Visiting its operations in Mumbai, Accra-based Sheila Ochugboju sees much to admire in Dial 1298 for Ambulance, a private company using a cross-subsidy model to provide ambulance services for residents rich and poor, but fears the middle class is too small in her own city for the model to be replicable there.
While economic development policies might contradict and undermine the needs of the urban poor, slums like Dharavi may incubate industries that can export to the world and should be embraced.
On the occasion of the World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Kerwin Datu speaks with Professor Edgar Pieterse, director of the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, on retheorising the African city, the politics of Africa's mega-regions…
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Slums should be seen ... as places that can be engines of growth themselves rather than just pools of cheap labour. As we observed in Dharavi, slums can create industries that can even be competitive enough to export.
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The Global Urbanist is an online magazine reviewing urban affairs and urban development issues in cities throughout the developed and developing world.
Its readers are drawn from the urban policy and international development sectors, and include urban planners, officers in local, national or international government agencies, civil society leaders, and researchers.
