A key note speech on land management and land use planning was done by Dr. Mwenda Makathimo from Land Development and Governance Institute. Evans Gichana from Kisumu County Government made a presentation on climate change, to highlight the manifestation of climate change in, and the challenges faced by the cities in trying to mitigate or adapt to climate change. Additional input on governance was prepared by Gertrude Gamwera from the East Africa Local Government Association. A panel of 2 (Ayanda Roji- Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo & Eng. Nancy Njeri- Institute for Transport & Development) gave insight into the topic of gender and sustainable urban development particularly in relation to public spaces and urban mobility.

Group work sessions gave room for further deliberations on challenges and ways of addressing those, on the topics of: (i) urban basic services and sector governance, (ii) land management and land use planning and (iii) climate change. Whilst climate change is a cross-cutting theme for the project, we deemed it useful to offer more to the cities even as they envision to incorporate this in their projects. The results of these working groups will inform the topics for dialogue events and webinars for this project phase.