Four pillars driving transformative urban change in Africa: Insights from ICLEI and CoM SSA’s trailblazing work

Four pillars that based on ICLEI and CoM SSA experience we feel are pivotal, working together in concert, to push the African urban conversation forward & lead to transformative action:

Pillar 1: Advocacy and political liaison

• A critical pillar that sets the tone & charts the course for change at all scales
• Our decades of advocacy for the importance of cities in achieving any of the global agendas has paid off:
• The IPCC has mandated the development of a special report on cities.
• Over 70 countries have signed up to the #CHAMP initiative, which focuses on sub-national government involvement in NDC revisions.
• The loss and damage fund has been set up, and refers to direct access for sub-national government and communities to this finance.
• The first African Urban Forum is in full swing.

Pillar 2: Capacity building & peer-to-peer exchange

• Most critical in capacity building is the HOW. Capacity will only be sustained when it is delivered in co-productive ways.
• Humility is critical. In many ways, it’s more important to know what one does not know, than what once does know. Bringing in others to collaborate and share diverse good practices.
• Always amazed at the value of peer-to-peer exchange, and how lessons learnt and networks made at events like this, lead to on-the-ground implementation when Mayors return home.

Pillar 3: Institutionalisation

• Policies and plans matter. They signal intent to donors, and they allow cities to direct the development they want.
• We must move away from separate climate plans and ensure that climate change is incorporated into existing core development plans for direct links to budgets and KPIs.
• We have done such with Steve Tshwete Local Municipality, South Africa, by co-developing a just transition chapter in their Integrated Development Plan, linked to a pipeline of just transition projects.

Pillar 4: Finance

• Our main lesson has been that we need to move away from typical TA, and ensure that there is proper acknowledgment and resourcing of the role of knowledge brokers and intermediaries in bridging the multiple divides that hinder city projects from reaching bankability. Walking the long road with all partners and bridging language, data and agency divides.
• Our two best examples of how to get finance flowing to the local level:

(1)    Alternative Financing for Municipal Embedded Generation project success factors:

- Donor – in this case UK PACT – willing to fund finance knowledge brokering and early project preparation.

- Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) setting up a PPF tailored to municipal projects and being transparent about the criteria required to enter this PPF.

- DBSA setting up a facility to de-risk city-scale projects once they have exited project preparation, to overcome the main challenge with city projects, their high-risk profiles.

(2)    Enabling African Cities for Transformative Energy Access project success factors:

- Using limited grant finance to ensure financial viability businesses by working with SMMEs in Uganda and Sierra Leone to tailor clean cooking technology to informal settlements, overcoming affordability and contextual challenges, and leading to the rollout of clean cooking technology to over 19 000 people.

Panelists: Emmanuel Osuteye (AUC), Aya Mohanna (UNDP), Mathais Spaliviero (UN-Habitat), Ria Hidajat (GIZ), Chilando Chitangala (Mayor of Lusaka, Zambia and ICLEI Africa REXCOM Chairperson & Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Mayors Forum RMF Vice-Chair), Fatimetou Abdel Malick (Council President of the Region of Nouakchott, Mauritania & CoM SSA RMF member) and amjad abbashar (Director, Regional Office for Africa, UNDRR