East and Central Africa Cities Development Forum

On May 24-26, the IGC participated in the first East and Central Africa Cities Development Forum (ECAC-DEF) in Kampala, Uganda. ECAC-DEF has been created as a platform to spearhead the development of a regional urbanisation framework for East and Central African cities. It brought together urban planners, city officials, civil society representatives, development partners, and academics, and served as a forum for stakeholders to meet, share, and shape urbanisation and urban management practices. The forum provided an opportunity for African cities to learn from one another in addressing urbanisation challenges, and it facilitated cooperation and dialogue on major topical issues.

The IGC co-hosted a panel at ECAC-DEF with Real Impact Analytics on Urban Data and Research. The panel focused on why data is important for urban policymaking and how alternative data sources (particularly mobile data) can be leveraged to support urban policy agendas, as well as work being done in this area. A number of IGC researchers presented at the event, including Sir Paul Collier, Prof. Tony Venables, Mihaly Kopanyi, and Dr. Patricia Jones.

The event resulted in the Kampala Declaration on Building Inclusive Growth and Liveability in African Cities, which will be a key urbanisation policy document for use throughout the region.