Ghana: Sodom & Gomorrah Eviction On Course - The brouhaha surrounding the eviction and demolition of the popular slum, Sodom and Gomorrah, has taken a new twist, with the relocation of the Agboloshie food hub, lorry station in the area. [AA Urbanisation]

Kenya: Slum Dwellers to Get Sh1.7 Billion Sanitation Upgrade - Thousands of poor urban households will gain access to water and sanitation services in a Sh1.7 billion deal targeting the slums. [AA Urbanisation]

Kenya: Slum Upgrade Welcome - Kenya's latest efforts towards upgrading slums into decent precincts for human occupation started yesterday with the relocation of the first batch of shanty dwellers to newly constructed flats adjacent to the Soweto area in Kibera, arguably Africa's biggest slum. [AA Urbanisation]

Nigeria: Face of a Modern Slum - The high cost of renting houses in Abuja which has been said to be the fastest growing city in Africa, has been identified as a major factor which is driving many residents to live in deplorable conditions in uncompleted buildings across the city. This is besides many homeless street urchins, who have converted such structures to their permanent abode. [AA Urbanisation]

Nigeria: Amaechi Debunks Court Order over Waterfront - The Rivers State Governor Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, has said that there is no court order barring him and the state government from going ahead with the planned demolition of shanties and slums in Port Harcourt waterfronts. [AA Construction]

Kenya: Move to 'Paradise' for Kibera Slum Dwellers Put Off Yet Again - The transfer of the first batch of Kibera residents to modern houses in Lang'ata estate has been postponed for the second time this week to an undisclosed date. [AA Urbanisation]

Kenya: Team Blames Ministry Over Slums Spread - The Housing ministry has been blamed for failing to reduce the mushrooming of slums in various parts of the country. [AA Urbanisation]

Ghana: Addressing the Problems of Slums - the Case of Tema (part Two) - A major component of UN-HABITAT's strategic vision is to mobilise domestic investment resources for the financing of cities and shelter. Hence as part of UN-Habitat's effort to attain the Millennium Development Goal 7, Target 11 (to improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020), the Slum Upgrading Facility (SUF) was set up in 2004. The facility seeks to provide technical assistance and facilitate access to domestic capital by its clients for financing slum upgrading projects. Even though slum dwellers supposedly lack financial or material resources, evidence suggests that the general application of this notion is flawed. Opportunities for tapping the resources of slum dwellers largely have remained untapped. [AA Urbanisation]

Ghana: Addressing the Problems of Slums - the Case of Tema (1) - Due to the increasing rate of urbanisation, especially in developing countries, illegal structures as a form of shelter are common place. In their quest to have a source of shelter, these unplanned and illegal structures tend to increase and thus lead to the springing up of slums. In the past months, a number of articles and letters have been published in the newspapers on the subject of slums and their associated challenges posed to proper planning, particularly in Tema. The authors have expressed abhorrence for the persistence of these conditions in what should have been a model of a planned city. Indeed, Architect S.Y. Akoto's account "Tema and its broken promises" places Tema's slum challenge in its appropriate historical context, recounting the underlying intentions of the planners of Tema. [AA Urbanisation]

South Africa: Eradication of Shacks Not Possible By 2014, Say Officials - THE Gauteng housing department has admitted that its goal of eradicating shacks by 2014 is becoming impossible to reach. [AA Urbanisation]

Kenya: Kibera - It's Rich City Folks Who Need Slums Most - The other week, a reporter from the Nation's sister paper in Uganda, Daily Monitor, visited Nairobi and was given an initiation visit to the Kibera slums, Africa's largest. [AA Urbanisation]

Nigeria: FG, American Firm Move to Reclaim Slums - Federal Government and a United States-based Urban Development Company, Cities Alliance Group yesterday expressed desire to jointly roll-out measures to tackle the challenges posed by the rapid growth of slums in most cities in Nigeria. [AA Urbanisation]

South Africa: Shack Dwellers Angry At Being Moved for IRT Road - Doornbach shack dwellers who saw their shacks demolished in April but were then able to rebuild them after the City of Cape Town intervened are angry at the prospect of again seeing their homes demolished to make way for a new road linked to the Integrated Rapid Transit (IRT) system. [AA Urbanisation]

Botswana: The Sorry State of a City's 'Ghettos' - As the country prepares for the 10th poll next October, Mmegi Staff Writer RYDER GABATHUSE reflects on the poorly developed state of Francistown's low-income locations [AA Urbanisation]

FACT : 62% of sub-Saharan Africa's Urban Population live in Slums.

Millions of people move to Africa's cities every year, swelling the numbers of urban poor. "We cannot chase people away from slums," says Kelvin Mmangisa, chief executive of the Lilongwe City Assembly. "But we can improve the conditions there to make their lives better."

Mmangisa made this call for investment in affordable housing for the poor in an interview with IPS on Jun. 10 in Nairobi, where he was among 200 delegates at a conference addressing challenges of urbanisation and poverty reduction for slum dwellers in developing nations.