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ESA Regional Hub: Regional Roundtable on Showcasing and Sustaining City Led Action to Prevent Hate, Extremism and Polarisation

Publication Date:

23/09/2025

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Event Reports

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ESA Regional HubNational-Local CooperationNeighbourhood WatchRegional RoundtableSTRIVE CitiesYouth Innovation

Summary

On 23 – 25 September 2025, the Strong Cities Network’s East and Southern Africa (ESA) Regional Hub held its fifth and final regional convening as part of the European Union-funded STRIVE Cities programme. The convening, which brought together 14 cities from six countries, local government associations, national governments and civil society and international actors, offered an opportunity for cities from across the region to showcase specific prevention policies and practices they implemented with support from the Hub over the course of the three-year STRIVE Cities action.

The following key findings emerged from the case studies that were shared:

• Local governments do not need to wait for dedicated municipal budgets and resources to start implementing prevention practices: they can start small, leveraging existing infrastructure and capacities;
• Building on this, in most contexts, city-led prevention can start with just going back to the basics of local governance – i.e., through hosting regular town hall meetings and other opportunities for dialogue between a local government and the people it serves. In examples shared throughout the roundtable, dialogues were often the starting point: they revealed communities’ needs and inspired ideas that then led to action, while also building trust in local government by demonstrating it seeks to address the actual – rather than assumed – concerns of its communities;
• However, scaling prevention efforts may require a dedicated municipal budget and staff. Here, city leaders can play a key role in pushing for social cohesion to be an explicit point of discussion during annual budget development processes;
• City-to-city partnerships work: bringing local governments together to exchange practices can lead the implementation of new policies and practices, even if the threats their communities face differ;
• Local governments should not underestimate the importance of built environments: for example, investing in safe, physical spaces with free internet access and sports and cultural activities can mitigate youth idleness and loneliness;
• Local government associations can play a vital role in advancing city-led action against hate and extremism through advocacy at the national government level, dissemination of practices and learnings and identifying and facilitating city-city partnerships.

Threats & Key Challenges

Amongst the key threats and challenges discussed at the workshop were the continued local impacts of global crises, with climate change identified as one of the biggest drivers of instability and insecurity. For example, officials from Malawi shared that climate change has forced many rural communities that have traditionally relied on agriculture for their livelihoods to seek alternative means for making a living. This has motivated them to move to the country’s urban centres: Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Zomba. These cities, in turn, have felt largely ill-equipped to manage the influx of domestic migrants, leaving many such migrants in poor living conditions in informal settlements on the outskirts of the cities. Officials from South Africa cited the same concerns and emphasised climate resilience as foundational to building a ‘strong city’.

Youth unemployment and idleness also remain key concerns, with one participant from South Africa citing this as a ‘ticking time bomb’ in a region where youth make up such a significant proportion of the population. She added that the region’s education systems are failing young people by “not keeping up with modern technology”, pointing to the continued absence of digital resilience and citizenship training in national education curricula as a significant gap. Other participants shared that in Kenya and Uganda, unemployed or idle youth have been exploited to sow division on ethnic/tribal and/or political lines, with one participant stating that “we as city leaders must engage our young people before those with bad intentions do”.

In other contexts, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Mozambique, conflict and mitigating the spread of violence remains of priority concern. In this context, local officials stressed the importance of being involved and engaged proactively by national, regional and international actors on matters of safety and security, with many sharing their frustrations about being consulted only when it’s too late, i.e., when violence has already erupted.

Key Themes

1. Neighbourhood Watch

One of the practices showcased was Neighbourhood Watch and its implementation in Nansana (Uganda), which the Regional Hub started supporting in March 2024. Neighbourhood Watch is traditionally a petty crime prevention model that involves groups of individuals volunteering to patrol and otherwise monitor their neighbourhoods, deterring crimes such as theft and burglary. In the case of Nansana – and inspired by counterparts in South Africa, as described below – the model was implemented not only to deter petty crime, but also to strengthen social cohesion and address marginalisation.

