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Join us as we explore the RISE Africa themes over the next few months through the RISE Africa Roadmap of online engagements, shared resources, webinars and video provocations. Together, we will build momentum for the RISE Africa Summit in May 2021.
 
“Futuring processes give us techniques to engage with the abstractness of futures. However, these processes should go beyond 'visioning' to support the democratisation of visions and imaginaries, and may require challenging many of the systems which give us comfort.”

~ Paul Currie, Manager Urban Systems Unit, ICLEI Africa
 
 

What happened last month? 

“Un-visioning” the African city through futures literacy
Given rapid changes in the environment and urban development, we are faced with many shifting challenges and many uncertain ones. This dynamic context requires more flexibility to respond to change, while charting a course to improve social, economic and environmental wellbeing.

Unfortunately most of us are not comfortable engaging with uncertainty, and we rely on planning to demystify and control the future, by setting key objectives, targets and indicators in a linear manner. However, static planning and policy tools are no longer enough to support sustainable urbanisation. This month, joined by UNESCO’s Foresight Department, we explored how futuring approaches and increased futures literacy are vital for improving comfort with uncertainty, allowing us to step away from static images of the future, and reinvigorating our work in the present.

The typical planning approach is solely led by planning ‘experts’ who keep manufacturing what Dr. Geci Karuri-Sebina describes as “stale futures.” Through this approach, the outcomes tend to fit into four types: fixed visions of a utopia or of a dystopia, a form of disciplining the future in which all people change behaviour to adapt to an ideal, and a fourth variation reflecting some influences from Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome. The problem with this approach is that we manufacture cities that follow the same rules or motivations, and do not address the specific needs of their present and future citizens. Instead, conversations around futures should put less focus on what the ideal future should be but rather on how the present is and how the adaptation of different images of the future can actually be reflected in our present. This requires a process of futuring in which we step back to understand who decides the kind of futures we can think about and what kind of futures we are envisioning.

Futuring is an important exercise because it changes our perceptions, changes what we imagine, changes what we resist, what we preserve as well as challenging the very conditions of change. Futures literacy also provides us with the tools and methodologies to democratise the process of visioning the future. The Future Literacy Lab at UNESCO supports and utilises this approach of futuring in which the future is not left in the hands of specialists but created by communities through conversation and identification of shared values.

The argument for futuring is not to stop planning but to widen the perception of what futures are possible, more especially if we aim to create resilient futures that can withstand the uncertainties posed by climate change, systemic inequality and rapid urbanisation.

We welcome you to revisit our webinar on Challenging African Urban Visions. ICLEI Africa looks forward to further engagements and creating platforms to explore the possibilities of building futures literacy with our members and the RISE Africa community.
"We have to be ready to imagine futures that are not about the future but about helping us to discover, tease, provoke aspects of the present that wouldn’t otherwise be noticeable and also suspend this kind of urgency that we must plan for it or otherwise its game over.”


~ Riel Miller, Head of Foresight, UNESCO
“Engaging in discussions around the future is about creating spaces for learning and sharing that can tap in to different dimensions of time and space.”


~ Kwamou Eva Feukeu, Project Officer acting as Africa Coordinator for Futures Literacy, UNESCO
 
 
 

August winners

The RISEAfrica Annual Photography Competition has had numerous compelling submissions to this year’s theme: #hiddenflows.


August explored how #water moves through our cities, supports life, disrupts routine and challenges our urban environments. The winners and finalists are shown here.


October’s focus is #energy.

Submit your photos by following @futureafricancities, and using #hiddenflows and #energy.

For more information, click here.

 
 

WINNER - @katumbabadru

Kampala, Uganda
A man carrying three school going kids helping them to cross at clocktower after a heavy rain that saw water cut off parts of Kampala city roads
 
 

FINALIST - @mohamedali_nizar_saleh

Kinshasa, DRC

FINALIST - @ainazo

Antananarivo, Madagascar
Street shower. #ourstreets
 
 

RISE Africa Roadmap to 2021

 
 

ICLEI Africa’s LoCS4Africa 2020 virtual congress, in partnership with The Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa and others

Co-hosted by The Government of Rwanda, The City of Kigali and The Rwandan Association of Local Government Authorities (RALGA)

LoCS4Africa explores unlocking finance across four tracks, and 3 cross-cutting themes

RISE Africa @ LoCS4Africa


Localising the SDGs through an urban food lens in the Global South: lessons from the Hungry Cities Project

An African Centre for Cities, Balsilie School of International Affairs & ICLEI Africa Side Event @ LoCS4Africa, as part of RISE Africa
Monday, 9 November 2020 14:30 – 1700 CAT, and Tuesday, 10 November 2020 – 14:30 – 17:00 CAT


There are growing efforts to localise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which acknowledge the vital role of local government and urban actors in driving sustainability. These efforts are supported by an intuitive understanding of the interrelation between each of the SDGs, yet the integration of the SDGs is not as clearly articulated by the underlying SDG targets and indicators. This side event offers global reflections on SDG localisation efforts, and proposes that FOOD offers a useful lens for approaching sustainability in a holistic manner (Day 1). It then delves into the learnings emanating from many global South Cities engaged in the Hungry Cities project to shed light on food insecurity, food retail environments and policy implications for food and urban sustainability (Day 2).

Uncovering the #hidden flows in our cities: a photographic dialogue

Wednesday, 11 November 2020 – 12:00-13:00 CAT


You are invited to the Launch of the #hiddenflows photography exhibition. The exhibition explores the lived experience of many urban Africans and their relationship with the resources that sustain them and let them flourish. Particularly, we are interested in the hidden resource flows that are not taken into account in city planning or decision making. Through the use of photography we endeavour to communicate many ways in which African citizens interact with their city. This exhibition highlights and create a collective understanding of how urban metabolisms unfold formally and informally in African cities, and will be used to convene dialogue among viewers to explore the ideas and events depicted in the photographs. This launch event will share insights from the project coordinators and key participating photographers.
 
 

RISE Africa, brought to you by ICLEI Africa, with support from our partners: 

African Centre for Cities, NRF, South African Cities network, African Circular Economy Network, Djouman, The Nature of Cities, IIED, GSB-AGC, WWF, Tores Foundation, Covenant of Mayors SSA, AU Youth Envoy
 
 
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