Lusaka Mayor, Her Worship Ms. Chilando Chitangala has hailed the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa-UNECA for their efforts in assisting the Local Authority develop tools and implement strategic policy reforms aimed at expanding and strengthening the municipality’s fiscal space through the DA-15 project.
Speaking when she addressed participants at the ongoing two-day expert group meeting to validate the Lusaka City Council’s Financial Assessment Report-FAR in Livingstone today, Ms. Chitangala described the partnership between UNECA and Lusaka City Council as timely and relevant. 
She told the meeting that billboards, business levy fees including land rates are among the lifeline revenue streams for Lusaka City Council but that a lack of proper and robust digital data capturing tools for the Council’s clients and the emergency of unplanned settlements continue to exist as bottlenecks that hinder the Local Authority from broadening its revenue base.
The Mayor further disclosed that the Local Authority has been losing millions of Kwachas due to untapped revenue sources, thereby making it difficult for LCC to enhance service delivery to the citizenry as per its mandate.
Ms. Chitangala expressed confidence that through the interface with UNECA, Lusaka City Council is poised to create integrated, user friendly, proper and sustainable revenue collection tools that will play a critical role in actualizing the city’s aspirations in line with both national and global goals.
Speaking at the same event, Nairobi City Conty Governor, H.E James Njoroge Muchiri backed Lusaka Mayor’s call for leakage free revenue collection tools and the development of proper books of accounts especially that both Nairobi and Lusaka are expanding at a rapid rate.
H.E Muchiri cited the need to embrace Public Private Partnerships-PPPs and the development of city research units as some of the practical steps through which local municipalities can expand their fiscal space
And United Resident Coordinator to Zambia Ms. Beatrice Muthali said that the United Nations understands that Local Authorities are in the frontline in addressing complex urbanization challenges such as population growth, climate change, and economic disparities.
Ms. Muthali disclosed that research indicates that the urban population, which currently stands at 42%, is projected to grow by 50% by 2030 and 60% by 2050, proving true that there will be sustainable development challenges.
She said that despite the urbanization challenges, the government of Zambia must be praised for making strides in creating an enabling environment for the attainment of the sustainable development goals-SDGs particularly, SDG 11 as implemented within the framework of the 8National Development Plan.
The DA-15 project is designed to enhance the ability of city governments in Africa to develop and implement strategic policy reforms aimed at expanding and strengthening urban fiscal space as part of broader national “building forward” priorities The project’s core objective is to equip municipalities with the capacity to assess and improve their financial management.
