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| Features |
| Impact of urbanisation in Malawi |
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by
George Ntonya, 28 October 2004
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08:19:24
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The number of people migrating from rural areas into cities and towns continues to grow in the country thereby exerting a lot of pressure on public resources, officials have said.
Director of Planning at Lilongwe City Assembly Dalitso Mpoola and Floyd Mondiwa, chief estates management officer at Blantyre City Assembly said in separate interviews urbanisation is worsening the problem of street vending, illegal squatter settlements and environmental degradation, among other negative effects.
Lilongwe City’s population is believed to be growing by 6.7 percent every year mainly because of the rural-to-urban migration of people in search of greener pastures, according to Mpoola.
“Obviously, people in rural areas are coming into cities to look for greener pastures. They find urban life attractive because there is nothing for them in the rural areas,” Mpoola said.
Mondiwa agreed with Mpoola, saying people living in rural areas are pushed into the cities or towns by the belief that there are greater opportunities for jobs in urban places and that the standard of living is much better than in rural areas. They also hope for better health care, education and recreational facilities.
But this is not always the case. The imagined green pasture in urban places sometimes turns out to be brown for some rural people when they arrive in the cities or towns, especially because they normally have no special skills to attract the attention of potential employers. They have to struggle to earn a living. Many of them end up staying in shacks and depend on unsafe water.
“Look at how our city is congested. Our streets have more vendors than pedestrians and this is one of the social indicators that things are not well,” Mondiwa said.
Those who cannot find employment or any other source of income fail to resist the temptation to join the “league” of pickpockets and petty thieves. Some of them graduate into dangerous criminals.
While Lilongwe has a lot of bare land - which low-income earners eye for squatter settlements - the situation is different in Blantyre, where some people have built houses on areas previously reserved for other development programmes and conservation of natural resources.
“If you go to Soche Hill now you will see that some people have built houses on the slopes. Go to Mzedi, Bangwe, Ndirande or Chilomoni and you’ll see how congested they have become,” Mondiwa said.
Blantyre City Assembly demarcated 600 plots near Sanjika in Chilomoni and invited applications from residents who wanted to build own houses. The response was overwhelming. Nearly 5,000 residents applied. When the assembly demarcated another 150 plots it received about 3,000 applications.
Since the assembly cannot meet the demand for plots, the city has witnessed encroachment on private land and subsequent development of unplanned residential areas.
Dubai and part of Area 36 are some of the residential areas in Lilongwe City that started as squatter settlements some years ago but have witnessed the mushrooming of modern houses.
Urbanisation is defined as the increase in the proportion of people living in towns and cities. Malawi ranks high on the urbanisation list of developing countries in the world.
Experts say rural-to-urban migration of people usually occurs when a country is still developing. Prior to 1950 the majority of urbanisation is said to have occurred in more economically developed countries (MEDCs).
“Rapid urbanisation took place during the period of industrialisation that took place in Europe and North America in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many people moved from rural to urban areas to get jobs in the rapidly expanding industries in many large towns and cities,” says information sourced from the Internet.
Since 1950, it says, urbanisation has slowed in most MEDCs. Now some of the biggest cities are losing population as people move away from the city to rural environments.
Mondiwa said unless the government develops rural areas by providing them with small factories and other things that would create economic opportunities, the rural-to-urban migration would not decline.
During the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) rule the government - with support from donor countries like Germany - embarked on an ambitious project to mould Rural Growth Centres (RGCs) but the initiative flopped. President Bingu wa Mutharika’s administration intends to revive the concept.
The country’s draft national population policy indicates that only 14 percent of the total population was living in urban areas in 1998, having grown from 11 percent in 1987 and eight percent in 1977.
“The government has aimed to retard the rural-urban flow of the population through policies and programmes to upgrade the quality of rural life, such as the development of rural growth centres and secondary centres,” reads part of the draft policy.
The RGCs are expected to retain potential seekers of urban employment within the rural catchment areas, it adds.
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