The City of Cape Town has renewed its working partnership with the German city of Aachen for another five years. This will enable the two cities to continue working together to promote sustainable development.
The partnership addresses the environmental, social and economic challenges both cities face.
The first Memorandum of Understanding with Aachen was signed in 2000, making this one of the City’s longest multilateral agreements.
Executive Mayor, Alderman Patricia de Lille, and the Lord Mayor of the City of Aachen, Marcelo Phillip, signed the new Memorandum of Agreement on 17 October 2012.
Speaking at the event, she said that cities around the world often face similar problems and can benefit from the experience and knowledge of other local governments.
“By sharing ideas of international best practice and engaging in constructive dialogue, we learn tried and tested ways of improving the lives of our residents.”
These include finding solutions to tackle rising levels of urbanisation and formulating strategies to attract investments in the local economy.
Leveraging such partnerships through joint ventures also assists in remaining competitive and fostering economic growth in order to create jobs.
De Lille said Cape Town is the country’s best-run municipality partly because it has applied lessons learnt from cities like Aachen, and has had the courage to implement the sound policies it has introduced, including appointing the right people for the right jobs.
All of the partnership projects between the two cities have one thing in common, she said: to ultimately create opportunities for residents.
She listed examples of the exciting outcomes of this partnership, including the City’s Smart Series campaign, which promotes the reduction of waste through recycling projects, the use of green technologies in buildings, and encouraging organic gardening.
Another example is the Bicycle Recycle Project to promote the use of non-motorised transport, which has seen over 1 800 bicycles from Aachen distributed to encourage youth in impoverished areas to use cycling as an alternative means of transport.
An exchange programme will enable City officials to gain new insights and skills that they need to help the City reach higher levels of excellence in municipal governance, she said.
