On July 31, 2024, HipCity Innovation Centre convened a one-day stakeholder dialogue on “Developing a comprehensive Area Council Development Plan”. The event brought together representatives from Area CouncilS, FCDA, FCTA, CSOs, and the HipCity team to discuss the way forward for inclusive city making.
The dialogue was centered around the need for a coordinated development approach at the Area Council level, as highlighted by HipCity’s Executive Director, Bassey Bassey. He emphasized that the current lack of a development plan hinders the development of Abuja’s Area Councils and their achievement of inclusive cities where people can live without feeling pressured to move into the Federal Capital City.
During Bassey’s presentation, he showcased the potential for each Area Council to develop its unique identity leveraging its comparative advantage, identifying opportunities in areas of connectivity, mobility, housing, agriculture, security, tourism, public healthcare, education, and other pillars of economic growth.
The plenary session generated valuable discussions and suggestions, including interrogating Area Council chairmen’s intentions during campaigns, granting Area Councils full financial autonomy, developing model cities with a defined system of governance and administration, creating innovative and implementable development plans, and addressing challenges like lack of planning authority units, enhancing synergy among sister agencies, and mitigating slow policy implementation.
Participants identified quick wins for Area council development such as intentional investment in infrastructural development such as model neighborhood, streamlining responsibilities and synergy between area council planning officers and FCDA planning officers, joint capacity building trainings, and legislative support from the National Assembly to interrogate how Area Councils utilize their funds, Security enhancement in villages and communities within Area Councils, monitoring and evaluation of activities and projects. With the recent supreme court judgement, it is imperative for Area councils to plan ahead and make themselves competitive and attractive for investments and investors.
HipCity Innovation Centre as an inclusive city advocate has the commitment to facilitate more of such meetings with Area Councils and continue collaborating with CSOs for further engagements. The dialogue marked an important step towards building inclusive cities, as we look forward to more engagements with Area Councils to develop strategic development plans.
