The first Strong Cities Network (SCN) Regional Practitioners’ Workshop of 2017 took place on 9-10 March, hosted by the City of Dakar, Senegal. The event brought together 50 participants, including local frontline CVE practitioners from 15 cities drawn from 10 countries across East and West Africa. Over two days, participants engaged in debates around the role of civil society actors in CVE, increasing municipal coordination of local activities, and strengthening vertical cooperation with national governments. Taking these discussions forward, all cities outlined their current challenges, risk profiles and core local partners as part of an in-depth practical session on developing local action planning.

The event was led by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the Global Center on Cooperative Security.

The following cities were represented:

Kousseri, Waza Reserve (Cameroon);Tadjourah (Djibouti); Kwale, Lamu, Mombasa (Kenya); Bamako (Mali); Kiffa (Mauritania); Diffa, Naimey (Niger); Kano State, Lagos (Nigeria); Dakar (Senegal); Zanzibar (Tanzania); Kampala (Uganda).

The workshop was also joined by representatives from the City of Kristiansand, Norway, and the Centre for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence, based in the City of Montréal, Canada, both leading members and partners of the SCN. Kristiansand will later this year host a practitioner delegation from Mombasa, Kenya under an SCN city exchange programme as part of a wider programme of bilateral cooperation on CVE and youth engagement facilitated by the SCN. Montréal will also host practitioners from Dakar, Senegal for a week-long SCN city-to-city exchange programme on developing local CVE initiatives.

Read a full summary of the workshop and topics discussed and download all PowerPoints and documents here in English and in French (members only).