FIG
Africa Task Force
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Background
The UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving poverty
will not be reached in Africa. The same applies to a number of the other MDGs.
There is a need to revitalise the efforts in a large number of areas, whilst it
is also important to view efforts to find best practices in all areas of
society.
Africa has seen many positive developments and experienced
progress in several areas in the past decade, primarily thanks to Africa’s own
efforts and reforms. In recent years Africa has achieved growth rates of about
5%. Furthermore, there are also clear signs of improvement in governance. The
business environment is improving. Many countries are taking steps to combat
corruption. The public authorities in many places have improved.
Despite these and many other positive examples, Africa faces
considerable challenges in the next couple of years, and development must be
accelerated further. In a global context, Africa has largely been left behind in
the area of economic growth, which is a pre-requisite for solving many of the
still existing challenges.
Focus of the Task Force
The Task focus is on the African Surveying Profession and how
it can best contribute to meet the key challenges of poverty alleviation,
economic growth, and environmental sustainability.
The key purpose is to enable the surveying profession in Sub
Saharan Africa to deal with social responsibility in terms of contributing to
achieving the MDGs. In this regard, the role of the surveyors as change agents
engaging with the politicians is important. This relates to the professional
status of surveyors that in turn is based on the principles of social
responsibility and justice.
The Task Force will consider and present new and creative
tools to revitalise and strengthen members within Sub Saharan Africa. The focus
will be on building the capacity of the surveying association and individual
surveyors to act as agents of positive change and encourage the process of
development and growth for the benefit of Africa and its people.
Recent good examples of such approaches can be found in Kenya
and Ghana. Within the framework of Professional Development and Ethics the task
force will look at developing capacity and relevant tools in three key areas:
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Peri-urban development – to develop tools to plan for
access rights to sanitation and water infrastructure in emerging informal
settlements, and thereby also complimenting the current FIG efforts to
increase access to secure tenure
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Environmental resilience – to develop tools for responding to
local natural resource environmental degradation by integrating the principles
of sustainable development into all stages of the building cycle process and by
encouraging practices to stem the loss of environmental resources
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Recruitment and involvement of young surveyors and women
- concentrating on ways and means to breaking down entry barriers for young
people and women
Timetable and Working Programme
The Task Force was established at the FIG Working Week in
Eilat, Israel, May 2009. The term of this Task Force is exceptionally
2009-2014. A mid term report was presented at the FIG Working Week in Rome
2012 and the final recommendations were presented in the FIG publication
that was launched at the FIG Congress 2014 in Kuala Lumpur.
FIG
Publication 63 - FIG Africa Task Force
Even if the focus of this Task Force is on the African
region the results can of course be multiplied for inspiration and
implementation in other regions such Asia and Latin America.
The Africa Task Force had an ambitious working programme
that included a range of thematic seminars and open discussion fora prior to
the submission of the final report. This included:
With the aim of ensuring African ownership and in order to
provide valuable input for the Task Force’s work, a series of thematic workshops
were arranged in Africa between the Working Weeks to inform, and be widely
discussed at the next Task Force meeting. Members of the Task Force will
participate and co-chair each conference.
The Task Force has been chaired by Dr. Diane Dumashie,
Chair of FIG Commission 8 (2007-2010) and Vice President (2015-2018). Members of
the Task Force included key persons anticipated to be representatives from East,
South, Central and Western African countries. Other FIG resource persons also
contributed to achieving the aim and objectives of the Task Force.
The Task Force was allocated some budget funds on annual
basis from the Council for organising the regional events.
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