Until a few years ago practically none of them had qualified planners in
their staff. Luckily 6 out of 9 Councils in my province now have university
graduates employed which is major progress. When I say that I mean they have 1
each and they’re practically a clone of each other. All fresh out of college,
maybe with a year’s works experience under their belt, most are relatively
enthusiastic and some are quite bright. This is major progress. But these guys
are expected (on their own) to take on the responsibilities of an entire
planning department (if and) when the decentralisation process kicks in.
Currently they have little or no formal responsibilities. So my job in theory
is to help these guys make that step.
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| Andrew, Laia and Paul in Mbala |
Because Irish Aid have funded 4 of our placements (the overall aim of
the project is to improve Governance in Zambia (!) the other three placements
being in Financial Management, Socio-Economic Planning and Monitoring &
Evaluation) and are also funding our project costs (fuel, accommodation and
meals for our trips out to the district councils) I have to work with the group
on everything and follow all the ridiculous government protocols and
bureaucracy (of which I’ll moan about in detail at a further point). Of the
districts in Northern Province we had decided to focus on 5 of these rather
than spread ourselves too widely. This involved traveling to each district,
carry out assessments on each council and eventually come to a decision on
which ones to select. An example of some of the challenges involved in this:
Kaputa is probably the most distant district from here at around 390km,
reasonable you will say. We couldn’t make this journey for the first 2
months due to the rains which last for 5 months. When we did, it took us over 9
hours in a 4x4 through crazy conditions.
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| One of many road blocks, truck here skidded off the Kaputa road |
In the end we only made it to 8 of the districts because one of them is
on an island and the weather was so bad that the ‘ferry’ wasn’t operating for
months so we ditched it from our study. Harsh!
That was a time, finance and patience consuming process but eventually
we were at a position where we could finalise our 5 districts. All the way
through, we had to do it through the government channels so we were essentially
being used by provincial government to show how much they are doing to help
their local counterparts etc. African customs/culture means it needs to be
approached with the right degree of delicacy so I kept my trap shut and endured
it !
(The following is technical planning talk so feel free to skip over
it….)
First, a bit of background to the major issues that exist here in terms
of town planning and urban design.
80% of Zambia is what is known as Customary Land, that is, it is under
the control of tribal chiefs. This area is essentially comprised of mud or
brick huts. Only 20% is on State Land. Only State Land is subject to the
planning system. It’s a huge country that’s very sparsely populated (14m
in a country 10 times the size of Ireland and 3.5 times the size of Britain),
so infrastructure here is very difficult to provide. Saying that it’s one of
the most urbanised countries in Africa at 40% (Australia is 80%). Outside of
cities less than 5% of houses have legal title, that is to say they have little
or no property rights in the eyes of the law other than as squatters. This has
serious ramifications for wealth generation as credit cannot be obtained using
property as a form of collateral and Councils cannot gather rates from the
majority of the properties in their jurisdiction which is theoretically one of
their major revenue streams. A vicious circle.
As the chiefs control 80% of the land, in order for towns to meet the
demand for housing land the Councils need to go cap-in-hand to the chiefs to
get land off him (all sorts of shenanigans go on here I’m told). But basically
they’re at the mercy of a chief in terms of securing land for housing. A major
issue I see is that the land given to them is usually in a ridiculous location
for the proper expansion of these towns and really creates for major problems
down the line.
75-80% of housing in Zambia is contained within ‘informal settlements’,
unplanned (I mean with little or no thought put to it) and unserviced. In other
African countries this takes the shape of shanty towns but in Zambia (Lusaka
apart) its more shacks than the atrocious images you’d see in Johannesburg or
Nairobi. Nevertheless, these shacks are just thrown up and often there’s little
or no space for roads (major problem if a fire breaks out or an ambulances
needs access), there’s no piped water, majorly prone to flooding, no
electricity, no sewerage system etc. 5 or 6 families might share a ‘latrine’
which is an open pit toilet which you would only experience at a music festival
or a national park in our world (this effluent can sometimes seep into the
shallow wells where the community draw water from). Whatever about how mank
these living conditions are, the health ramifications can be pretty severe and
where water borne illnesses thrive (among others).
When the bureaucratic blockages ceased the actual work could begin in
earnest. The bulk of my work is essentially training and guiding these planners
in 5 Councils and also working directly with them on certain projects. Although
I try to limit the amount of hands on work I do as enabling them to do the work
is more valuable in the long term than me getting the projects done myself,
even though the need is pretty acute at times. We focus mainly on the following
topics:
Geo-spatial Database:
Most councils have seriously out of date maps, talking decades here and
none of them are digital so we’re trying to digitise any of the raggedy things
we can find, get out on the ground to update what’s actually been built using a
GPS machine and map it on GIS (I’d never used GIS before I came here so I had
to train myself up on it fairly lively in order to pretend I was an expert in
it!) Because there are no digital records, serious chaos has taken place.
