The Special African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development (AMCHUD) will be held at the UN-HABITAT headquarters in Nairobi from April 3-4, 2006. The theme of the conference is, Achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Africa: Strategies for the Realization of the Millennium Review Summit Commitment on Slums. It reflects the political will in Africa to address one of the world’s greatest shelter problems: In sub-Saharan Africa, 72 percent of urban dwellers (187 million people) live in slums. They constitute 20 percent of the global slum population. In Goal 7, Target 11, world leaders have committed themselves – “to achieve significant improvement in the lives of 100 million slum dwellers” by the year 2020.
Delegates arriving from more than 40 African countries include more than 30 Ministers responsible for various aspects of human settlements. Other senior government officials, local authority representatives, the NEPAD Secretariat, and representatives from the global Millennium Cities programme will also attend the conference. With the slum populations growing daily as more and more people in Africa move into towns and cities, the meeting will discuss ways of implementing the target at the national and local level.
AMCHUD has invited the Minister of Construction of the People’s Republic of Government of China Mr. Wang Guangtao as a special guest speaker to share China’s experience in improving its human settlements.
The conference expects to:
- Develop a shared framework for slum upgrading and prevention as a means to achieving the goals.
- Identify ways of improving policy formulation and implementation for addressing the housing and urban management crisis in Africa.
- Consider a draft constitution and develop a programme of work for the next two years.
The meeting is convened by the Chair of AMCHUD, the Minister of Housing of South Africa, Ms. Lindiwe Sisulu, and hosted by the Government of Kenya, with the support of UN-HABITAT.
