Preparing the Monrovia Slum Upgrading Initiative

Status

ongoing

City

Monrovia

Main actors

City Government, NGO / Philanthropy, Community / Citizen Group

Project area

Neighborhood or district

Duration

Ongoing since 2008

Liberia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy initiates upgrading of five slums in Monrovia among its strategic priorities for poverty reduction

Both national and local governments need to introduce strategies that deal with the current and future realities of urbanisation. Experience shows the importance of anticipating and pro-actively planning demographic and social transformation, rather than ignoring and resisting the changes. The fundamental objective should be to lay the groundwork that will facilitate residents involving themselves in constant upgrading over time, with the support of the public authority.

Many residential areas in Monrovia have typical ‘slum’ characteristics: occupants are low-income earners, basic infrastructure is absent, ambiguous or insecure land tenure rights, high population density, poor environmental conditions, poor or very poor building quality, lack of urban culture, high levels of criminality and delinquency, etc… Criminal activities are very common and most of such crimes are perpetrated by those living outside their communities. A consolidated strategy for slum upgrading, reflecting Cities Alliance concepts, makes this case worth studying.

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Sustainable Development Goals

The working methodology was not limited to merely translating terms of reference; instead it sought to establish a continuous and systematic process comprising:

observation of the slums in order to identify local actors
applied research and strategic plans to improve living conditions in these settlements. Therefore, participation of all actors is crucial.

Monrovia City Corporation was the driver of the initiative. Taking ownership of the initiative by the City Corporation was vital to ensure the sustainability of the programme. Consultative meetings were held in all the identified slum settlements. Efforts were also made to ensure that such meetings were representative of the communities in general. All the various groups within the communities were invited to meetings and contributions taken on board. In Sonewein, an initial consultative meeting was cancelled and had to be rescheduled due to the lack of women participating in the initial meeting. External consultative meetings were also held with various NGOs currently involved in providing services in slum settlements. Meetings covered topics such as past, current, and future intervention. Key personnel in government ministries and agencies were consulted. Three national workshops held as part of this exercise provided an invaluable forum for all major players to help shape the future course of this initiative.

Various meetings concerning the project were held within five communities in Monrovia. Meetings were not only limited to community leaders and representatives of various organisations. No selection criteria for attendance or participation existed; all residents had the opportunity to attend and participate. Pre-determined pointers for discussions were used in the meetings. The advantage here is the organisation of discussion topics ensuring that not only the most important points and issues covered, but also the views of participants.

In implementing the planned initiative, the following measures were planned to be taken:

Create and maintain a supply of plots accessible to people without resources; combining action by the government of Liberia with action by Monrovia City Corporation and the traditional sector controlling land in peri-urban areas.
Create an effective system of controlling and inspecting the use of land. This system should involve residents themselves and be combined with education, persuasion, and enforcement action.

Providing more structured forms of employment, enabling people to learn new skills, and indigenous capacity to develop economic initiatives to city-wide and nation-wide slum up-grading holding the greatest promise of scale and sustainability.

These approaches include:

City and national governments moving beyond short-term projects to long-term activities, tackling systemic causes of slum formation. For international partners, this approach argues for long-term programmatic engagement.
Pursuing a city-wide, multi-sectoral approach. Slums are not a result of shortcomings in just one sector; rather, they result from policy and resource deficiencies across a broad spectrum of sectors. A comprehensive approach allows the shack to become a house, a slum to become a suburb, and a slum dweller to become a citizen.
Recognising urban upgrading as a lengthy process requiring continuity of effort: continuity of political and financial support from local and national authorities, and long-term; consistent; and reliable support from development partners.
Paying attention, not only to upgrading existing slums, but also to anticipating and planning for future urban growth.
Meeting basic infrastructure and service needs of growing urban populations by long-term sustainable financing. Among other actions, mobilising private sector investment in informal settlements is critical to achieving impacts at scale.

The Monrovia Initiative was the subject of the Cities Alliance annual evaluation. In addition to substantive lessons that Cities Alliance gained from cities’ experience, evaluation allowed Cities Alliance to reflect on both the relevance of its small preparatory grants, and on approaches towards supporting least-developed countries (LDCs) with particularly complex development challenges. Among the findings are:

Including slum upgrading in a national Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper can be a real force in motivating governments to respond to the needs of the urban poor. Its impact may be tempered, however, if the upgrading agenda is poorly resourced.
While supporting countries emerging from conflict may present significant operational challenges, timing of engagement is critical to harnessing opportunities for national and municipal development policy formulation and the political will and enthusiasm for change which may exist.
Where approaches to slum upgrading are under discussion, exchanges with comparable cities are particularly relevant and valuable. Exchanges of this kind provide an opportunity for peer groups of slum dwellers to learn from each other’s experience, relationships with authorities, and approaches to negotiation. They enable local authorities to compare and learn from one another’s preoccupations and approaches.
Public officials, slum dwellers, and leaders of community-based organisations (CBOs) travelling together and jointly representing their city also provides a unique opportunity for all parties to develop mutual understanding of one another’s positions, capacities and limitations.
Slum CBOs and savings groups are likely to be numerous and active. Coordination rather than mobilisation is important in order to maximise individual group efforts and negotiating strengths.
A distinct preparatory phase focused on mobilising stakeholders, building consensus, and developing plans for a slum upgrading programme should occur prior to developing a full slum upgrading policy and implementation strategy.