University partnerships are key to UN-Habitat’s ‘centre of excellence’ aspiration. They can act as drivers of capacity building, innovation, and urban change. These partnerships are enacted through a wide array of knowledge products and across a vast geography of collaborations internationally. A reform and enhancement of Habitat UNI, as the university partnership initiative of UN-Habitat, could be pivotal to reap the benefits of this multifaceted engagement.

The African Urban Agenda (AUA) is an initiative by UN-Habitat tailored to establish and strengthenpartnerships between state and non-state actors towards advancing a new urban agenda. The project aims at raising the profile of urbanization as an imperative for development in Africa. It contributes to promoting democratic governance through mobilization, sensitization and strengthening of non-state actors to partner effectively with the national governments of sub-Sahara African countries in articulating Africa’s priorities for the next 20 years with a focus on a transformative national urbanpolicy, compact cities at a human scale, undertaking institutional and legal reform and improved collaboration.It also aims at building an understanding between non-state actors and national governments, thereby building an African consensus with a strong momentum of support for a continent-wide urban agenda for the next 20 years.The project will especially contribute to building collaboration between state and non-state actors through inclusive and participatory preparation for the Post-2015 agenda and national reports for Habitat III, creating a strong balance for the urbanization tripod of Government, CSOs-including academia and the private sector.

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The guidelines outline the main principles underlying the democratic, constitutional/legal and administrative aspects of local governance and decentralization. At the same time they must be applied to specific conditions of State form (federal, regionalized or unitary), with different State traditions (for example, Napoleonic, Germanic or Anglo-Saxon, as well as traditions found in Asia, or in the Arab world).

For that reason they do not provide a uniform and rigid blueprint applicable to all Member States of the United Nations. They may be subject to national adaptations. Their main objective, however, is to support and guide legislative reform where necessary and appropriate.