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Elevating the Role of African Cities in Preventing Extremism and Hate: Mapping City Needs and Priorities – Nairobi

Publication Date:

15/05/2022

Content Type:

Event Reports

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From 10 to 12 May 2022, the Strong Cities Network convened over 65 mayors and other local leaders, civil society representatives and senior officials from national governments and multilateral bodies in East and Southern Africa for an exchange of perspectives on how best to support city and other local authority-led efforts for preventing extremist- and hate-motivated violence and polarisation¹. The multi-stakeholder gathering included officials and experts from Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, as well as the African Union, IGAD, UNOCT, UNDP, UN Habitat, UNOPS, other city networks including the East Africa Local Government Association and the Global Parliament of Mayors, and the British, Danish, Dutch and US embassies in Nairobi. The EU-funded workshop is part of a larger EU-supported initiative to map city-level prevention-related needs and priorities across Africa.

Topics included the threat landscape of hate and extremism in the region, as seen from the perspective of cities and other local actors; the comparative advantages of cities and other local authorities in prevention, and policies and infrastructure needed to leverage them; the challenges cities in the region face in terms of tapping into their potential for prevention, and how international, regional and sub-regional bodies and networks can support cities with overcoming them. From Blantyre to Cabo Delgado to Cape Town to Dascnitted from a range of diverse perspectives on the threat landscape and the strengths and limitations of existing approaches to preventing and countering the threat.

Below are key takeaways and proposed next steps based on these discussions, which were conducted under the Chatham House Rule. A more detailed overview of each takeaway and next step can be found in the next two sections of this document.

During the workshop, participants discussed the relevance of a range of sub-national authorities in the prevention space: this included capital cities, remote villages, small towns and county and other regional governments.

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