Yes in My Bamako Yard | Hacker News Reader

Yes in My Bamako Yard

asteriskmag.com

61 pointssurprisetalk13 comments

This is a great article; not the first time Asterisk has published an article that has important implications for the growth of poorer countries, the other one I recall being the provocatively titled "Want Growth? Kill Small Businesses" [0]. I think this topic of what approaches will let Africa grow quickly over the next century is among the most important for world prosperity and peace we can be discussing.

[0] https://asteriskmag.com/issues/07/want-growth-kill-small-bus...

It's also interesting to look at what happened in Luanda. During the civil war, a large portion of the population fled to the capital for safety. The city went from half a million in 1970 to ~9 million today. Now downtown Luanda is one of the most expensive places in the world to live, and the city is surrounded by endless stretches of slums that are visible on satellite maps.

They are making progress on building new housing, but it's a very uphill battle.

That's interesting but I am wondering in which order to prioritise capital deployment:

1. Education and Health

2. Agriculture for self-sufficiency

3. Infrastructures

4. Housing and Urban planning?

The second, third and fourth items are related but also slightly projection based. Number one is urgent. And also related to the second item. How many top universities on the whole continent? To be fair, when we speak about universities, even in Europe, we think about American ones. Except Oxford, Cambridge and LSE in finance perhaps.

Also, the issue that comes after Education is to have policies that favor development of the private sector in order to have jobs. Obviously that would be driven from the items above.

Just that driving housing development too hard too soon based off of population growth projections could be easily sketchy. Especially since there is a scarcity of available capital due to numerous factors. I'd tend to think that Housing will solve itself according to supply and demand trends, unlike some of the other priorities.

When it comes to prioritizing capital deployment for education, it's probably better to start with primary schools before thinking about top universities. https://wid.world/news-article/china-vs-india-how-human-capi... suggests that this played a role in the economic divergence between India and China: India had a higher tertiary school enrollment rate than China until about 2000, but China had universal primary school enrollment much earlier, so more people could transition out of working in agriculture.

Interesting.

And yes, implicitly, if there are top-universities, that would mean that the full educational system is functioning properly. It's mostly to be understood as a signal.

Thank you for the article. It's quite enlightening.

Saying "Africa" is too broad.

This is not actionable advice when jurisprudence and institutions are heavily state dependent.

The problems that afflict urban planners in Mali (Bamako) are different from those that Mozambique, and each African country will have to resolve issues and innovate institutional solutions that match their own states.

I mean, I feel like there’s plenty of useful information in the article despite that. Africa is a large continent sure, but there are also useful things to say about the state of housing and urban development in ‘the West’ and most of the world. I don’t think those topics are too broad either.

That's my point though.

Saying "Africa" or the "West" or "Asia" is too broad.

Housing and urban planning norms, regulation, and laws are very dependent on regional, jurisdictional, and institutional norms.

Slum redevelopment in a democracy like Nairobi, Kenya is going to be very different from authoritarian Kigali, Rwanda.

And even within a large country like Kenya, with norms and personas in Nairobi City County being distinct from those in neighboring Kiambu County.

Jurisdiction and institutional norms vary significantly given how governance has been so distinct from African country to African country. Some were governed under British colonial legislation and retain British colonial codes. Others were governed by French colonial codes. Others yet completely rewrote their legal codes after revolutions or reformist movements.

Giving a broad recommendation without taking into account local governance context is just ridiculous.

Fair enough

In 2016, I visited a call center in Bamako - it was powered by an Asterisk VOIP system... And that is what I expected the article to cover...

Anyway, yes... Think America is the land of infinite suburban sprawl ? Meh - Africa is where it's at, with the obvious severe negative impact on urban development, mass transportation etc. Similar challenges as the USA, but a tenth of the resources.

>In the next 25 years, Africa is projected to add around 900 million new urban residents — more than the current urban population of Europe and the United States combined. The scale and speed of this growth are historically unprecedented

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S222658562...

"estimated that approximately 500–550 million rural residents had transformed into cities and towns from 1978 to 2017 in China"

and if we add newly born in the cities then it would result in about the same number of new urban residents.

Great read, thx for sharing

This is partly why we are not going to save the climate and environment...

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