Many donor agencies are recognizing the need to
address the growing levels of urban poverty in Africa, Latin
America and much of Asia. Many also acknowledge that they
had under-estimated the scale of urban poverty. As they develop
or expand programmes on poverty reduction in urban areas, there
are many remarkable initiatives on whose experience they can
draw.
This paper reflects on the lessons from seven of these: three from
Asia, three from Latin America and one from Africa. All these
initiatives combined direct action by low-income groups themselves,
working with local NGOs, with some support negotiated
from one or more external agency in order to improve housing
and living conditions, basic services and livelihoods. Each initiative
sought to make limited funding go as far as possible - and
most achieved partial or total cost recovery for some (or all) of
their interventions. All used credit to allow low-income groups to
spread the cost of capital investment over a number of years.
These initiatives also changed the relationship between poor