Anna Tibaijuka is the first African woman to be elected by the UN General Assembly as Under-Secretary-General of a United Nations programme. She is currently serving a second, four-year term as Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN-HABITAT. In its unanimous decision to re-elect Mrs. Tibaijuka for a second term as Executive Director of UN-HABITAT, the General Assembly noted her success in forging strategic partnerships with financial institutions for follow-up investment in housing and urban infrastructure. These include the UN-HABITAT $570 million agreement with the African Development Bank and $500 million agreement with the Asian

Development Bank.

Mrs. Tibaijuka has been instrumental in promoting water, sanitation and slum upgrading globally and in assisting the African Union to establish the African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development (AMCHUD). She also helped place urban poverty high on the agenda of similar regional bodies for Latin American and the Caribbean, as well as the Asia-Pacific.

A Tanzanian national born to smallholder banana-coffee farmers in Muleba, Tanzania, she was educated at the Swedish University of Agricultural Science in Uppsala. She served as a Member of the Commission for Africa established by British Prime Minister Tony Blair which resulted in the cancellation of multilateral debt for several African countries by the G8 Summit in 2005 at Glen Eagles, Scotland. In July 2005 the Secretary General appointed Mrs. Tibaijuka as his Special Envoy on Human Settlements Issues in Zimbabwe following massive evictions of the poor in urban areas. She is currently a member of the World Health Organization Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, and is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, co-chaired by the former US Secretary of State, Ms. Madeleine Albright, and the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto.

Prior to joining UN-HABITAT, Mrs. Tibaijuka was with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UNCTAD, in Geneva, in 1998 as Director and Special Coordinator for the Least Developed, Land-locked and Island Developing Countries. Before the UN, Mrs. Tibaijuka pursued an active academic career as a Professor of Economics at the University ofDar es Salaam, Tanzania. In 1994 she founded the Tanzanian National Women's Council, BAWATA and in 1996 she founded Barbro Johannson Girls' Education Trust (Joha Trust) that advocates for quality girls' education in Tanzania and Africa.

Mrs. Tibaijuka is winner of several awards, the most recent being the prestigious Goteborg Award for Sustainable Development, which she will receive in November 2009. Mrs. Tibaijuka has honorary Doctorate degrees conferred on her by the University of McGill in Canada, University College London, and Herriot Watt in Scotland. She is a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture.

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The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-HABITAT, is the United Nations agency for human settlements. It is mandated by the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all.

Cities are now home to half of humankind. Cities are the hubs of economic and social processes that generate wealth and opportunity. But they also create disease, crime, pollution, poverty and social unrest. In many cities, especially in developing countries, slum dwellers number more than 50 per cent of the population and have little or no access to shelter, water, and sanitation, education or health services.  It is essential that policy­makers understand the power of the city as a catalyst for national development. Sustainable urbanisation is one of the most pressing challenges facing the global community in the 21st century.

UN-HABITAT's programmes are designed to help policy-makers and local communities find workable and  lasting solutions in their housing and sustainable urban development.