BULAWAYO mayor David Coltart last week attended the annual African Mayors Leadership Initiative (AMALI) that was held at the University of Cape Town in South Africa aimed at enabling African city fathers to help each other in developing their cities.
The initiative is a programme that focuses on ensuring leaders, mayors and former mayors from different African countries help each other in bringing solutions to the continent’s cities to reach world-class standards.
This year, 15 mayors from across Africa and the United States attended the meeting.
Speaking to NewsDay yesterday, Coltart said the meeting was also attended by a variety of supervisors and mentors, including people like the former mayor in Mozambique, Luis Adonko, among others.
“We were invited in these small groups to go over the range of issues our respective cities were facing and to prioritise them and logically work out a process within that time frame to resolve the issues,” he said.
Coltart said he focused on solutions to the provision of clean water, the rehabilitation of the sewer systems and the construction of markets to address the crisis prevailing in the city.
“The meeting helped me to clearly focus on these issues and to work out strategies to deal with them. My hope is that if I am able to implement these goals and strategies that it may result in the city having reliable sources of clear water and it may also result in sewage plants being rehabilitated,” he said.
“It may result in the clean-up of the city sector and the provision of attractive markets like the likes of Egodini, but not limited to Egodini.”
- Outrage over school uniform prices
- Schools reopen amid deepening teacher crisis
- Village Rhapsody: Sanctions are not the reason Zim is in a mess
- Outrage over school uniform prices
Keep Reading
The AMALI programme, launched in January 2023, was centred on annual cohorts of approximately 15 mayors which participated in an initial four-day forum, follow-up workshops and a reunion, access data support, and in select cases received tailored mentoring and coaching.
AMALI is a joint initiative of Big Win Philanthropy and the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town and is hosted by ACC.
It also receive support from Bloomberg Philanthropies.
