Little more than three decades from now, as many as three-fourths of the world's people will live in cities. More than half already do – crowding neighborhoods, straining schools and overwhelming social services like transport and sanitation facilities. Add climate change and rising water levels that threaten coastal populations and the challenges will multiply.
Around the world, cities are increasingly thinking about their futures by considering how to build resilience, and AllAfrica's series on resilient cities explores how African cities are doing just that.
Resilience is about the capacity of individuals, communities, and systems to survive and bounce back stronger in the face of shocks or stresses, and even transform if required.
Resilience also enables cities to work across sectors to strengthen their systems to better cope with these overlapping threats. This approach is especially important now in Africa, and is attracting greater attention and investment from among urban planners and public officials.
African cities are growing faster than any other continent's, and most of Africa's people are concentrated along vulnerable coastlines. The percentage of urban Africans living in slums is nearly twice that of other developing regions, magnifying the crisis of sustainability that is facing cities everywhere.
With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, AllAfrica's urban issues section examines the problems and possibilities of urbanization - asking planners, scholars, activists and particularly urban residents for experiences, insights and ideas to make cities more livable. The series looks at gardens and garbage, at toilets and technology – an array of strategies and opportunities for building resilience.
"We welcome this chance to focus public and policy attention on an urgent issue that often gets too little notice," said Amadou Mahtar Ba, AllAfrica co-founder and chair and immediate past CEO of the African Media Initiative. "Media play a critical and essential role in stimulating informed discussion that can lead to effective action to turn problems into opportunities."
"As cities grow, we need to ensure they are places of safety, opportunity and growth for all of their citizens – regardless of what the future brings," said Mamadou Biteye, Managing Director of the Rockefeller Foundation's Africa Regional Office. "While we don't always know what's coming, we can prepare ourselves, and AllAfrica is uniquely positioned to document and demonstrate how this is already happening across Africa."
About AllAfrica
AllAfrica is the leading pan-African online destination, posting 2000 reports daily through collaboration with 130 African news organizations, hundreds of NGOs and a network of international information clients that collectively reach tens of millions of people.
About The Rockefeller Foundation
For more than 100 years, The Rockefeller Foundation's mission has been to promote the well-being of humanity throughout the world. Today, The Rockefeller Foundation pursues this mission through dual goals: advancing inclusive economies that expand opportunities for more broadly shared prosperity, and building resilience by helping people, communities and institutions prepare for, withstand, and emerge stronger from acute shocks and chronic stresses. To achieve these goals, The Rockefeller Foundation works at the intersection of four focus areas – advance health, revalue ecosystems, secure livelihoods, and transform cities – to address the root causes of emerging challenges and create systemic change. Together with partners and grantees, The Rockefeller Foundation strives to catalyze and scale transformative innovations, create unlikely partnerships that span sectors, and take risks others cannot – or will not.For more information please contact: Achieng' Otieno, Communications Officer, the Rockefeller Foundation Africa Regional Office aotieno@rockfound.org, Tel: +254 704848792
