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Nigeria: 'Urbanizing African Cities, Vulnerable to Climate Change'
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Daily Trust (Abuja)
19 October 2007
Posted to the web 19 October 2007
Atika Balal
An environmental non-governmental organization, UN-HABITAT, has said that Africa being the world's fastest urbanizing continent, has much to gain from the growth of cities, but is also at a high risk from unchecked chaotic urbanization.
The organization in a report titled "Enhancing urban safety and security" states that Africa's rapid urbanization generates the potential for substantial losses from single large disaster events, whilst poverty, conflict, chronic disease and weak gover-nance further aggravate Africa's vulnerability, making it highly susceptible to the local impacts of global environmental change.
"Africa will be the worst affected by climate change and coastal cities such as Lagos and Cairo will be the first defence line," it said.
The report, which added that Africa has the worst record in terms of tenure insecurity with over 2 million people forcibly evicted worldwide annually empha-sizes that forced evictions are most prevalent in areas with the worst housing conditions and the poor are the ones who fall victim when these evictions do occur.
The report also stated that the organization has establi-shed a safer city programmes whereby several African cities are taking steps to combat crime through broad community based partici-pation.
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"Such initiatives help generate employment, imp-rove health and food security, and create safer neigh-bourhoods that are more resilient to natural disaster; this gives us hope that Africa can demonstrate to the world that urbanization can be put on a sustainable track."
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