Charter Cities Institute (CCI) has said the implementation of Malawi Secondary City Plan (MSCP) will require huge financial investment for it to be materialized.
Executive Director for CCI, Kurtis Lockhart, said this Wednesday in Lilongwe during the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for cooperation on the implementation of Malawi 2063 first 10-year implementation plan (MIP-1) with National Planning Commission (NPC).
He said without capital and finances, there would be no impact to the implementation of the plan, hence the need to link up with financial institutions for assistance.
“We are focused on ensuring that secondary cities are constructed. Without finances, plans will remain plans and ideas remain ideas. We need to have adequate financial resources in order to move things,” Lockhart pointed out.
He added that the future is about urban cities hence the need to plan for them.
“In the next 30 years, 1 billion Africans will be moving from the countryside to cities. On average three new cities could be created per month for the 28 years. This will be a challenge, which needs stakeholders to come together and do something about cities,” Lockhart projected.
Executive Directors said it was pleasing the NPC has expressed intention to join a new cities coalition with other Zambian entities, the coalition does not only involve government entities, public sector entities, civil society, research institutes, financiers and financial institutions.
He said they link them up to showcase projects by hosting events where financiers could form governments and new city projects.
Director General of NPC, Dr Thomas Munthali said the signing of the MoU was at the back of the launch of MSCP and one of the key pillars of Malawi 2063 is urbanization.
He said the key component was to take these cities to the people to ensure good quality of life.
“Plan is one thing and operationalization is another, for us what is key is building on our mandate to observe implementation to ensure that plans are getting rolled off,” Munthali said.
He said NPC was courting all key partners and one of them is CCI because they are already into a movement of building coalitions of countries which are willing to partner with them.
Director General said they bring important expertise around connecting countries to financing.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Small Farm Cities, Jon Vandenheuvel said their primary objective relates to working with small farmers integrating affordable housing with municipal services.
He said they build on a framework of urbanization and city planning could they be accessible to all relevant players in the economy.
