Zille seeks green solutions to crisis

Cape Town - Western Cape Premier Helen Zille has challenged business leaders and innovators to come up with new, alternative “green” ways to address the province’s informal housing crisis.

Launching the provincial government’s latest project, the Better Living Challenge, on Tuesday, Zille said there was a desperate need for new technological designs for informal and subsidised housing.

There are more than 500 000 people on the province’s housing waiting list, the majority of whom live in informal settlements and backyards.

Zille said the challenge would entail creating “homes on show” that feature new technological designs. There is no financial incentive for ideas, but the provincial government would provide a platform for winning concepts to be showcased and implemented in pilot areas, Zille’s spokesman Zak Mbhele said. Jenny Cargill, Zille’s adviser, said the provincial government had the capacity, the resources and even the capital, but no “real solutions” to the challenges.

“We have massive challenges in the province when it comes to housing. This new public challenge will enable us to get ideas and solutions from innovative thinkers that could help us redevelop informal settlements, using green technologies.”

Cargill said more details about the project would be announced over the next few months.

In the meantime, Zille said she would consult with Finance MEC Alan Winde to include a dedicated amount for innovation in his department’s annual budget next year.

“We need that dedicated component in our budget to support innovative start-ups,” Zille said. “We sit on extraordinary potential and possibility in the Western Cape and South Africa. With the right policies, we can promote job-creating growth and development and create replicable innovations that can be spread throughout the continent and beyond. In all of this, the role of the government is to make it easy to be an entrepreneur.”

Tuesday’s announcement coincided with the release of the Western Cape Green Economy Strategy Framework, which seeks to position the Western Cape as the leading green economic hub in Africa.

Key partners of the initiative included the UCT Graduate School of Business Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the V&A Waterfront.

Professor Walter Baets, director of the UCT Graduate School of Business, said: “We want to focus on bringing together on-the-ground knowledge with the brightest minds. A partnership has formed between the UCT Graduate School of Business and the V&A Waterfront, and we are calling on the most innovative foundations and corporates to come on board.”

- Cape Argus