Somali officials meet with UN experts on urbanization issues

Somali local government officials and United Nations experts have met to brainstorm on lasting solutions to the challenges brought about by rapid urbanization in the country.

Somalia is among the fastest urbanizing countries in the world, this is acting as pull factors of the movements from rural to urban areas and has created the need to revise the urbanization trends to suit these displacements.

The meeting brought to table local government officials, civil-society representatives and UN experts as they discussed the role of local authorities in finding solutions to the country’s urbanization challenges.

One of the participants, George Conway, representing the United Nations Development Program told reporters,

“This isn’t simply a humanitarian issue; it really is about looking at these waves of displacement in the longer term as part of the trend of urbanization that the country has been experiencing for many years now. And this trend will continue, the climate change trajectory of Somalia is such that we’ll see continued spikes in rural-to-urban migration and the cities have to be prepared and they have to be ready to expand housing opportunities, to expand access to basic services and importantly to ensure livelihoods and employment opportunities for these new people that are joining cities.”

Recent stability in the capital Mogadishu has begun to attract investment from locals and Somalis living abroad.