Implementing for impact: A selection of highlights, tools, learnings and reflections

Implementing for impact in 2025

A selection of highlights, tools, learnings and reflections

Reflections from Kobie Brand, ICLEI Africa’s Regional Director

As we come to the end of another year, I find myself filled with profound gratitude for the unwavering commitment of the ICLEI Africa team, our leaders, our cities and regions, and our partners and funders, to advancing urban sustainability across our vast and diverse continent.

While the scale of the challenges we face to create a sustainable urban future for all is still immense, we have seen some significant milestones during 2025:

ICLEI Africa turned 30, marking three decades of bold action and transformative change
We launched three new Centres of Excellence – focusing on sustainable finance, food systems and clean cooking – to strengthen our impact and offering
We stepped up our training and capacity building, and co-created a number of innovative tools and solutions with our cities, adding to the 8,000 stakeholders trained and more than 600 knowledge products and tools produced in the past 5 years
We hosted the most Town Hall COPs globally in the lead up to Climate COP30, where the priorities and perspectives of African cities and regions were elevated
We celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa, and growing to 400 signatories, with ICLEI Africa as the Secretariat, and
We helped people live better lives through our projects that currently span 121 cities across 41 African countries.

Through interventions as diverse as making clean cooking accessible to 40,000 people in hard-to-reach communities and implementing much-needed food market infrastructure upgrades, to strengthening and scaling community-led flood resilience systems, mainstreaming nature into city policies and budgets and supporting communities to tell their impact stories, ICLEI Africa is committed – as part of ICLEI’s strong global network and guided by our core values – to do everything that is needed to tackle the immense sustainability challenges we face and deliver real impact to people on the ground.

As we move into next year – following a roadmap towards an African COP in Ethiopia in 2027 – I feel energised and inspired by the opportunities that lie ahead to deepen our partnerships, further amplify local voices on the global stage, expand exclusive offerings to our members, and co-create solutions that reflect the unique innovation and resilience of our African communities, all the while deepening our commitment to implementing for impact.

Co-producing life-saving solutions

Practical community-based early warning systems

By strengthening and scaling community-led flood resilience systems, including emergency evacuation networks, preparedness plans, and practical flood response toolkits and training manuals, our INACCT project is enhancing climate resilience in the informal settlements most exposed to extreme weather impacts. This includes cross-border exchanges that share practical lessons on locally led adaptation and disaster preparedness.

Making clean cooking accessible

Modern cooking solutions scaled to 40,000 people in hard-to-reach communities

We are collaborating, through our ENACTUS project, with Uganda’s Ministry of Energy’s Clean Cooking Unit, to expand access to clean cooking and improve lives . Through catalytic finance, local SMEs are scaling modern cooking solutions in informal settlements, turning previously non-viable approaches into financially viable models in these contexts.

Transforming urban food systems

From impactful interventions to powerful photo stories

Across 10 African and 5 European cities, AfriFOODlinks is co-designing and testing practical food interventions to improve nutrition, food security, circularity and opportunities for city entrepreneurs. Complementing this work, the 2025 #AfricanCITYFOODMonth photo competition highlighted impactful actors on the ground. With 86 entries from across the continent answering the question “Who feeds the future?”, it celebrates the often unseen champions nourishing Africa’s next generation.

Building a toolbox for the future

Visioning just transitions in African cities

The world is rapidly heading towards a significant overshoot of the 1.5 °C target, which will unleash devastating consequences. What we know today isn’t enough to prepare fully for these uncertain futures. A gathering with leading urban practitioners showed that investing in futures literacy and overshoot preparedness now, is foundational to unlocking the Africa-led urban transition the world urgently needs.

Sharing key learnings

Leaving a decade-long legacy of transformative, nature positive impact

Our pioneering UNA Project has concluded its 10-year journey across 11 African cities. UNA leaves a vital legacy of co-created solutions that embed nature and human rights at the core of urban planning and governance. Through over 100 stakeholder dialogues engaging more than 2,500 people, 100 plus knowledge products, two interactive online courses and diverse on-the-ground interventions, the project successfully mainstreamed nature into city policies and budgets, bridging divides and securing well-being.

