17/04/2026
: African cities are rich in climate ambition and planning frameworks, yet the central challenge remains delivery. How do cities move from strategies and pilots to functioning, finance-ready infrastructure that improves lives at the neighbourhood scale?
At 2nd Africa Urban Forum (AUF2), CoM SSA convened an interactive session focused on the “how” of implementation, bringing and partners together to explore what it takes to move from plans to delivery-ready and .
A strong message emerging from the discussion was that locally rooted, community-driven approaches are essential for sustainable implementation.🏘️As Hon. Cecily Mbarire, EGH reflected that local governments are uniquely placed to connect communities with national governments and systems, and unlock locally led solutions. This was illustrated through Embu’s Dallas ASILI (Adaptation Solutions, Inclusive Locally-led Infrastructures) project, which shows how community engagement can translate climate strategies into tangible neighbourhood-level action.
At the same time, speakers emphasised that delivery depends on aligning infrastructure, planning, ecosystem management and citizen mobilisation into integrated systems. Experience from Dire Dawa Government Communication Affairs Bureau (Ethiopia) highlighted how combining infrastructure investments with watershed restoration and strong citizen mobilisation can strengthen long-term resilience. As Deputy Mayor Tajudin Yusuf noted, early stakeholder alignment during planning stages was crucial to ensuring sustained implementation.
Beyond technical planning, the session underscored the importance of designing projects that match real financing conditions. Discussions highlighted the need to align project scale with realistic investment ticket sizes and ensure that risk-sharing arrangements support long-term sustainability. As highlighted by GIZ Kenya’s Abel Omanga, community ownership and investment alignment are both essential to ensuring that projects remain viable beyond funding cycles.
Public-private partnerships also emerged as a key mechanism for implementation, particularly where incentives are structured to support both public outcomes and private investment. As noted by Expertise France’s Sebastian Hicks, successful partnerships depend on ensuring that both public and private sector incentives are clearly aligned from the outset.
Structured as a world café style exchange, the session created a space for direct engagement between cities, communities and partners on practical delivery challenges, including partnerships mobilisation, -sharing, moving from project planning to implementation, and long-term sustainability.
The session reinforced a central message emerging across : Africa’s urban future will depend not only on strong plans, but on strengthening the systems, partnerships and financing pathways that enable cities to deliver at scale.
