Catalina Marulanda is the Practice Manager of the Urban, Resilience and Land Unit in the Eastern and Central African region, overseeing a US$4 billion portfolio of operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, Burundi, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Madagascar, Seychelles, Comoros and Mauritius.
This involves roughly 25 active projects that support the development of livable and resilient cities in Eastern Africa, making them more competitive and attractive to private sector investment, thereby fostering economic growth and the creation of jobs. This is done through complementary interventions in the three areas to:
- Promote sound urban management, through interventions that improve land use planning, climate-smart infrastructure, affordable housing, and service provision in financially sustainable ways;
- Improve governments’ preparedness to natural disasters and climate change, emergency response, risk reduction, and disaster risk financing; and
- Support the development of land administration systems that increase tenure security and enable the generation of land-based revenue for cities.
Catalina has a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering from Lehigh University and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.