AfricaGrowth Agenda

The National Development Plan compels all cities to create sustainable environments for their communities (RSA, 2012: 37-38). However, the challenge throughout South African cities is the lack of f inances needed to provide the green infrastructure required to drive the sustainable cities agenda, while cleaning up the environment (SANC, 2016: 198-199). Therefore, this paper follows a qualitative, literature-based approach to discuss alternative financing models which include private investors as well. Obviously, as per literature a self-funding municipality could result in cost savings and/or the attraction of outside investment which might be a good idea for South Africa considering its current economic status. However, it seems that in the current situation South African municipalities do not have the finance to kick-start such a process. Therefore, based on satisfactory results from a collaboration between Singapore and China on the transition of greening its cities since 2009, an alternative financing structure for greening South African cities is proposed. This may serve as a guiding tool for policy makers on greening South African cities.

The corona virus shocked everyone, from private institutions to govern ments. It presented a dual crisis which had not been experienced before, a health crisis and an economic one. The effects of the former would likely be signicficant in the short term while the effects of the latter are likely to be felt in the long term. The country and regional idiosyncrasies implies that some regions will experience a much greater shock than others. Whilst COVID19 is a global pandemic, this article discusses the challenges and opportunities that this crisis presents for Africa. On one hand, the crisis amplifies already existing Africa's weaknesses characterised by uncoordinated and dysfunctional institutions.These manifest themselves in compounded socio-economic challenges such as war, political instability, poor trade channels and systems, poverty, poor health facilities among others. On the other hand, the pandemic presents an opportunity for the continent to re-model itself and take advantage of convergence eefcts thereby 'catching-up' with emerging and advanced economies. This paper provides an overview of how Africans can transform the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity through a coordinated approach. The lesson is that Africans must learn to work as teams or perish as individuals.