Africa: Africa Needs $31 Billion Yearly to Build Infrastructure - Study - A study conducted in 24 African countries shows that the poor state of infrastructure in Sub Saharan Africa - its electricity, water, roads, and information and communications technology (ICT) - cuts national economic growth by 2 percentage points every year and reduces business productivity by as much as 40 per cent. [AA Urbanisation]

Africa: Africa's Mortgage Market Is Transforming - Kwaku Gima has spent almost fifteen years building his family a house, and it's still not finished. The floor hasn't been plastered smooth and the kitchen cabinets are yet to be fitted. Last year the 47 year old high school teacher in Ghana got a mortgage from a co-operative society to build a home he expects to be complete within nine months. [AA Urbanisation]

Pretoria - The shortage of water in Africa will form part of key discussions at the week-long African Ministers' Council on Water Summit which kicked off in Johannesburg this morning.

The African Ministers' Council on Water (AMCOW), the initiator of the Africa Water Week, will focus its attention on establishing a sustainable roadmap on increasing Africa's water supply at the conference.

A reduction in the number of Africans without access to water is yet to be achieved.

AMCOW executive secretary, Bai-Mass Taal, said it was a challenge to reduce the number of Africans that are still living without adequate access to water.

"Our efforts in providing water access to areas in need are fruitful, however, it cannot be seen owing to the ever-increasing African population," said Taal.

Taal stresses the importance and need for Africa Water Week to be able to reach and carry forward the commitments made at African Union (AU) Summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on water and sanitation.

Africa: Fear As Africa's Village Comes to Town And Forgets All About Home - Africa is coming to town! By the '80s less than 30 per cent of the Africans were living in cities. The United Nations predicts that in less than 10 years time more than half of the Africans will be city dwellers. Is it good or bad? What does this exodus from rural areas foretell to this continent? [AA Urbanisation]

By 2030 the majority of Africans will be urban residents, and the majority of them will live in slums and informal settlements unless radical corrective measures are taken. To leverage Africa's options in an environment that is simultaneously global and local, it is important for its leaders at all levels to develop forward-looking visions based on analyses of where Africa is now and where it wants to be in the future. 

This publication aims to provide focus and encouragement to African governments at the central and local level as well as to other key actors in the broad area of sustainable human settlements development. 

The report is available at http://www.unep.org/urban_environment/urbannewsletter/IssueFeb09/publications.asp#StateofAfricanCities

Africa: Build Houses for Humanity - The United Nations has designated the first Monday each October as World Habitat Day. [AA Urbanisation]

On this day we Honour the Memory of Architect Mohamed Atta, who was falsely accused of piloting the first passenger jet plane to crash into New York's World Trade Towers on the 11th September 2001. This ridiculous accusation remained unsubstantiated for years but has now been proven to be completely false.

Africa: Experts Seek Air Safety, Infrastructural Renewal in Africa - Aviation experts in Africa yesterday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, identified poor safety and obsolete infrastructure as impediments towards the growth and development of air transport in Africa. [AA Urbanisation]

Africa: Chinese Hungry for Projects - A CHINESE government initiative to support business partnerships between Chinese and African entrepreneurs is battling to find suitable infrastructure development projects and business in Africa. [AA Urbanisation]

Dar-es-Salaam - Africa's population has reached 1 billion as the continent's population grows by about 24 million a year, says a report.

A report published by the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau, jointly with the US government aid agency USAID, says its expected that the African population will double to nearly 2 billion by 2050.

Although population growth has slowed in North African countries such as Egypt and Tunisia, on average women in sub-Saharan Africa have more children than women elsewhere.

"While globally the average woman has 2.6 children, in sub-Saharan Africa she has 5.3 children (which is down from 6.7 children in around 1950), the world's highest," the report said.

Worldwide, 62 percent of married women of childbearing age use contraception, but in Africa the figure is 28 percent, according to the report, which also revealed that sub-Saharan Africa has the world's most youthful population, "and it projected to stay that way for decades."

In 2050, the African continent is expected to have 349 million youth, or 29 percent of the world's total, a sharp rise from the 9 percent of the world's youth in 1950, the report noted.

Global Witness to testify at Financial Services Committee Congressional Hearing

WASHINGTON DC: Some of the world's major banks, including Barclays and Citibank, have been facilitating corruption and undermining development in some of the worst-governed countries in the world, campaigning organisation Global Witness will testify to the U.S. House of Representatives' Financial Services Committee today (May 19).

Global Witness lead investigator, Anthea Lawson, will tell Committee members, including Chairman Barney Frank, that a catalogue of failures in the design and enforcement of anti-money laundering laws has enabled banks to help politicians from some of the world's most corrupt regimes to use government money to fund lavish lifestyles, while their populations live in poverty.

"The key factors allowing banks to do business with corrupt regimes are precisely those which allowed banks to destabilize the U.S. and other major economies […] People now agree that we need to reassess the way we regulate banks. We must also take this opportunity to tackle the way banks facilitate corruption, and thus help fuel poverty," said Ms Lawson.

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We are intersted to establish business in Angola. Also we are working road bridge also tower building hospitals construction.

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By Kristin Palitza

African economic experts at the World Economic Forum on Africa have called for a regional approach to the global financial crisis, but South Africa - the continent's strongest economy - does not want to play ball.

South African minister of trade and industry, Rob Davies, believes strict trade policies, regulation and export to developed countries are the most suitable mechanisms to protect the South African economy.

"We will resort to regulation and tariffs. The rules-based trading system gives us policy space [to do this] and it would be naïve to imagine countries won't use this policy space," he told delegates at the Forum, taking place in Cape Town from June 10 to 12.

While developed countries have resources and finance available to deal with the economic crisis, developing countries rely on fighting the economic downturn with non-financial instruments such as tariffs, Davies explained.

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.

Africa: Call for Affordable Housing for Poor - 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." [AA Urbanisation]