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Africa

Building the Capacity of Urban Practitioners in East Africa

There is a severe lack of capacities across several Commonwealth countries, particularly those in the global South, to deal with rapid urbanization, climate change and informality. The Commonwealth’s recent initiatives to quantify this lack of capacity illustrates the critical gap in the availability of trained professionals such as architects, planners, engineers and surveyors that these geographies face. Especially in the public sector, there is the need to foster change in thinking and operating, in order to better design, develop and manage cities and human settlements. These cities need to be more inclusive and sustainable and need to develop the local capacity to respond to challenges – in a scalable and replicable manner.

Building the Capacity of Urban Practitioners in East Africa

CROSS-CUTTING SECTORS

Capacity building 

ORGANISATION(S)

Commonwealth Association of Architects in partnership with Makerere University, the University of Cape Town and the Indian Institute for Human Settlements 

PROJECT OVERVIEW 

There is a severe lack of capacities across several Commonwealth countries, particularly those in the global South, to deal with rapid urbanization, climate change and informality. The Commonwealth’s recent initiatives to quantify this lack of capacity illustrates the critical gap in the availability of trained professionals such as architects, planners, engineers and surveyors that these geographies face. Especially in the public sector, there is the need to foster change in thinking and operating, in order to better design, develop and manage cities and human settlements. These cities need to be more inclusive and sustainable and need to develop the local capacity to respond to challenges – in a scalable and replicable manner. The proposed initiative leverages a Theory of Change approach to design, develop and implement a mid- to long-term capacity building programme aimed at building urban practitioners in Uganda and across East Africa. It leverages the experience of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements in India in building a programme for capacity building for urban professionals over the past decade and aims to foster South-South learning. The proposed programme aims to conduct thematic and meta-thematic workshops among the stakeholders of urbanization in the identified geographies.  

RELEVANCE TO THE CALL TO ACTION ON SUSTAINABLE URBANISATION ACROSS THE COMMONWEALTH

These examples have been chosen because of their relevance to the Call to Action, as shown by the direct quotes provided below. To view the Call to Action click here.

  • “Cities and human settlements are responsible for ensuring delivery of essential services including water, sanitation, healthcare, education, public transport, and housing, upon which their citizens depend.’ 
  • “Universities, research, technology, innovation, and knowledge sharing will be at the heart of ensuring sustainable cities and human settlements of the future.’ 
  • “Sustainable urbanisation demands collective action – genuine multi-level governance – to empower, enable and support cities and their citizens.”  

THIS EXAMPLE HAS BEEN PROVIDED BY

Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS): www.iihs.co.in