As Regina Bakitte, the Mayor of Nansana, shared at the workshop: 

• Background: In December 2023, she attended a Strong Cities learning exchange in Cape Town (South Africa), where officials from Cape Town and its neighbour, Stellenbosch, presented on the vital role that Neighbourhood Watch plays in safeguarding both community safety and social cohesion, with both cities crediting their investment in Neighbourhood Watch as the primary reason for largely avoiding the xenophobic riots and unrest that plagued the rest of the country in 2019. Mayor Bakitte identified the model as easily replicable in her city and as a priority for implementation.

In March 2024, the Mayor was alerted to the presence of militants from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a militant group based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Concerned ADF militants would exploit the fact that Nansana sits on the main transit route connecting DRC with Uganda’s capital of Kampala, Mayor Bakitte requested urgent support from Strong Cities’ ESA Regional Hub to implement Neighbourhood Watch as both a) an early-warning mechanism against ADF recruiting and conducting other activities in Nansana and b) a community-based approach to addressing local vulnerabilities ADF and other such groups may exploit, such as marginalisation, youth disenfranchisement and others. The Hub then initiated an implementation partnership with Nansana and practitioners from Stellenbosch.

• Implementation and Impact: As shared by Mayor Bakitte and Charl Kitching, Senior Manager: Protection Services, Stellenbosch Municipality (South Africa), the implementation period started with training 200+ community members and local government officials in a selection of wards that would serve as pilot locations. These wards were then asked to launch Neighbourhood Watch groups, with explicit instruction to ensure such groups included representatives from historically marginalised groups, such as youth, people with disabilities, women and others. The 30+ groups that were established were then trained on a strict code of conduct to guide their activities. To monitor implementation, practitioners from Stellenbosch also conducted several site visits and delivered additional training on an as-needed basis.

• Impact: Through regular patrols, awareness-raising activities (e.g., of hate and extremism as well as reporting mechanisms) and creating fora for dialogue, Neighbourhood Watch has had the following impacts, as shared by Mayor Bakitte:

• Greater social participation and integration of women, with unemployed women, who are traditionally confined to their homes, forming a disproportionate amount of Neighbourhood Watch group members. Such women have expressed their appreciation for having a platform and being empowered to help safeguard their neighbourhoods.
  • Economic benefits, with Mayor Bakitte reporting that local businesses feel safer to stay open longer due to the visible patrolling of Neighbourhood Watch (and the resulting deterrence of petty crime).More dialogue about and proactive reporting of community concerns: Neighbourhood Watch groups are mandated not just to patrol streets but also to host fora for community members to share concerns. Through monthly committee meetings with the Mayor’s Office and dedicated WhatsApp channels, the groups can then identify – with the Municipality – how best to address such concerns. This has, in turn, led to a more informed deployment of local government resources that responds to the actual needs of communities as they arise. Improved trust in local government as a result of the Municipality being better able to address concerns as they arise, and due to the trust-building function of Neighbourhood Watch, who serve as an interlocutor between the community and local government.
  • An overall greater sense of camaraderie and togetherness, with Mayor Bakitte sharing a poignant story of one Neighbourhood Watch group stepping in to find employment and offer interim housing to a man in their jurisdiction who lost his job and then his house.

