In February, Dr. Ailsa Holloway, director of the Disaster Mitigation for Sustainable Livelihoods Programme, an integral part of the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies located at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University, delivered the keynote address to the 4th Africa Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction at Arusha in Tanzania. The website for the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction reported that Dr. Holloway stated that, “risks that have historically played out in rural areas like drought, floods, and wildfires are being transferred and transformed and expressed differently across Africa’s fast growing cities and towns.”

During her address, Dr. Holloway noted that by 2050, “Africa’s urban population is expected to be 60 percent of the total population.” In some countries, that figure will be reached by 2030. She went on to say, “Urban risk management in Africa is simply not up to speed. It is unrealistic to expect our national disaster management authorities to have capacity to address nationwide concerns simultaneously with those faced by large cities and towns.” She continued, “Urban fire is devastating and a poorly understood and weakly managed risk across the continent, while new forms of rising flood occur in our growing cities due to unplanned settlement and weak urban infrastructure. Food insecurity in cities generates multiple challenges.”

By way of a fascinating comparison Dr. Holloway said, “One of the most amazing aspects of urban risk is its sheer dynamism. There are always new configurations of risk. For instance, last year in Luanda [Zambia], over 20,000 people were reportedly bitten by rabid dogs and illustrating the often nuanced nature of the emerging risk—those most vulnerable were 5-9 year old boys.”