The World Bank has urged cities across Africa to leverage on technology to reduce on social and economic inequalities involved in the access to services by the different groups of people.
The call was made by Martin Onyach-Olaa, the World Bank Senior Urban Specialist in the Urban Resilience and Land Practice during an online executive committee meeting of WeGo Cities hosted by Kampala Capital City Authority- KCCA on Tuesday.
WeGO is an acronym for World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization, an international association of city and other local governments, smart tech solutions providers, and national and regional institutions committed to the transformation of cities into smart sustainable cities.
In his presentation, Onyach-Olaa identified the difference barriers to access to socio-economic services such as offices, information, grievances redress, financial services and service like citizen feedback among others. The limited access is often linked to the unfriendly infrastructure that is unfavourable to some members of the public such as the elderly who strain to stand in long lines at the banks and also persons with disabilities -PWDs like the visually impaired who cannot easily navigate the city to find offices more so on storied buildings. The other vulnerable group is the children who may not have access to services in the City as well.
One of the key service that several people seek in Cities and Local Government is finding places and also paying taxes. Onyach-Olaa refered to an initiative of the world bank which saw over 100,000 buildings and 950 roads named while attaching a number to buildings and hence making them easily traceable and ultimately, the city becoming easy to navigate.
“Properties have numbers, signage for tourism, GIS reference hence property can be found on Google which also offers alternative routes when navigating” said Onyach-Olaa
In Kampala in 2015, the World Bank also piloted the City Address Model or Computer Aided Mass Valuation which KCCA adopted, launching it last year September 2021. The system is designed mostly to aid in the valuation of property for property rate. It captures all data Including street name, address and also the property’s geographic information system (GIS) number. The picture of the property owner is embedded in the System.
Onyach-Olaa says that before the system was introduced to KCCA, the City Authority had an out dated Property valuation list yet navigation in the city was very poor and difficult to locate the property for administration and development control.
“Quite rich property owners who are within the CBD (Central Business District) were literally paying no property rates and those who are not well connected and were not very rich were the ones doing good compliance. Through the CAM system that type of inequality was addressed.” said Onyach-Olaa adding that one of the biggest challenges Local governments face is the leakage in revenue collection which is caused by lack of data on tax payers and also the manual nature of making payments for tax.
Apart from using the system to monitor developments of commercial buildings that are eligible to paying property tax, the system also has a component of online payments. Here, a property owner is not required to walk to KCCA or a bank to make payments for tax but rather use their smart phones and make the payments online.
According to World Bank, the local government revenue administration system which is based on tax collectors and tax payers interface is prone to leakage.
In her presentation, Dorothy Kisaka the KCCA Executive Director reiterated the Authority’s efforts to digitalise its services inorder to achieve a Smart City. She made reference to the developed digital system that allows developers to apply for Building permits online without neccessarily meeting KCCA officials physically.
She emphasized the need for cities to prioritise policies that promote diversity, increase on production, export competitiveness, attract and invest in skills development, productive job creation among others. She adds that in persuit of growing resilient Cities, local authorities need to harness collaborations with some partnerships like WeGO and the Africa Smart Towns Network-ASTON.
On his part however Abdinassir Sagar, the Head Innovations and Digital and the UN Habitat called for People Centered approach to Smart Cities. He says that for people such as the elderly, if cities move their tax collection online, the elderly who don’t have access to computers or don’t know how to use it, may not be included .
“People Centered means, the needs of the people are at the heart of the solutions. There is a specific need that the solution is targeting. There is respect for human rights both online and offline. Technology should not be used to violet human rights, the solution should be put in place to improve the living conditions of those that are targeted, meaning life is made better by those solution,” added Sagar.
According to a 2021 report by International Telecommunications Union-ITU it is estimated that 14.3 per cent of households in the Africa region had Internet access in 2019, compared with 57.4 per cent globally. The report further indicates that the proportion of individuals using the Internet in 2019 totalled 28.6 per cent in Africa and 51.4 per cent globally highlighting the need to bring more people in Africa online. URN
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