Africa is projected to have the fastest urban growth rate in the world by 2050, this would result in Africa's cities will be home for about an additional 1 billion people. This transition offers great opportunities but it also poses significant challenges. The fact is that this urbanization is developed most often without addressing these challenges such as lack of policies or investments. While on the other hand, there is a weak or absence of technical competences and/or knowledge that is needed for planning, development, and management of such transitions.
The ongoing transition "urbanization" is part of Africa's 2063 Agenda and it would play a pivotal role in Africa's achievement to the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs, while the STISA-2024 pillars and its priority areas can be the change agent to achieve inclusive and eco-friendly urbanization.
For Africa to benefit much from this
transition and to
be
ready to harvest the economic and social
benefit its
Engineering scientific community needs to
stand toll to
address the technical and knowledge
challenges that to
be
faced to ensure the resilience, and
sustainability of
our
future cities.
The challenge will be more for the
Engineering
scientific
community if we consider that Africa is
home to
three of the
world's megacities where the
populations of
Cairo, Kinshasa,
and Lagos have already gone beyond 10
million. In
addition,
it is forecasted that African cities
with more than
five
million inhabitants will rise from six
in 2015 to 17
by 2030
and cities with over ten million people
will
increase from
three to five.
This conference is a call for Africa's Engineering scientific community to lead the change and transformation by availing solutions and interventions to the challenges of Africa's urbanization. Motived by the above mentioned and after intensive consultation with relevant stakeholders and Africa's Engineering scientific community "Engineering and Informatics for Africa's Urbanization" was agreed upon to be the theme for the 1st ASRIC Conference on Engineering Sciences.
It is deemed also to address the areas that are in conjunction with the conference theme and sub-themes.
The 1st ASRIC Conference on Engineering Sciences aims at bringing together lead academic scientists, researcher, and scholars from Africa and its Diaspora to exchange and share their experiences, research findings on all aspects of Engineering that to address Africa's Urbanization. The conference is an opportunity to strengthen intra-Africa research and cooperation, it is also a platform for researchers, practitioners to present and discuss the most recent solution, innovations, trends, and concerns as well as practical challenges encountered and solutions adopted Urbanization.