue I think is there is engaging with the informal economy is not romantic they are the bulk of the population they also create a number of jobs and it's absolutely critical for these kinds of fora and for governments to engage not just with investors and developers when they talk about cities but to engage with taxi unions vendors associations community groups enterprise associations and respond to lively needs in the design of cities rather than doubling them out and figuring them over or concreting them over those people are still there and many of them have highly capable systems that could be upgraded so upgrading them technical development working with these systems to make them better taxi associations better small enterprise activities more technically available and work with the informal economy to formalize what we can rather than just shoving it aside because those jobless people are still there I'm just going to add to what Phillip mentioned I think we have a conversation in our practice about thinking of buildings as incomplete sentences that the users will complete and I think it might be productive to think of cities as maybe incomplete essays so there's always a certain level of indeterminacy that should be embedded in the planning strategies because I think the tendency to openly determine these cities is the problem because they're shifting so fast the aspirations and the ambitions that the residents are shifting so we need to find ways to inject them with several levels of indeterminacy that are not too limited Steve Croswell another question a number of the comments actually remind me of these Lesotho factory workers that I spent time with and what airlines illustrate and I think it picks up on an annual point of how do we categorize how do we visualize how do we cut the data because their lives actually defy all these categories so these women, they're all women spend time they started their lives in informal economy and then because of Taiwanese and Chinese investment in the textiles and clothing sector in Lesotho which is the largest sector in the country they became formalized in the formal economy these are hard jobs they were in China before they moved to Africa and these are hard jobs so they got involved in the trade union and now they're challenging the leadership of the trade unions which were a legacy from mining all male dominated these are all in textiles and in apparel manufacturing the world over 80% of the workers are women in Lesotho and so now they're knocking on the doors of the national leadership and challenging these men I take so much inspiration from their story and their lives because to me it's a reminder of a couple of things one of how people are multifaceted and they're interfacing with so many of these dimensions that we tend to talk about in isolation but secondly how there's a process of adaptation going on where one of the so China's industrialization is an amazing story but worker protection was not one of the highlights of that in Lesotho these women because there's trade unions in Africa or at least in Lesotho in a way that there can't be in China they're adapting and interfacing with this foreign investment hopefully in a way that will make the lives of themselves, their fellow workers and huge swaths of their country much better so we're really called to stop sorry I have to cut in for one second I think it's important to note that many of those Lesotho factory workers lost their jobs overnight when the Taiwanese investors pulled up stakes because the trade preferences changed it is not sustainable for Africa to be turned into a cheap labor pool for other people's agendas they must develop their own systems and own to be up to end I'll go to say one thing there was a question about national economic planning I'm just going to say I'm really deeply suspicious about it though because issues of competence, of the land and issues of corruption and it wasn't a lot of new orders it's a much better role for the government so just on that really beautiful note of incidence the censors I should say I just want to give Ricky an opportunity to make an announcement Philip if there is, no so lunch is happening now and I hope that you all feel inspired that this is indeed a forum for debate and for disagreement and for discussion and I guess what I walk away with from this session in particular is the importance of really clarifying what adaptive capacity means and that we can't figure that out unless we know the detail of what's happening on the ground in our cities so thank you to our speakers we've been unbelievably disciplined and very clear so thank you for being here after lunch and we hope you have a necessary balance to remind you to return