Thembi Simelane, South Africa’s Human Settlements Minister, stood in the City of Tshwane on Friday to open something her department has been building toward since at least October 2022: a dedicated UN-Habitat Country Office, now formally in place to accelerate housing delivery, informal settlement upgrades, and sustainable urban development across the country.
For the millions of South Africans living in informal settlements or substandard housing, the office’s arrival is more than a diplomatic milestone. It creates a permanent institutional presence, one designed to guide policy implementation, build local government capacity, and coordinate the many departments and development partners already working on these issues, but often without a shared anchor.
Simelane and UN-Habitat Executive Director Anacláudia Rossbach presided over the launch together, a pairing that signals the weight both sides attach to the work ahead. Simelane framed the office as essential infrastructure, not a symbolic gesture. She noted that South Africa has already earned international recognition for its approach to housing provision and informal settlement upgrading, and argued the new office would amplify that work rather than restart it.
The office operates under a Country Programme adopted in September 2023. That programme connects to several layers of South African planning simultaneously: the National Development Plan’s chapters on transforming human settlements and building safer communities, the Medium-Term Development Plan 2024-2029 (particularly its focus on reducing poverty and addressing the cost of living crisis affecting millions of households), and the Comprehensive Plan for the Creation of Sustainable Human Settlements, which targets the transformation of informal settlements and improvement of substandard housing conditions.
Meanwhile, Simelane pointed to a regional dimension that extends the office’s potential reach well beyond South Africa’s borders. She described the partnership as a possible foundation for a consolidated Southern African Development Community agenda on human settlements, filling what she called a critical gap in current regional development programmes. That ambition ties directly to the continental vision of Agenda 2063, The Africa We Want.
The groundwork for Friday’s launch was laid in October 2022, when the then Human Settlements Minister hosted UN-Habitat’s former Executive Director Maimunah Mohd Sharif. That visit produced two concrete outcomes: adoption of the Global Action Plan on Accelerating the Transformation of Informal Settlements and Slums, and a Memorandum of Understanding to strengthen cooperation on implementing the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda in South Africa. Plans for a dedicated country office were discussed during those meetings.
The Country Programme pursues five core objectives. It will strengthen collaboration among government, UN-Habitat, other United Nations agencies, development partners, and human settlements stakeholders. It aims to promote integrated urban interventions that accelerate progress toward national and global development goals. It will capture lessons and global best practices to inform new partnerships, identify contextual challenges and opportunities, and develop solutions grounded in both international experience and local realities. The fifth objective focuses on building the capacity of national and subnational institutions to improve urban management and development.
Simelane closed the launch with a direct call to all stakeholders: use the new platform to deepen commitment to creating human settlements where communities can live safely, inclusively, and with dignity. The office now provides the institutional mechanism for pursuing that vision systematically. Whether it can bridge the gap between policy ambition and conditions on the ground, for the families still waiting in informal settlements, remains the question that will define its legacy. More information is available at https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/un-habitat-country-office-strengthen-sas-drive-inclusive-human-settlements.