Advancing risk-informed urban development in Africa

Context

Extreme events such as floods, droughts, earthquakes, and rapidly spreading diseases threaten economic and social development, exacerbating existing inequalities. Disaster risk management strives to make individuals and communities more resilient to these events, but current approaches often only consider individual threats. Consequently, complex risks are neither systematically addressed nor adequately considered in planning and adaptation processes.

Cities, as agglomerations of people, goods, and infrastructure face significant risks, especially the inhabitants of informal settlements. With Africa's urban population set to increase by almost one billion people over the next three decades, there is an urgent need for action to ensure risk-informed urban development and urban resilience.

Objective

State and non-state actors effectively identify and address risks, enhancing risk-informed urban development and disaster risk management across Africa.

Approach

The project advocates for inclusive, gender-responsive risk informed urban development through the following measures:

• Establishing a learning and exchange platform: The project establishes a platform that enables mutual learning and experience sharing on urban resilience of local, national and regional actors in Africa.
• Supporting continental and regional urban resilience: The project enhances the implementation of the African Union’s (AU) Africa Urban Resilience Programme and fosters regional urban development with the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
• Enhancing participatory disaster risk management: The project supports inclusive and gender-responsive disaster risk analyses and preventive activities in cities and informal settlements, in collaboration with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction Regional Office for Africa (UNDRR Africa) and the civil society network Slum Dwellers International (SDI).
• Enhancing climate change adaption in Africa: The project strengthens the role of the Africa Adaptation Initiative (AAI) and its implementation partners, such as United Cities and Local Governments of Africa (UCLGA), to serve as a Pan-African forum for climate change adaptation.

Last updated: August 2024