Empowering the Urban Poor in Global Politics

The SDI Experience

 Benjamin Bradlow and Rose Molokoane

Ordinary people who are affected by homelessness, landlessness and poverty can talk for themselves. The voice of the poor will be heard if they are well organized.

—     Rose Molokoane, December 2010, Ou Kasie, Brits, South Africa

Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) is a global network of community-based organizations of urban poor. Each of these associations practices basic rituals of (1) women-led daily savings, (2) community-based information collection and planning, and (3) brokering deals with government and other stakeholders that influence the development of cities.

SDI emerged in 1996 from a series of exchanges between slum dwellers in India and South Africa. SDI affiliates now exist in 33 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Each national federation is supported by a small NGO that provides technical assistance, operational resources, and links to formal political actors.

SDI resists exclusion determined by urban poverty. This marginalization is tied to the “informality” of slum dwellers. The urban poor are generally excluded from formal land markets and formal financial institutions. Consequently they often address their shelter needs by building shacks on private land, or by invading state-owned land. Slum dwellers are also invisible in the data that governments use to plan cities, and they have little influence on policies impacting their lives. This absence of voice is particularly acute in global arenas, where the urban poor are almost never seen or heard.

SDI affiliates focus on three fundamental areas of exclusion in cities: finance, planning and politics. In all of these areas, federations don’t just make demands on government for services, but build relationships with official institutions to “co-produce” solutions. SDI activists reject discourses that make the poor “subjects” of development. Instead, the poor themselves must be at the forefront of both the creation and the implementation of development initiatives.

Regarding finance, the SDI practice of women-led daily savings is not only used for livelihood loans. It also serves to leverage further funds for community-led projects from other stakeholders. In addition, the savings scheme builds female leadership when leadership in informal settlement communities has traditionally been overwhelmingly male.

Regarding planning, SDI promotes the collection of community-based information which is then used for planning settlements and cities. Communities conduct detailed household socio-economic surveys, map settlements, verify information, and negotiate with government to make the information official. In this way, communities plan for themselves and are able to influence formal planning processes.

Regarding politics, SDI-affiliated groups come together to engage with different levels of politics that impact cities. City-level federations negotiate with municipal authorities. National federations strike deals with national governments. SDI federations share lessons and strategies through horizontal exchanges at local, regional, national and international levels. These exchanges have come to include government officials and other relevant parties, reinforcing the principle of “co-production” that underpins SDI’s vision of inclusive cities.

SDI pursues a number of global activities to advance this vision. In each instance, global engagements are designed to empower the urban poor in decision-making processes that affect their development.

In the area of finance, for example, SDI’s Urban Poor Fund International (UPFI) accesses resources at the global level — from private foundations as well as official donor agencies — which then seed national “urban poor funds” made up of federation savings. The infusion of global resources allows federations to develop their projects and address their priorities.

In the area of planning, SDI pools slum dweller-created maps and databases, thereby feeding the growing global demand for urban information. SDI’s track record in large settlements of cities like Bombay and Nairobi has brought acceptance of its methodologies by institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank.

In the area of politics, SDI holds a position on the Consultative Group of Cities Alliance (CA). Housed in the World Bank, this association brings together donors and Southern country governments. SDI’s presence on the Consultative Group puts slum dwellers in direct negotiation with major multilateral and bilateral donors working in urban development.

The SDI experience shows that inclusion in global politics can take many forms. By organizing at the grassroots level, SDI federations demonstrate that, to achieve a more inclusive and empowering democracy, those who are most excluded can and must take the lead in making change. In SDI the poor are not passive subjects who wait for the state and the market to improve their lives. SDI federations, and the global SDI network as a whole, are showing unique ways for the poor to organize in order to achieve more sustainable — and inclusive — change in cities of the South.

Watch video footage of Ben Bradlow and Rose Molokoane introducing their paper on 'including the urban poor in global poltics' at our international workshop in Rio de Janeiro.

The workshop brought together academics, activitists and policymakers from around the world and generated lively debates and new understanding on how to understand and overcome exclusion.

Read more about:

including the exluded | rio workshop |   workshop findings

<< BACK to case studies page                                              NEXT case study >>