Dr. Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka (b.1950) is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT). She is the highest ranking African woman in the UN System.
Born in Tanzania, Tibaijuka studied Agricultural Economics at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala and is fluent in English, Swahili, Swedish andFrench. She is the widow of the former Tanzanian ambassador Wilson Tibaijuka who died in 2000. She is the second highest ranking African woman in the UN after Dr Asha Rose Migiro, the Deputy UN Secretary General (Who is also a Tanzanian).
As an African woman who so far has had the honour and the privilege of running an UN programme and, in my view, quite successfully with a lot of support, I have been empowered and I have been supported. Clearly I could not do this alone. You need partnership, you need support from Members States, from your colleagues, the staff, the Secretary-General of the day who gave me the chance to lead and show that even African women could actually do our work and do it well. So this is empowerment. Basically, empowerment is giving people a chance to prove themselves, especially the marginalized groups.
From 1993 to 1998 Tibaijuka was Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Dar es Salaam. During this period she was also a member of the Tanzanian Government delegation to several United Nations Summits including the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Istanbul, 1996); the World Food Summit (Rome 1996); the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing 1995) and the World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995). At the World Food Summit in Rome, she was elected Coordinator for Eastern Africa in the Network for Food Security, Trade and Sustainable Development (COASAD). Mrs. Tibaijuka has also been a Board Member of UNESCO‘s International Scientific Advisory Board since November 1997.
As a young woman, did you think that you would one day lead a UN agency?
To be honest with you I did not because I am actually of that generation of Africans born, bred and brought up in the countryside. The only reason I went to school was because my father decided that [I could go to] this missionary school… So he was progressive in that sense, and then the rest follows, so there was a lot of missionary activity in my home area and through mission schools I got a chance and then one thing leads to another. But basically it was through education that I was able then to come and end up in the United Nations. It was not something that I consciously worked for.
I am an economist by background but also a wife like many other women. It so happened that after my training in Tanzania, my late husband was a Tanzanian diplomat and he was working in Stockholm so as a very young bride I found myself there and I did not know what to do, so I started to go to school. As you know Sweden is one of the most progressive countries. You could study. Education was free and after that I went back to work in my country as a professor in academia, but it was very clear for me in 1998 that we needed to put in our perspective at the international level so I joined the United Nations to work on trade issues. I was recruited by UNCTAD [UN Conference on Trade and Development] as the director of the Least Developed Countries there, but then my tenure there was short-lived… [then Secretary-General] Kofi Annan said that I have to come to Nairobi to run this Habitat programme.
What are the key challenges and targets regarding slum dwellers, of which there are millions worldwide?
The MDG [Millennium Development Goal] target for UN-Habitat was grossly inadequate. In fact it was a conceptual omission. The target stated “to make significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers,” but this is made at a time when you already had 1 billion slum dwellers. So you are trying to improve the situation of 10 per cent of the slum dwellers. I have always argued, and this continues to be unfinished business on the part of Member States, that the target should be stated as a proportion. The target should be to halve the proportion of people living in slums and squatter settlements, which is really more in line with the ideal of cities without slums that was endorsed in the Millennium Declaration.
So while the Millennium Declaration was correct and endorsed the principle of cities without slums, when it came to the MDG, the slum target was poorly formulated into a number. I would like to say that much as we are happy the 100 million [people out of slums] have been proved, it is no cause for celebration. Because the net effect between 2000 and now is that there have been about 60 million new additions and they will continue [to grow].
What is more, these 100 million slum dweller target has been reached by only a few countries – China and India mostly… But if you look at sub-Saharan Africa, the number of slum dwellers is increasing by the day. The same goes for South-East Asia and other places. So I would like to say that we really applaud the gains made but the target was itself problematic from the outset.
You were the first African woman elected by the General Assembly as Under-Secretary-General of a UN programme. Are you a good example of gender empowerment?
As an African woman who so far has had the honour and the privilege of running an UN programme and, in my view, quite successfully with a lot of support, I have been empowered and I have been supported. Clearly I could not do this alone. You need partnership, you need support from Members States, from your colleagues, the staff, the Secretary-General of the day who gave me the chance to lead and show that even African women could actually do our work and do it well. So this is empowerment. Basically, empowerment is giving people a chance to prove themselves, especially the marginalized groups.
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