• Learnings: Mayor Bakitte and Charl also shared a number of learnings for other cities to take away as they seek to implement a similar model. This includes:

• Start small and focus on hyper-local groups: when transferring a city-led practice from one context to another, Mayor Bakitte and Charl recommended starting small, implementing in a selection of wards to test and refine the identified practice to its new context. Specifically to Neighbourhood Watch, they recommended focusing on establishing hyper-local rather than multi-neighbourhood groups, citing that even between neighbourhoods, needs may differ.
  • Tap into existing networks: Mayor Bakitte originally identified Neighbourhood Watch as transferable to Nansana due to Uganda’s – and other parts of East Africa – traditional community policing models, such as Nyumba Kumi, which sees clusters of ten households work together to monitor community safety. This means that a) Nansana already had a culture of volunteerism it could tap into for Neighbourhood Watch and, b) informal, traditional structures around which it could build Neighbourhood Watch groups, expanding these to ensure they represent the diversity of the neighbourhoods they represent and professionalising them with training and a code of conduct.
  • Neighbourhood Watch groups are eyes and ears, not enforcers: to avoid the Neighbourhood Watch groups from “taking the law into their own hands”, Charl reinforced the importance of the codes of conduct and of constantly communicating them as “eyes and ears” to support effective local governance, and not as enforcers.

2. Tapping into Youth Innovation

Youth-local government engagement also featured in the roundtable, giving cities like Maputo (Mozambique) and Masaka (Uganda) and others the opportunity to share how they – with support from the ESA Regional Hub – have and continue to pursue meaningful participation of young people in decision-making and governance more broadly.

In Masaka, Mayor Florence Namayanja requested support to better understand youth needs and vulnerabilities after concerns about young people in her community being used to amplify divisive political messaging and ethnic and tribal-based hate speech. In March 2024, the Regional Hub worked with Joseph Mgwata, a youth leader from Mombasa (Kenya) with experience working with Mombasa County Government, to address his peers’ concerns, to host an in-person dialogue between Mayor Namayanja, other city staff and youth representatives from across Masaka City. Since then, the Regional Hub, Joseph, Mayor Namayanja and the youth have re-convened several times virtually, ultimately normalising regular, direct engagement between the Mayor’s Office and her youth constituents. Some convenings have featured external speakers, including youth from elsewhere who were able to share examples of how they work with their city on various aspects of local governance.

As shared by Mayor Namayanja, these regular dialogues resulted in:

• Greater capacity for the Mayor’s Youth Desk (a part of the Mayor’s Office responsible for addressing youth needs) to operate in direct response to youth needs and to integrate youth ideas into policies and programmes: The Mayor cited an inspiring example of how the Youth Desk leveraged the regular dialogues to collate young people’s ideas for how to mitigate the local impacts of climate change. The Youth Desk then jointly developed a proposal for the Bloomberg Youth Climate Action Fund with these youth, which was successful and is now being co-implemented with them.
• A radio programme where young people raise awareness of the adverse effects of hate and extremism and share digital citizenship skills and digital hygiene tips.
• The launch of an Information and Communications Technology Centre (ICT) just for young people, in response to requests for physical spaces where youth can tap into their digital nativity to nurture innovation and entrepreneurship.

Other cities also shared how they tap into youth ideas and innovation to address local concerns and promote cohesion. In Kyengera Town (Uganda), the Council has partnered with schools to launch what it calls Talking Compounds, or spaces that are designed to encourage dialogue on topics like peace and social cohesion. Students were asked to draw or paint positive messaging and/or depictions of what a peaceful, cohesive city looks like to them, which are displayed in these spaces to foster conversation between the students themselves, as well as parents, teachers and other members of the community.

Importantly, as Joseph Semegura, Town Clerk for Kyengera Town, shared, implementation of the talking compounds was inspired by a similar practice shared by West Pokot County Government (Kenya) at a Strong Cities regional exchange in Arusha (Tanzania) in May 2024, further underscoring the potential for impact when local governments are brought together to learn from one another.

In Maputo (Mozambique), the local government, like in Masaka, also invests in ICT centres for youth and will have 70 centres with free internet access and tablets where young people can network and build out their ideas, as shared by Nercio Duvane, Councillor for Youth and Knowledge Creation. He also shared that they are building youth-centred sports and cultural centres. Both efforts ultimately seek to mitigate both youth idleness and loneliness/isolation by providing safe, free spaces where youth can build healthy peer networks and build and invest in healthy hobbies.

