The World Bank has stepped up its level of finance for the development of infrastructure in Africa, putting more emphasis on the integrated multi-sectoral aspects of human society, reports the Panafrican News Agency Friday.
The banks director for transport and urban development, Maryvonne Plessis-Fraissard, who was attending the second edition of the World Urban Forum in Barcelona Friday, said the institution has given more attention to social aspects of development.
– We used to build dams without thinking or doing something on how the people displaced from the construction sites are going to live. Now we are going to do it differently, she told PANA in an interview according to the World Bank press review Monday.
Some 3.000 delegates from around the world gathered at the 13-17 September forum that was organized by the UN Human Settlement Program (UN-Habitat) to dialogue on habitat issues, including water and sanitation.
– The message from the World Bank is that we have to finance the development of infrastructure and at the same time consider what impact such an investment would have on the social life (of the people involved). We have increased the number of social scientists in our organization, she said.
She added that the bank formerly used 800 million US dollar in Africa, a figure that was doubled two years ago. Last year, the World Bank undertook infrastructural development investment that cost 2 billion dollar.
– This 2 billion dollar is not the kind of investment we used to do in the past, because it has all aspects of life including gender dimensions. The mindset has changed and the product has also changed, she added.
Meanwhile, two billion people around the world are likely to be living in shanty-towns by 2020 if unregulated urban expansion is allowed to continue unchecked at its present rate, experts warned in Barcelona.
Seen as poles of prosperity, the worlds major cities are continuing to attract millions of country-dwellers, deepening still further the gulf in wealth between poor and prosperous regions, according to city mayors and town planners at the UN-Habitat forum.
Property speculation allied to the creation of improvised accommodation for new arrivals on the outskirts of ever-expanding urban agglomerations is resulting in de facto “urban apartheid,” some experts further warned.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
