Nairobi, 20 August 2015: As part of its advocacy, outreach and communications strategy started in 2012, UN-Habitat launched its global website in French  today, alongside two new social media channels Twitter and Facebook reporting globally on UN-Habitat’s agenda and activities in the French language.

The French website is part of a wider effort to provide global information on urban themes and UN-Habitat in the United Nations working languages. The launch of the global website in Chinese, Arabic and Spanish is scheduled for October and December this year.

UN-Habitat expects that the new communication channels in French will be especially important on the African continent: Africa is the fastest urbanizing continent worldwide, by 2040 more than 50% of its population will live in cities. At the same time, the majority of the world's French-speaking population lives in Africa.