3. Bringing Border Municipalities Together

The convening also showcased the work of the Hub’s Border Municipalities Working Group, particularly the city-city partnerships the Group has facilitated, such as that between Koboko (Uganda) and Musina (South Africa) on migrant integration:

• Background: As shared by Boniface Candiga, Deputy Town Clerk for Koboko, the Municipality has a robust and inclusive approach to managing migration that centres around:

a) data; i.e., understanding the numbers, background and needs of refugees and migrants in Koboko;

b) co-designing and co-delivering trauma-informed integration efforts with new arrivals; and

c) consulting long-term residents to see how they can not only support but also benefit from integration efforts, ensuring they don’t feel left behind, in turn helping mitigate anti-migrant sentiment fuelled by the perception that migrants steal resources.

In May 2024, Koboko’s Mayor, Sanya Wilson, presented on this approach at a Strong Cities regional workshop in Arusha, where representatives of the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) identified Koboko’s practices as transferable to and much needed in Musina; a town in South Africa that borders Zimbabwe, is host to one of the continent’s busiest border crossing points and is often used as a transit point for migrants and refugees seeking to settle in Johannesburg.

• Implementation: SALGA partnered with Strong Cities’ ESA Regional Hub to facilitate a partnership between Musina and Koboko to improve the former’s capacity for effective migration management. This included in-person and virtual trainings and exchanges, as well as site visits between the two border towns. 

• Impact: As shared by Nondumiso Twalo, Senior Manager, SALGA, at the regional roundtable, bringing Musina together with Koboko has already resulted in positive change. This includes the implementation in Musina of a one-stop hotline for refugees/migrants that come into the town, where they can find information about their rights and – should they wish to settle in South Africa – the proper procedure for doing so.

The partnership has also inspired SALGA to revisit how it can support local governments beyond Musina with migration management, particularly as South Africa continues to grapple with rising levels of xenophobia.

Another example of partnerships facilitated through the Border Municipalities Working Group and shared at the roundtable include that of Zanzibar (Tanzania) and Mombasa (Kenya), with representatives of the Zanzibar Association of Local Government Authorities (ZALGA) sharing that they are now regularly engaging county officials from Mombasa to better understand motivations behind and the scale of undocumented border crossings between Mombasa and Zanzibar, building on a Strong Cities exchange between the two in July 2024.

Importantly, both these examples not only highlight the potential of city-city partnerships, but they also highlight why local government associations must be engaged to scale and sustain city-led action. For example, SALGA identified a relevant pilot location (Musina) for practices it learned at a Strong Cities workshop, connected Musina with the Regional Hub, which in turn facilitated the partnership with Koboko. In Zanzibar, Strong Cities initiated the partnership with Mombasa based on needs shared by Zanzibar Urban Municipality, while ZALGA has committed to now playing the lead role in sustaining this partnership and scaling it beyond just Zanzibar Urban Municipality.

4. National-Local Cooperation

Finally, the convening showcased advancements in national-local cooperation since the Hub’s launch in November 2022, with a focus on Malawi.

As shared by Joseph Dzuwa, Peacebuilding Officer, Ministry of Local Government, Unity and Culture; Esther Sagawa, then-Mayor of Lilongwe City and Munira Bakali, Councillor with Zomba City, and supported by two Strong Cities national-local dialogues in March 2024 and March 2025, as well as sustained remote guidance from the ESA Regional Hub, Malawi has achieved the following:

• Complementing district-level multi-actor collaboration with a more localised city-level approach: As shared by Joseph Dzuwa, one of the recommendations of the first national-local dialogue Strong Cities hosted in Malawi was to complement District Peace and Unity Committees, which are multi-actor structures launched at the district/provincial level by the Malawi Peace and Unity Committees, with structures that operate at a more local level, i.e., within cities.

