According to World Bank report in the area of Ethiopia urban review during the last fiscal years, Ethiopia has lagged behind in the activity of urban expansion, which is a cornerstone to promote economic growth, create jobs and pave ways to prosperity.
The report quoting Central Statistics Agency that, the urban population is projected to nearly triple from 15.2million in 2012 to 42.3million in 2037, growing at 3.8 percent a year. The paper study indicated that the rate of urbanization will be even faster, at about 5.4 percent a year. That would mean the tripling of the urban population even earlier by 2034, with 30percent of the country’s people in urban areas by 2028.
It stated that if managed proactively, urban population growth presents a huge opportunity to shift the structure and location of economic activity from rural agriculture to the larger and more diversified urban industrial and service sectors. The paper pointed out that creating job opportunities in urban areas will be essential if Ethiopia is to exploit its demographic dividends.
Cities already play an important role in the economy, contributing to 38 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) though employing only 15 percent of the total workforce, due primarily to the high productivity associated with sectors located mostly in urban areas. The review study demonstrated that as the Ethiopian Government’s vision is to reach middle income status with an estimated gross national income per capita of US$1,560 by 2025, urbanization could be an important catalyst to promote economic growth, create jobs, and connect Ethiopians to prosperity.
If urban development is not managed proactively, rapid urban population growth may pose a demographic challenge as cities struggle to provide jobs, infrastructure and services, and housing. About the necessary and foundational tools for the urbanization advancement, the paper pointed out that infrastructure and service delivery are already undermined in many cities by growing urban extents and by stretched municipal budgets, while formal labor markets are failing to keep up with demand for jobs.
The report underscored that Ethiopian cities run the risk of becoming less attractive places for people and economic activity. Moreover, constraints on rural urban migration including the loss of land rights for those who leave rural areas reduce incentives to move to cities, which in the long run could slow agglomeration, reducing productivity and economic growth.
It also pointed out that land management and infrastructure investment are the key actors for expansion of urbanization. The report stressed that urbanization is failing to meet the demands of growing numbers of urban residents in accessing jobs, infrastructure and services, and housing deliveries. The report remarked that poor quality and often overcrowded living conditions are the major housing challenges experienced by urban households.
Land management practices, intended to maximize social welfare, indirectly and unintentionally contribute to the problems that cities face in providing sufficient serviced land for people, firms, and public uses and services. As to the study paper, in order to meet the growing demand for jobs, infrastructure, services, and housing, a robust institutional framework are necessary to support efficient and sustainable land management, urban governance, and municipal finance.
Based on the report, The Ethiopia Herald had approached Ministry of Urban Development Public Relations and Communication Director Ethiopia Bdicha said that the practice of urban expansion has its own advantageous and dysfunctional impacts in allrounded performance of the country. Urbanization has played undeniable role in accessing jobs, housing and service deliveries. And it serves as spur for economic growth and poverty eradication of the country.
On the other hand, it has disadvantageous roles in socioeconomic, cultural aspects. It also plays negative impact to accelerate the intensity of rural-urban migration as well as discouraging green economy. This implies that it is more likely to bring paradoxical outcomes in the activities of economic growth at the long run. He quoted a recent report as saying although the rate of urban expansion has reached to 5.4 percent But he said there is still a call for a concerted and integrative as well as well-established efforts to realize the envisioned imaginative cosmopolitan urban cities which leads toward targeted places of convenience, decent living life and harness move on the ladders of harmony and sustained metropolitan advancement.
He noted that as infrastructural adjustment is considered as an indispensible tool for economic growth of the country and for the expansion of urbanization, Ethiopia has striven hard to attain the peak of the infrastructural development index. National strategic plan also highly rely on the core of infrastructural development, paramount for all over performance of the country.
Therefore, infrastructural development is a millstone to expand urbanization, necessary instrument in creating and accessing jobs as well as for the sound application of living conditions and civilization. He pointed out that the ministry is working hard to implement urbanregional plan which aims at accelerating the rate of urbanization in accordance with well-organized and solid foundations based upon structural urban frameworks. Public capital investment is a merely means for enlargement of urbanization to attain in the level of middle income countries by 2025.
The Ethiopian Herald, December 23/2018
BY MEHARI BEYENE
