Open data, disruptive technologies and community approaches in co-creation of climate services in urban Africa – The Resilience Academy approach

African cities are experiencing rapid growth, with projections indicating that the majority of the continent’s population will become urban dwellers in the near future. However, this urban expansion is largely unplanned, often resulting in development on hazardous lands with limited regulatory controls and insufficient risk information. Consequently, cities are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, as climate risks manifest in more complex and multidimensional ways.

A critical challenge faced by African cities is the lack of baseline knowledge and digital data necessary for informed decision-making and effective management of climate-related risks. The fast-paced transformation of urban landscapes drives an urgent need for climate risk information that offers higher resolution, improved timeliness, and greater update frequency. Additionally, there is a need for data that better captures the interactions among socioeconomic factors, environmental conditions, and physical infrastructures.

To support informed and sustainable urban development, digital data production models and future climate services need to be transformative. Climate services, which are locally driven, contextually appropriate, possess low complexity and fit for purpose ensure that the data and decisions are reliable, locally owned, and actionable over time. For wider scalability and transfer, it is important that co-production models and data-driven climate service solutions can be adopted more widely in African cities.

Resilience Academy (RA) is a university-driven partnership model, which aims to improve climate resilience in urban Africa though co-creation of demand-driven, locally sustainable and scalable climate services operating in the nexus of the digital revolution, community engagement and local youth skills. RA an action-oriented and collaborative ecosystem, which thrives from open data, affordable technologies, skills development and inclusive participation of multiple actors. It builds particularly on the talent and commitment of young generation scientists and students, and local residents changing the ways cities are mapped, designed and managed for the future. Resilience Academy approach seeks to establish tangible co-benefits around co-created climate services by strengthening youths’ digital skills and future employment opportunities in cities.

Our presentation will discuss experiences of applying Resilience Academy approaches in mapping climate adaptation needs, collecting climate risk related digital data and co-creation of urban climate services to address communities’ adaptation to heat, pollution and flooding stressors in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. In our presentation, we will share challenges, good practices and lessons learnt related to using low-cost digital tools and working with local communities and youths in vulnerable urban neighbourhoods. We will discuss opportunities and challenges related to wider adoption and scaling of RA -approaches for climate service provision across African cities.