Recently, I had the opportunity to represent the City of Tshwane at the Urban 20 Mayors Summit in Indonesia. The trip was fully funded by the event organisers. The Urban 20 Mayors Summit is a gathering of mayors of large metropolitan cities across the globe to discuss issues of mutual interest.
One of the highlighted subjects was looking at ways that cities could recover from the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and revive their local economies. For example, here in the City of Tshwane the pandemic affected revenue collection levels and the City is still working on reaching pre-pandemic revenue collection levels. In this regard, the summit served as a platform to discuss and share valuable insights that could be applicable here at home.
Other key matters of discussions included improving social services to residents by strengthening health systems and providing equitable housing. In our case, the City has already started this work with our three social housing projects, namely Marabastad Townlands that is almost ready for occupation with 1 200 mixed units, Chantelle that just began construction of 1 098 units and Timberlands that has 607 planned units.
The summit also highlighted issues such as sustainable energy transition, a topical and relevant issue here at home as metropolitan municipalities are now under pressure to seek alternative power solutions to counter the continuous load-shedding by Eskom.
Other discussions included strategies for cities to reduce their environmental impact, and during this discourse I shared our City’s Climate Action Plan. The Urban 20 Mayors Summit will then deliver its final report for consideration by world leaders during the upcoming G20 summit.
As Tshwane is the capital city of South Africa and home to a large diplomatic community, it is important that the City of Tshwane forms part of global engagements where we can share ideas and learn best practices to improve governance and service delivery.