Developing innovative tools

Transforming adaptation finance in Cameroon

Our BRIDGE project in Cameroon demonstrates that the quality of adaptation finance – ensuring that funded action is locally led and gender-responsive – matters as much as the quantity. Drawing on this experience, ICLEI Africa’s Cameroon adaptation finance landscape tool boosts transparency, closes knowledge gaps, and helps financiers, policymakers, local impact brokers, and national and subnational governments channel funds where they matter most.

Major food market upgrades

Building more resilient, nutrition-sensitive fresh food markets in Lilongwe and Lusaka

November marked the transformation of two urban food markets through our Strengthening Fresh Food Markets for Healthier Food Environments project. Infrastructure upgrades at Lilongwe’s Lizulu Horticulture Market and Lusaka’s Chilenje Market, including roofing, drainage, sanitation and waste management facilities, are already contributing to improved food safety and daily operations. Scaling workshops amongst partners established shared commitments for future upgrades.

Celebrating impact

10 years of driving local climate action in sub-Saharan Africa

Launched in 2015, the Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa (CoM SSA ), the regional chapter of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM), has grown to over 400 signatories committed to advancing sustainable, low-carbon, and resilient urban transformation. Building on decades of engagement with GCoM, ICLEI Africa hosts the CoM SSA Secretariat, supporting signatories across the region.

Creating water resilience

Circular water solutions for local and regional governments

Through our Morocco Urban Circular Water Resilience Initiative, we are working closely with stakeholders throughout the country to build a strong foundation for city-specific action plans and behaviour change campaigns. At World Water Week 2025, we also launched the Circular and resilient urban water management compendium – a resource offering actionable pathways to local and regional governments globally to build resilience to address urban water challenges. The second English and first-ever French versions are forthcoming.

Making real connections

Why impact storytelling matters

Impact storytelling is the practice of surfacing real changes – through methodologies like outcomes harvesting – and creating credible, engaging stories that connect those changes to an initiative’s contribution. We are supporting the IDRC to tell the impact story of its Step Change Programme, communicating significant shifts, insights and contributions through narrative and visual impact stories.

Offering free online courses

Empowering urban communities: People-centred decision making for nature-based solutions

Developed under the UNA project and hosted by LearnWithICLEIAfrica, this course is designed to equip urban planners, local government officials, biodiversity practitioners and community leaders with the knowledge, skills and tools to build resilient urban environments by re-centring people in the management of urban nature.

Sharing solutions

Improving waste management in African cities

With less than half of urban waste collected, Africa faces a rapidly escalating waste crisis as cities grow and consumption shifts. ICLEI Africa’s new publication, “No Time to Waste”, flips traditional approaches by showcasing modular, decentralised systems that cities can pilot and scale, including composting, small digesters, black soldier fly units, modular transfer stations and mobile recovery hubs.

Reflections

2025 Urban Action Festival by RISE Africa

RISE Africa’s fifth Urban Action Festival, Realising Unbound Possibilities, represented a pivotal moment in our collective journey. Over five years, we have built a movement that refuses to separate dreaming from doing, creativity from policy, or research from practice. This year’s theme challenged us to break down silos and forge unlikely collaborations across disciplines, sectors and perspectives.

Launching soon

Exclusive Member co-learning series

Early next year, ICLEI Africa will launch an exclusive co-learning series for its Members across the continent, tackling critical issues that forward-looking cities are focusing on, and covering topics as diverse as sustainable finance, waste management, communicating for impact, culture and heritage, health and wellbeing, nature and just transitions. Through this series, Members will benefit from tailored knowledge, peer-to-peer exchange, and exposure to replicable city-led solutions.

Thank you to the ICLEI Africa Regional Executive Committee (RexCom) and RexCom Advisors, an astute group of local government leaders committed to guiding and elevating our important work.

11 December 2025