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East & Southern Africa Regional Impact

Publication Date:

23/01/2026

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East & Southern AfricaEast & Southern Africa Regional Hub

Cities Leading Change Across East and Southern Africa  

In October 2022, with support from the European Union (EU), Strong Cities Network launched its East and Southern Africa (ESA) Regional Hub to strengthen city-led prevention of hate, extremism and polarisation across the region. Since then, the Hub has engaged more than 60 cities across 17 countries, including Botswana, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

This includes through five in-person regional workshops and more than 10 countrywide and city-city capacity-building activities, as well as remote guidance provided throughout, which together inspired local action and commitment to driving inclusive prevention efforts from the ground up.  

These peer-learning opportunities and the Hub’s dedicated technical support have led to tangible action across the region. For example,  

• A Strong Cities-facilitated partnership between Nansana (Uganda) and Stellenbosch (South Africa) has resulted in the former launching 30+ Neighbourhood Watch groups as a community-based early-warning mechanism against hate and extremism.  

• To strengthen inclusivity and participatory governance in Masaka (Uganda), the local government has launched dedicated ‘desks’ within the Mayor’s Office that are responsible for engaging historically marginalised communities.  

• In Zomba (Malawi), the City has trained existing community-based committees on hate and extremism prevention to strengthen early-warning and mitigation of threats to social cohesion.  

• In Zanzibar (Tanzania), the Urban Municipality held its first-ever convening with youth-led organisations and youth leaders to better understand their needs and concerns and to strengthen youth engagement overall.  

• The City of Cape Town (South Africa) launched a prevention framework that recognises the importance of investing proactively in structures and programmes to mitigate threats to social cohesion.  

• Kyengera Town (Uganda) has implemented a Talking Compounds initiative inspired by West Pokot (Kenya)’s Peace Border Schools. 

The platform provided by Strong Cities’ ESA Regional Hub to showcase the role of local governments in prevention has also inspired greater national-local cooperation (NLC):  

• In Malawi, as a result of two Strong Cities’ national-local dialogues and remote support, the Ministry of Local Government, Unity and Culture and its partners have started working with the country’s four primary cities to launch city-level, multi-actor Peace and Unity Committees.  

• In Uganda, the Regional Hub’s work on strengthening NLC has resulted in the establishment of a city-led taskforce that comprises local government officials, civil society, youth leaders and Resident District Commissioners and which will work with the National Counter Terrorism Centre to review and “unshelve” its National Strategy for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism.  

Once sensitised to the importance of city-led prevention, several national local government associations have also started serving as disseminators of Strong Cities’ mission and learnings in ESA: for example, 

• In July 2024, the Zanzibar Association of Local Government Authorities (ZALGA) – inspired by its participation in the Strong Cities regional workshop in May 2024 – partnered with the Hub to build the capacity of its members on youth-local government engagement and (cross-border) city-city collaboration.  

• Other associations engaged by the Hub have also become advocates of city-led prevention, including the Kenyan Council of Governors, the South African Local Governments Association, AMICAALL Uganda, the Ugandan Local Government Association. 

These achievements not only underscore the importance of and potential for impact when cities are invested in as core to the prevention of hate, extremism and polarisation, but also the appetite of local leaders and local governments to get involved. When they are empowered to lead and given a platform to collaborate with their national government counterparts, prevention not only becomes more inclusive, sustainable and rooted in the realities of communities, it also begins to take on the whole-of-society approach to addressing extremism that is internationally recognised as good practice.  

Through the ESA Regional Hub, Strong Cities is proving that strong cities make stronger societies.

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