He has been held-up in another meeting at the Habitat headquarters in Nairobi. You are all very busy individuals with immense responsibilities. Yet you have been generous enough with your time to devote three days to this workshop. I have no doubt that this is a reflection of your concern for the subject matter that has occupied us over these three days. For it is a subject that we live everyday of our lives, and the problems that we have identified and have been talking about here are ones that we ourselves experience daily, either at a personal or institutional level.
Urbanization is the future of mankind.
The future economic growth of our nations will to a very large extent depend on how well our cities and towns are managed. We know that one of the most important criteria influencing the rate of new industrial and commercial investment in any city, hence creation of new jobs, is the adequacy and reliability of infrastructure, especially power supply, water supply, roads and telecommunications. The well-being of our urban populations will also be determined by their degree of access to basic urban infrastructure and services, especially potable water, sanitation, domestic energy, education and health. All of this, of course, can be reduced to the fundamental question of urban financial health, and, as we have seen in this Workshop, privatization of urban services may lead us in the right direction and help us to attain better coverage and efficiency. We have shared very useful information on both privatization and financing of municipal services.