What do you get when you bring some 150 African mayors and city officials,
urban researchers, and World Bank South African Country Director Ruth Kagia
together to talk about climate change and African cities? In a word: Concern.
All city officials and those who work with them are concerned about climate
change.
Earlier this months, in partnership with France’s AFD and the Development
Bank of South Africa, met to follow up the Fifth Urban Research Symposium held
in Marseille last year (Cities and Climate Change:
Responding to an Urgent Agenda). This local dissemination workshop held
in South Africa focused on climate change in African cities. When you look at
climate change through the lens of African cities, impacts appear closer, and
more dire–climate variability is expected to be severe and the ability to
respond often weak. With Africa’s current pace of urbanization, the number of
people already living in informal communities, and the infrastructure backlog
(e.g. the per capita installed electricity supply in Nigeria is less than 1% of
the average OECD country), all participants agreed that climate change will only
add to the problems and that an urgent response is needed.
