Event type:

In person

Date & time:

08 Jun 2023, 11:00 – 12:30

Talk by Rashid Seedat, Executive Director of Gauteng City Region Observatory

UCL Urban Laboratory is delighted to invite you to join us for a seminar and presentation from Rashid Seedat, Executive Director of the Gauteng City Region Observatory, titled "Urban governance challenges in times of political crisis: perspectives from the Gauteng City Region Observatory, South Africa".

Photo by Steffen Lemmerzahl on Unsplash
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Talk by Rashid Seedat, Executive Director of Gauteng City Region Observatory

Rashid Seedat

Executive Director

Gauteng City Region Observatory

Rashid Seedat is the Executive Director of the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) in South Africa, a position he has held since June 2021. As the executive head of the GCRO, he is responsible for its management and providing its overall strategic direction.  The GCRO is a partnership between the Gauteng Provincial Government, organised local government, the University of the Witwatersrand, and the University of Johannesburg. As a UN-Habitat recognised urban observatory, the GCRO conducts data collection, spatial analysis, policy development and independent research on social, economic, environmental and governance dimensions of the Gauteng city-region. 

Between 2011 and May 2021, Rashid was the head of strategic and spatial planning in the Premier’s Office of the Gauteng Provincial Government. Between 2001 and 2011 he headed the Central Strategy Unit in the Mayor’s Office in the City of Johannesburg. Rashid has a long history of involvement in urban struggles in South Africa during the resistance against the apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s and early 1990s. He is Deputy Chairperson of the Steering Committee of UN-Habitat’s Global Urban Observatory Network (GUO-Net); a Special Advisory Committee member of uKESA (Urban Knowledge Exchange Southern Africa); and an Expert Group member of Metropolitanisation in Barcelona. In his private capacity, he is a trustee of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation. 

Rashid studied at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in political studies, higher diploma in development planning and two masters’ degrees, in public management and development planning respectively. He held a visiting fellowship at the (former) Local Government Centre at Warwick University in 1992-93 and completed a certificate course in metropolitan and municipal management at the Development Planning Unit at UCL in 1993. 

Further information

Ticketing

Ticketed

Cost

Free

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Organiser

Jennifer Robinson

UCL Geography

jennifer.robinson@ucl.ac.uk