The value add by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in urbanising contexts

This report explores the current and potential future value-add of SDC’s activities in urbanising contexts, offers recommendations to expand Switzerland’s urban development capacity and identifies SDC's potential future priorities in an increasingly urbanised world. The report was prepared by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne with support from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Global urbanisation has changed the world. The majority of the worlds poor still live in rural areas but the proportion of people living in urban poverty is rising. Urbanisation contributes to poverty reduction overall, for example, through reducing demand on rural economies and employment, and through remittances. The majority of the world’s urban population live in settlements of one million or less, with the small and medium-sized cities of Africa and Asia absorbing the majority of the world’s population growth in the years ahead. It is unevitale therefore to address urbanisation as part of delivering SDC’s mandate of reducing poverty. 

All priority regions have most of their populations in cities with less than 300,000 inhabitants. The SDC has considerable experience of working in intermediary cities and towns, which are often host to large reservoirs of urban poverty as well-being first ports of call for rural-urban migrants.

Overall, countries and regions with the smallest share of urban population tend to have the highest projected urbanisation rates. Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are the two regions with the largest projected urbanisation rates between 2020 and 2025 at 4.15% and 2.7% annually respectively. In Eastern Europe, the rate is low across all priority countries at below 1%, except in Albania and Azerbaijan. Countries in the MENA region are not expected to have a strong increase in urban population ranging between 1 to 2% annually, except for the Occupied Palestinian Territory which is an outlier in the region and close to 3%. In Latin America and the Caribbean, urbanisation is not expected to increase significantly but the share of urban population living in slums is realitvely high at 38.6%.

6) Opportunities for the SDC in urbanising contexts

6.1) Immediate opportunities

Immediate opportunities to integrate urbanisation as a contextual cross-cutting issue present themselves. We analyse these under SDC’s four strategic areas, ordered by relevance.  

a. Peace, Governance, Equality

Switzerland is well positioned to address multi-level governance, given its own canton system and experience in participatory decision making. SDC has a wealth of experience working to improve equality and social cohesion. In local governance and decentralisation it is committed to working with local partners such as municipalities and civil society organisations. There are opportunities to refresh SDC’s offer to include metropolitan multilevel and emergency governance and to work in synergy with SECO on governance issues relating to infrastructure and the economy. 

b.   Climate, DRR, Environment

The risk profile of cities has increased due to climate change and unplanned urbanisation. As people and assets are concentrated in cities, impacts of hazards and natural disasters are more intense.

Cities contribute to climate change as areas of high population concentration, economic activity and consumption. Targeting urban areas can reduce risk through addressing environmental negatives such as air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. SDC has engaged in-depth on air pollution in cities in Latin America and Asia.

Under themes such as water there are opportunities to build on existing SDC expertise (from watersheds through to standpipes in slums), to demonstrate interaction along the rural urban continuum. The Swiss, SDC and SECO, have the ability to combine and coordinate governance and institutional with infrastructure-related urban tools.

Switzerland has a long experience in waste management. Recent studies show waste generation rates are high in low/middle income countries. Switzerland has taken effective measures to reduce waste generation at source and improve waste treatment. There are opportunities for SDC and SECO to cooperate, combining interventions involving financing, infrastructure, and municipal reform with involvement of the informal waste economy.

SDC has vast experience in spatial planning and there is significant potential to combine this with Switzerland’s Centre for Development and Environment’s expertise in supporting the design of low-cost, climate-friendly housing.

c.   Economic development

Urban areas play a disproportionate role in productivity and trade and have a key role in providing livelihoods. Academic research in Switzerland’s leading research institutions could support local expertise and entrepreneurship, especially in high-tech sectors and in relation to environmentally friendly economic development and green growth. 

Food systems fit well into an understanding of urbanisation as a process of interaction. They involve food production, transportation, marketing, consumption and nutrition in food supply chains that straddle the rural-urban continuum. 

Education and training constitute not only a social good, a human right, and a contribution to livelihood creation but also offer a valuable contribution to economic development in ways that utilise Switzerland’s rich academic and research offer. 

ICTs have great potential to solve urban problems across the urban-rural continuum. Switzerland is considered an innovative country with expertise to share in cities. SDC could enhance existing digital innovation in areas such as market knowledge within food systems, local governance programs, the reach of healthcare and data, as well as skills development.

The private sector is important but in SDC target countries it is not monolithic. It includes a range of actors from large investors through to small and medium sized entrepreneurs. Ways could be sought to exploit existing synergies and complementarity between the SDC and SECO towards integrated approaches to environmentally friendly / green economic development including public private partnerships, incorporating a full range of actors including the urban informal economy.

The role and contribution of the private sector in urbanising contexts is essential and a primary component of economic development that puts knowledge and innovative ideas into practice. SDC can coordinate with SECO on SME development and bring in an understanding of social impact entrepreneurs and the urban informal economy. 

d.   Human development

Human development cross-cuts many activities in the other strategic areas. SDC aims to act where needs are most urgent, and social need is increasingly oriented towards urban areas, with implications for humanitarian aid as well, which in turn is increasingly urban. This refers both to existing urban settlements exhibiting humanitarian need and settlements created due to humanitarian crises. Urban areas are overwhelmingly youthful in many of SDC target regions, with implications for priorities in human development and the need to integrate young people socially, economically and in terms of governance. 

Respectively, 60% and 80% of Refugees and IDPs live in urban areas. There is a blurring of the lines between humanitarian and development assistance. Interventions are increasingly needed in towns and cities. With its new structure SDC is well prepared and positioned to work on the nexus between humanitarian and development work, to address increased urban violence through citizen security and psychosocial support and to play a pioneer role in tackling these challenges.

Health and safety usually come under human development, but urbanisation is pushing to breaking point the safety of many urban residents given the increase in urban violence in many cities. Urban safety and security are threatened not only by conflict generated within cities. Safety and security are further impacted by unsafe living conditions due to natural hazards, inadequate services and poor health conditions.  Switzerland's extensive experience and expertise in the health and humanitarian sectors offer new opportunities for knowledge exchange and investment in the regions.

6.2) Mid-to-longer-term term opportunities

Over the longer term SDC could continue with urbanisation as a transversal or contextual area but the following would be necessary:

■      A clear positioning of SDCs approaches and added value in urban and urbanising contexts will facilitate increased complementarities and synergies between SDC and SECO at the country or regional level and enable a more systematic and coherent policy dialogue for Switzerland on a global level.

■      Existing partnerships with UN-Habitat and Cities Alliance, should be strengthened and used more systematically and strategically, within the context of a coherent SDC policy dialogue at the regional and global level

■      Consolidate the focus on towns and intermediary cities but where relevant, extend to larger cities where, for example, opportunities exist to address poverty in urban slums and informal settlements, or where opportunities to support SMEs present themselves 

■      A greater focus on slums and informal settlements as a site of intervention because while a majority of poor people still live in rural areas, the geography of poverty is changing, with most urban poor living and working in slums.