Interview with Arkebe Oqubay, mayor of Addis Ababa

Arkebe Oqubay was parachuted in as mayor of Addis Ababa after Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi dissolved the entire administration for incompetence. Here six months into the job, Arkebe tells IRIN of the problems faced by the impoverished, sprawling city which has a population of more than three million, and the solutions he has in mind. QUESTION: What are the problems faced by a city like Addis Ababa? ANSWER: The biggest is unemployment - that is around 35 percent. Housing is critical because we have a backlog of 250,000 houses. And HIV/AIDS – the prevalence rate is 15.6 percent. These are the key issues. The other issues we need to address is making the city habitable, a pleasant place to live and work in which means it must be cleaned up, encourage a greener environment. We need to completely change the civil service because it has not been provided a good level of service. Infrastructure is weak and requires big investment, particularly the city’s water supply and roads. We must also mobilise all stakeholders – private sector and non-governmental organisations and local communities. Not enough has been done. Q: How do you tackle the level of unemployment in the city? A: Our programme is mainly focused on supported micro and small enterprises. In most cities it is only through these micro and small enterprises that you are able to generate employment. Here in our city we will try and address problems faced by them. We are opening finance to them, making premises available and creating access to raw materials and skilled manpower. We are also trying to attract investment to the city by preparing industrial zones that are available for factories and designing an efficient one-stop service delivery so that investors do not have to wait a long time to get permits or investment certificates. We have established the Investment Authority of Addis Ababa that allows investors to get services in minimal time – less than two days compared to months previously. Q: What would you like to have achieved before the next election in two and a half years? A: I want to reduce unemployment – the target we have for this year is to reduce unemployment by 10 to 15 percent. Job creation is one of the major areas on which we are focusing. Housing and shelter are basics and so here also in the coming three years we want to reduce the housing shortage by 50 percent through the private sector and social housing supported by the city. And for this current year, our target is to cut the prevalence of HIV/AIDS from 15.6 percent to 12.8 percent. Q: What are you doing to combat HIV/AIDS? A: We have established at city level an anti-HIV/AIDS council which is composed of all stakeholders - NGOs, the private sector, local communities, government offices - and is chaired by me. So we are giving it a high profile. The anti-HIV campaign is not effective enough because the prevalence rate has been going up. So it is clear that enough work has not been done. Q: What can you do? A: We have to increase awareness and introduce facilities like voluntary counselling and testing. Also in many hospitals, many patients who are affected by HIV could get care at home so we are introducing home-based care so hospitals are in a position to give services. We are focusing on schools. We have around half a million schoolchildren, so if we invest in them and try to protect these 'islands' who are not infected by HIV/AIDS it would be a big success. So we have to work on youth, women and schools. We also need specific policies on how people with HIV are treated. Their rights must be respected. There should be no discrimination. We also need special focus on prostitutes and vulnerable groups. That is one of the biggest challenges for me. Q: How do you deal with the city’s beggars? A: We have a population growth of around six to seven percent annually. This population growth is natural population growth and migration from rural areas. The continual growth is contributing to the numbers of beggars. By creating a conducive environment for new businesses we are trying to create job opportunities for many people. I believe this is a major solution. But there will still be street children or disabled who will be forced to beg. But with NGOs and the private sector we try to see these people are re-joined with their family to get education or food and try to limit the impact within the city. We are trying to encourage NGOs who support street children and their families. We need these social schemes to reduce this, while on the other side create job opportunities. Q: Why has the civil service failed in the past? A: Not enough has been done to change the civil service. Offices work independently, but we are implanting new guidelines designed to suit residents and already we are seeing improvements. For example getting a marriage or birth certificate would take more than two weeks and they would need to go to different offices, but now they can get these in less than an hour in one place. Offices are now almost 100 percent free from bribes. Here we have seen a major departure from the past. Q: So you are slashing the bureaucracy surrounding the civil service? A: We followed a new approach. We studied the whole process surrounding bureaucracy, all the steps, the time it takes to do things. We talked to the workers and customers and designed improvements. We asked if certain steps were necessary and if not, we removed them. For example selling a house required clearance from the finance bureau which took five to six months, but when we looked at it we decided no clearance was needed by them at all. We did the same thing in land administration and in water services. Improving the service delivery is the core activity within the administration and we believe in the coming few years we can completely overhaul the civil service within the city. Q: If you were to run a city as effectively as you would like, how much is needed? A: The current budget is 2.77 billion Birr [US $324 million]. But to address even the most urgent problems within our city, we need three times this amount. With this funding we are trying to prioritise and reduce administrative costs and use it in the most appropriate way. Q: But how can you tackle the massive infrastructure problems with that budget? A: Firstly wherever the private sector provides the service, we are saying we should facilitate and create a conducive environment. For example, solid waste management which is critical for the city - we are adapting a policy that the private sector provides this service to the institutional customers. They can have contracts with users. In other areas, we are trying to improve the revenue of the city while also allowing the private sector to get involved - for example the parking lots in the city. Q: And to develop the city’s infrastructure? A: In housing we are looking for the private sector to get involved. In terms of assistance like water supply we believe assistance is required because the investment required is huge, so there should either be access to credit or some kind of assistance. The water projects needed in Addis require billions of birr. We are financing the design, but we definitely need funding from different sources for the big multi-million projects. The options we have are from friends of the country, because issues like creating access to water and sanitation are issues related to poverty and poverty reduction. Secondly - access to credit. At this time we do not have much access to credit. Q: What about tackling congestion in the city? A: We are conducting a transport study which will show the long term direction of the sector. Also we need to improve the status of transportation because of the congestion. Our priority is focusing on specific roads which do have an impact on reducing congestion. Reducing the level of accidents also requires attention. In Addis, it is not so much the number of vehicles but more that drivers do not have good discipline. So we are introducing measures to tackle that. We want to give special attention to bus transport because the majority of people use them.