Public facilities vs expanding cities

The Zambia Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (ZIPAR)’s latest report released last week indicates that, Zambia’s city populations are expanding at an average rate of nearly four per cent per year.
Now that raises a lot of questions like, are public facilities in these cities expanding at corresponding rates?
What are the causes of this population explosion, is it a high rate of reproduction or merely rural-urban drift?
Generally, what is the impact of such population increase on service provisions, job opportunities and generally, the standard of living?
In short, is it a good or bad thing that city populations are, on average, growing at that rate? How can we take advantage of such population growth rate to translate it into higher economic growth rate?
It is for that reason that this week we decided to take a break from highlighting the legacies of the first five years of the Patriotic Front (PF) in government which we embarked on a fortnight ago.
First of all, ZIPAR which started operating in 2009 was established by the Zambian Government with the support of the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF).
It is an economic think-tank with a mandate to conduct research and analysis for policy formulation, implementation and monitoring.
On its present report, “Promoting Job-Rich Urbanisation in Zambia,” ZIPAR worked with the International Growth Centre and Just Jobs Network.
The report indicates that the four per cent growth rate for the city populations entails that Zambia must create 1.2 million new jobs in urban areas by 2025.
It is projected that Zambia should create 1.2 million new urban jobs by 2025 and 2.8 million by 2035.
One factor which could account for the increase in the urban population is reduction in the Zambian workers employed in agriculture from 71.4 per cent to 48.9 per cent.
“Zambia is witnessing a shift as the workforce moved out of agriculture into services and industry between 2008 and 2014,” the report partly states.
The report which forms part of ZIPAR’s on-going Flagship Project on “More and Better Jobs” shows that despite the country’s high levels of economic growth, its labour markets are not creating enough jobs that can propel inclusive growth.
Some of the effects from that on the cities are that between 2012 and 2014, purchasing power in the country’s heavily urbanised provinces like Lusaka and the Copperbelt, declined.
In Lusaka, urban workers earned nearly 17 per cent less in 2014 than 2012.
In both Lusaka and the Copperbelt, the number of workers who work without pay in a family business or on a farm was growing faster than the number of paid workers.
Most growth recorded in urban employment was in low productivity informal services. This is an early warning that productivity may not be rising fast enough to sustain continued job growth in the long run.
While the situation is likely to worsen with the current economic slowdown, there are some positive trends which could offset the declining rate of urban employment.
For example, the construction sector employed 128 per cent more workers in 2014 than in 2008.
The hospitality sector also expanded formal employment by 63 per cent in the same period.
But these bright spots cannot overshadow the warning signs of a severe lack of productive jobs in urban areas, outside the small, and shrinking formal sector, which employs just over a quarter of urban Zambians.
The researchers propose policy changes which could inform the development of the seventh national development plan, which is currently being worked on by government.
These are:
1. Strengthening  efforts to recognise and upgrade informal settlements.
At present businesses operating in informal settlements with over 70 per cent of Zambia’s urban residents face difficulties which include poor connectivity to markets, limited space, poor infrastructure and technology.
Government should address these challenges by recognising and upgrading informal settlements.
2. Extend cluster-based industrial policy to urban areas and upgrade urban markets.
The cluster approach to industrialisation, which the Zambian government is currently pursuing in rural areas, is well suited to an urban economy.
While the cluster approach can also succeed in rural areas there is significant scope to promote manufacturing activities in urban areas to create more jobs.
3. Improve intra- and intercity connectivity and leverage new infrastructure investment to stimulate growth-intensive sectors.
Connectivity-both within the city and between centres of production is one of the keys to leveraging mass effects of urban economies to create more and better jobs.
Effective public transportation networks can help small scale businesses to move their goods to markets.
Moreover, new investments in national road and rail infrastructure can be harnessed to support the growth of labour-intensive sectors and small scale businesses.
4. Revitalise and diersify the Copperbelt to create a more dynamic, job-creating urban region.
The Copperbelt is one of the most important urban regions of Zambia, but today its economic fortunes are endangered, largely because of its overdependence on copper mining.
Policymakers can reverse the province’s downturn by building on its existing assets and engaging the right mix of interventions to create a vibrant urban labour market through diversifying its economic output.
God willing, we will revisit the report to answer many of the questions it raises.
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