Breaking cycles of risk accumulation in African cities

This publication covers a range of disaster risk management (DRM) themes, from community participation in DRM data collection to risk mapping and from urban waste management to hazard accumulation in urban risk traps. Both the causes for risk accumulation and the opportunities for risk reduction in urban Africa lie clearly in development policy and practice. Combining action on overarching urban planning risk culture and the details of decision-making for sectoral policy and local practice can be a powerful and long-lasting way to approach the integration of risk management into urban development.

Once these are working together, positive feedback can be built. Success at a project and policy level reinforces the importance of risk culture across the city which, in turn, leads to the prioritisation of inclusive risk-reducing practice and policy. For risk reduction in urban Africa, the emergence of multilevel governance arrangements (strongly networked civil society organisations acting in concert with local and city authorities to address root causes, to record event losses and to better understand and support household resilience) provides a specific opportunity for equitable and sustainable risk reduction.