The Virtue of National Policies: Reflections on South Africa’s National Upgrading Support Programme

This article by Julian Baskin, Head of Programmes at the Cities Alliance, and Dr. Rene Peter Hohmann, Sr. Urban Specialist, reviews the South African National Upgrading Support Programme (NUSP), a project facilitated by the Cities Alliance. They argue that national programmes such as NUSP can create an institutional framework and political space to allow policy discourses at the national and local level to emerge. The article begins with a quick snapshot on the milestones in South African pro-poor housing legacies, before it illustrates some of the key features and achievements of the programme. It ends with reflections for future partnerships in Sub-Saharan Africa. The article was published on the Smart City Business Institute website 9 September 2015.