African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) research progress and collaboration areas workshop report.

African cities research aims to unravel the complex challenges that impede urban development. It recognizes that there are different actors and political interplay that influence the shape of urban development, and these agencies may enable or suppress the speed and form of urban reforms.  

The Nairobi research teams have actively adopted a co- production mode of carrying out the research, and identifying the city’s priority complex problems that incumber the city’s economic development. Through uptakes role, the research has brought forth a pool of actors, ranging from the local communities, county technocrats, county political agencies, civil society organizations, private institutions, professional bodies, academia, bilateral and multilateral agencies, and individual researchers; all with an expressed interest of driving urban reforms in their various areas of specialty. The uptake is keen to bring all these players together, as it is cognizant that the city operates as a system, and therefore a multidisciplinary co- creation approach is needed, for coordinated city programming, policy influence and attainment of gradual urban transformation.

Why the housing and safety and security workshop?

This workshop was held on 2nd December 2022, and brought together various actors to understand the progress of the research and help in defining the identified PCPs per domain, for:

1.     Increased partnerships and stakeholders’ commitment to support the research

2.     Aligning the research and PCPs to the new county/ city priorities, including integrating the research into the County Integrated Development Plan (CIDP) for 2022- 2027

3.     Co- identifying areas of programmes positioning informed by the research

4.     Identifying policy alignments, policy gaps and how to fill these gaps. For instance, it was identified that there is no existing renter market policy for the city; and social and affordable houses are constructed with an ownership orientation. The uptake requirement here is to collaborate with the county department of housing in the review of the existing housing policy to include the renter markets. This reviewed policy will then be approved by the county assembly

As a bonus 1: there is immense goodwill for different actors, including the government political and technocrats’ bodies, to take up the research and identify actionable programmes for implementation

Bonus 2: the stakeholders were keen on co- developing an implementation matrix for the overall Nairobi research, to ensure the research is actionized, through strategic implementation. As an action point, the next uptake meeting shall create sessions for the matrix development and actions prioritization.

Report synopsis: Charity Mumbi, Urban Planner (SDI-K)