Looking forward to living in more organised cities

In the past few days the media has run several stories related to the East African integration in a way that heightens hope for the region. A lot has been said since the East African Community was revived after a meeting between Pres. Museveni of Uganda, Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya and Ali Hassan Mwinyi of Tanzania. The major stories in the papers were about the timeline for the Mombasa-Kigali railway line, the understanding that will allow citizens of the region to use national IDs as travel documents, revived talk on the single currency and the single tourist visa. Personally there is nothing so new that has been said so I will reserve my comments for the time any of these plans is practically rolled out. I can’t count how many times I have seen headlines on any of the above issues. Sometimes it is on a weekly basis making us appear more of planners than actors. Moving away from that, I began the week with the privilege of attending a breakfast meeting organised by the City of Kigali administration with editors from different media houses, bloggers and micro-bloggers. The event was organised to familiarise and share ideas with the media players on the Kigali Master Plan particularly the transport arrangements that are to be rolled out soon. I must commend the City of Kigali authorities for being smart enough to bring key media players on board. This ensures that they can have on their side, an informed partner in the form of the media who will easily see to it that this level of understanding trickles down to the urban dwellers. Many a time, city authorities are criticised when they try to enforce regulations but the criticism is based on ignorance. Issues of developing the city are also usually politicised by both sides of the political grid. Those in government may try to ‘own’ a move while those in the opposition of the government will denounce it. At the end of the day the city is for everyone and what is important is to have it functioning better for those working and living in it. During the meeting the Mayor of Kigali revealed that indeed the city is now getting visitors from as far as Guyana. They come to learn how they too can have clean cities like Kigali. Interestingly I have on different occasions seen visitors from other cities come here with the same intention but nothing is ever implemented once they go back. Truth be told, the rural-urban migration continues to put pressure on our cities making them disasters waiting to happen. We have heard of buildings collapsing as we rush to create concrete jungles. Some of our cities are choking with traffic that is nothing but old fume emitting scrappy vehicles. We have seen slums circling the high rise affluent neighbourhoods, road reserves eaten up by greedy real estate developers who have ensured that developing any major road has to start with demolition of houses. The rapid growth of our urban centres with little planning has only made our lives miserable. Pollution, congestions, and insecurity are some of the conditions we have reaped from this unplanned growth. Kigali is in a way blessed in that by the time the new government took power in 1994 there was not much development to talk about and thus started modernising the city on a rather blank slate. Cities like Kampala, Nairobi or Dar are so built that new developments are so costly when one factors in compensation. The cost of compensation sometimes breeds more procrastination as political leaders fear political repercussions from demolishing structures that belong to ‘voters’. However some of these places can instead develop the areas where their cities seem to be stretching to in a better way. Public transport remains one of the biggest challenges because none of the cities in East Africa has a clear mass transport system in place. Yes we have a few that are implementing some kind of rapid transport system but there is no plan for mass transport and that is why we often spend hours in traffic jams. The challenges remain and if we all throw in our two cents and allow development to take a more organised path then we can hope for the day we shall have organised cities as opposed to gathering spaces also known as concrete jungles. Blog: www.ssenyonga.wordpress.comTwitter: @ssojo81