The National Slum Upgrading Strategy is designed as a direct response to Target eleven of MDG 7 which recognizes that slums are a development issue, which needs to be faced and this calls for coordinated policies and actions related to slum-upgrading. First, the growth of slums needs to be slowed down and eventually stopped through legal and land market reforms (in part to provide security of tenure) and revamping planning and zoning regulations and building codes to make housing more affordable. Second, there is need to adopt preventive strategies which are about managing the surge of urbanization and forestalling the challenges of the brutal urban poverty typified in slums.