To implement this recommendation, the Ministry of Local Government, Unity and Culture and Malawi Peace and Unity Commission visited each of Malawi’s four primary cities (Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Zomba) to train local officials on the Peace and Unity Committee model. Since then, each city has started establishing such committees, starting with identifying relevant actors to join.

• Institutionalising local action in national policy and frameworks: The Ministry of Local Government has also taken steps to revisit existing policy frameworks, such as the National Peace Policy (2017), to ensure it better captures the needs and concerns of local actors and how local councils can support its implementation.

The Government’s new National Action Plan on Youth Participation in Peacebuilding will also be operationalised in collaboration between local governments and the Ministry of Youth.

• More regular communication between national institutions and local governments, and between local governments themselves, on disaster risk management. Then-Mayor Sagawa shared, for example, that Lilongwe is now in more regular communication with the national government and with other cities in Malawi on climate resilience and other forms of disaster risk mitigation and management, catalysed by the national-local dialogues hosted by Strong Cities, which opened the doors for better cooperation and information-sharing between national ministries and local councils, as well as between local councils themselves.

Next Steps

The regional convening placed the spotlight on city-led prevention practices implemented with Strong Cities support over the course of the three-year STRIVE Cities programme. It provided an important and timely case study of why local governments must be empowered with (peer-peer) learning opportunities, resources and other support to prevent hate and extremism in their communities, particularly as they grapple with several national, regional and global crises, from conflict to climate change. The convening showed that bringing local governments together can and has inspired action at both the city and national-levels. Strong Cities will continue to build on this, including by leveraging its partners in the region, such as local government associations, to continue identifying, highlighting and disseminating city-led efforts to prevent and respond to hate, extremism and polarisation.

Strong Cities’ Sixth Global Summit, which takes place from 9 – 11 December 2025 in Toronto (Canada), will also provide an opportunity for cities in ESA to share – on a global scale – their learnings from implementing prevention practices as well as to learn from their counterparts across the world. The Summit will also seek their input on Strong Cities’ priorities and strategy for 2026, ensuring the support it provides in ESA remains driven by its main beneficiary: local government.

Additional Resources

• ESA:
• ESA Regional Workshop Reports
  • Inaugural Workshop Operationalising Local Government-Led Multi-Actor Prevention Policies and Programmes (Nairobi; October 2022)
  • Tapping into the Potential of Cities in Preventing and Responding to Hate- and Extremist-Motivated Violence (Johannesburg; June 2023)
  • Scaling City-Led Action to Prevent and Respond to Hate, Extremism and Polarisation (Arusha; May 2024)
  • The Role of Border Municipalities in Addressing Hate, Extremism, Trafficking and Other Threats to Safety and Security (Dar Es Salaam; June 2025)
• ESA City Spotlights: eThekwini Municipality (South Africa), Mandera County (Kenya), Mukaza Commune (Burundi), Nansana Municipality (Uganda), Stellenbosch Municipality (South Africa) 
• NLC:
• Strong Cities Policy Brief: National-Local Cooperation: A Pillar of City-Led Prevention of Hate, Extremism and Polarisation – A Practice Update. Strong Cities Network, December 2024.
• Global Counterterrorism Forum’s National-Local Cooperation Toolkit, September 2023 
• Other:
• A Guide for City-Led Response. Strong Cities Network, April 2024 
• Preventing and Responding to Election Disruption and Violence: Ten Considerations for Cities, Strong Cities Network, March 2024 
• A Guide for Mayors: Preventing and Responding to Hate, Extremism and Polarisation, Strong Cities Network, September 2023 
• A Guide for Cities: Preventing Hate, Extremism and Polarisation, Strong Cities Network, September 2023 
• Addressing the Overlooked Role of African Cities in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism, Strong Cities Network, July 2022 

Donors

Contact Information

For more information on this event and the Strong Cities Network East and Southern Africa Regional Hub under the STRIVE Cities Initiative, please contact Strong Cities at [email protected]   

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