Land being sold by the Council to two different parties, land not having
planning permission, land not having legal title etc.
So we are trying to compile this information and input it onto this GIS
based mapping system that I am creating. It’s not going to have much of an
immediate impact on the quality of the environment as it currently stands but
I’m pretty sure it will go a long way to cleaning up the mess that has been
created in the past and avoid such chaos occurring in the future when the
problems are really likely to come. The population of Zambia is going to double
in the next 25 years. Jaysus.
Computer Software:
Mainly GIS, AutoCAD and SketchUp and maybe some Photoshop down the line.
They’re relatively computer literate in fairness to them and do a bit of it in
college. They’re pretty keen on this side of things so we should make a degree
of progress.
Upgrading of Informal Settlements:
As I mentioned above, many of these settlements are of very poor quality
(they’d be called slums in our world) and completely lacking in the most basic
services – clean water (not even talking of drinking quality here, just clean).
Even toilets are probably too ambitious in these situations. I haven’t yet
started on an upgrading project but they’ll probably require a much more
collaborative approach with local community workshops as often more contentious
initiatives may be required to bring about improvements in the living
environment and provision of these basic services. Eg Often rehousing a few
families is the only solution to create space for access roads.
Encouraging the local community to embrace
the legalisation and titling process is central to the successful upgrading of
these settlements.
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| Wouldn't have fancied being in this latrine when it collapsed |
Introducing Evidence Based Planning:
There’s very little data contained in Councils but it’s possible to plan
areas here based on solid facts. So this involves introducing methods of
calculating socio-economic services required in a given area based on spatial
location and population/housing information. Eg. for every 100 houses this
means X number of extra primary school pupils, church go-ers,
medical patients, market stalls needed etc.
Town Strategies:
There is a programme of Integrated Development Plans and Local Area
Plans that commenced a few years ago. The idea is that every Council area will
have at least one of these done. In reality this could take years. Currently
none of the Councils in my province have been given budget for any of these to
occur and if any of them have actually had development plans done in the past,
they’re more than likely over 15 years old and of no practical use.
What myself and the planner are aiming to do in each Council is to
create an in-house strategy that identifies a future vision for the future
development of the main town over the next 10-20. It allows the Council to
adopt a pro-active approach to the inevitable development pressures that it
will face in the coming years. Using this document they can go to the chiefs
with requests for the release of land in actual suitable locations for the
future expansion of the town.
While this document will have no legal or policy standing, it will allow
the Council to dictate where development happens and what form it should take,
ensuring some semblance of sustainable future development. It should
incorporate issues such as the appropriate location for future growth, design
standards for new housing areas and for development in town centres (among
others). Ambitious definitely but worth aiming at.
Updating of Housing Layout Plans:
This is currently the domain of my office in the Provincial Government
but it is in ridiculously costly for them to do it [incredibly they actually
charge the Councils to do it which (legally) goes into staff pockets] which I
will explain in some later rant. It involves updating the plans as to what has
actually been built since they did the initial plan (usually 5-10 years ago).
This needs doing because often due to incredible administrative incompetence or
neglect, houses get built in completely wrong places, often straddling multiple
lots or even on the land where roads are meant to go. So what needs doing is
redesign these places to accommodate the shambolic scenario that has been
built, find new space for access roads (and limit the amount of inevitable
cul-de-sacs that have been caused), refit new plots into left over spaces
etc. I’m expecting some resistance down the line from the Provincial
Office but we’ll carry on until that happens.
Recently I accompanied my office on one of
these jollies to see how things are carried out. After walking
about doing the assessment for about an hour we reached a ridge in the land and
beyond it we were greeted by the sight of a reasonably sized lake (probably 500
sq m).
This surprised me as I hadn’t noticed any lake in this housing
development when I’d briefly perused the plans earlier.
- “Lads whats the story with
the lake?”
- “hmmm yeaaaah”
(a bit of head
scratching commenced)
- “Gis a look at the plan
there again Tryson willya”
(I then survey the plan)
- “Lads, there’s meant to be
3 rows of houses right here”
- “Oooh…… hmmmm …… ahhh …
well yeah that’s the problem with doing the plans from the office”
(everyone erupts laughing)
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| The Phantom Lake |
Basically nobody had even been out to the site to notice this massive
fucking lake in the middle of this piece of land! Initially I felt like Roy in
Saipan but after a few seconds I just had to smile. Hilariously farcical.
Only Africa could make an Irishman feel Swiss.
