Photo: Ikwerere, Tanzania. IDRC/ P. Bennet

The Climate Change Adaptation in Africa (CCAA) research and capacity development program aims to improve the capacity of African countries to adapt to climate change in ways that benefit the most vulnerable. The program is jointly funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre and the UK Department for International Development.

 

Although most of Africa is considered rural, the continent currently has the fastest rate of urbanization in the world. Its urban population was 294 million in 2000, and is projected to be as high as 408 million by 2010. According to UN population data, over half of all Africans will live in urban centres by 2025, where only one-quarter of the population were city dwellers in 1975.

  

The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report and numerous earlier studies have underlined the vulnerability of cities to climate change, in particular to the effects of extreme weather events that are expected to occur with greater frequency.

 

Africa’s urban population faces many challenges in preparing for climate change, given the multiple layers of environmental and economic stress on the continent. Many of its largest cities, such as Lagos, Cairo, Alexandria, Abidjan, and Cape Town, are located on fragile coasts or river deltas. Populations in these locations are highly vulnerable to sea level rise, flooding, and other extreme weather events, coastal erosion, and increasing salt levels in coastal water tables. Economic, social, and political infrastructure in many African countries is concentrated in coastal areas, magnifying the importance of protecting these sites.

 

African cities are further challenged by poverty and lack of infrastructure and poor planning. Heavily centralised policies, limited resources, as well as increased in-migration all conspire to reduce the capacity of local municipalities, most of which operate on inadequate budgets.  According to UN-HABITAT, over 70% of the urban dwellers in sub-Saharan Africa live in slums. Most of the human cost of extreme weather in urban Africa does not result from the events themselves, but from inadequate protection for residents, compounded by poverty. Urban vulnerability in Africa stems from many indirect risks, such as declining freshwater, and loss of livelihoods that depend on climate-sensitive resources.

 

To better prepare Africa’s urban settlements for climate variability and change, the Climate Change Adaptation in Africa program invited combined research and capacity building proposals that address the vulnerabilities of Africa’s urban centres to climate change, and will help urban stakeholders work together in developing adaptation options.