The Koulikoro Region Working with UN-Habitat in Mali

Following the high-level meeting held in New York with UN-Habitat Executive Director Anacláudia Rossbach, during which a firm commitment to the territorialization of urban policies and support for regional governments was reaffirmed, the President of the Koulikoro Regional Council, Abdoulaye Kaba Diakité, and his technical team have taken this dialogue to the ground through a working meeting with the UN-Habitat team at the United Nations headquarters in Bamako.

During the meeting, Sergio Blanco Ania, UN-Habitat’s Senior Technical Advisor in Mali, presented the agency’s strategic priorities in the country, focusing on sustainable urbanization, secondary cities and territorial resilience, structured around three priority areas: land tenure, housing and basic services.

Within this framework, the Koulikoro delegation highlighted the major demographic and spatial challenges facing the region. With a population that has already surpassed 2.25 million inhabitants, nearly half of whom are under the age of 15, Koulikoro is directly affected by mounting pressures, infrastructure deficits and imbalances resulting from the rapid growth of the greater Bamako metropolitan area, driven particularly by the expansion of urban centres such as the Kati–Kalabancoro conurbation. These challenges are compounded by the consequences of rural exodus and the pressure generated by the displacement of people fleeing insecurity in the country.

The Regional Council also stressed the need to accompany this demographic dynamic –which could see the population reach 5 million inhabitants in the coming decades– with planning policies aimed at creating secondary economic hubs, improving mobility and sustainably managing emerging extractive activities, such as artisanal mining.

The UN-Habitat representative welcomed the meeting, noting that it had given him a much clearer understanding of the strategic role played by Koulikoro in the territorial dynamics surrounding Bamako. With a fully decentralized approach aligned with the commitments adopted in New York together with ORU Fogar, Sergio Blanco committed to carefully reviewing all of the region’s proposals to ensure their inclusion in the agency’s planning and operational programmes in the country.