Category: Start-up promotion

Call for participants: Covid-19: Economic impact and recovery

Posted on by erik

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a deteriorating impact on the national and local government economic resources. In economies that largely depend on informal labour market, a lot of people have lost their livelihoods. The governments have been torn between life and livelihoods as the interaction of people propels the spread of the virus.

This shift affected the revenue stream for the local government especially in the cities as a result of shrinking businesses and also a mass migration of the urban population to the rural areas. This has a negative impact on effective operations of the municipalities and service provision.

Whilst the impact of this pandemic has been felt worldwide, cities have responded with different measures to avert the spread and cushion against long-term impacts and even future pandemics. It’s against this background that Connective Cities1 is offering a platform in which cities will share the challenges they have experienced and interventions that have either been implemented or are being planned to safeguard against the negative impacts and future pandemics.

In the second series  at10th & 12th November, 2020, 13:00- 15:00 (CET), we look at the economic impact of the pandemic, recovery and resilience of cities.

Conference language is English.

More information:Concept paper [pdf 3 pages]

Participation and contact

If you have further questions or would like to participate, please send an e-mail to Sophia Kamau (sophia.kamau@giz.de), Regional Coordinator for Connective Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Municipal Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic III

Posted on by erik

More than 30 municipal representatives from around 20 cities in MENA and sub-Sharan Africa  participated in the third virtual event of the knowledge-exchange series on Municipal Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Municipal representatives from both political and technical levels were invited and they engaged in knowledge-exchange to analyse and discuss practical examples of municipal response related to cushioning and the recovery from the economic impacts of the pandemic. 

Solutions for and by cities

Posted on by erik

"The Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation is dedicated to decentralised, city-to-city cooperation and sharing lessons learned from experience. Its focus covers the three pillars of sustainability: social, economic and environmental, and two additional domains – governance and technology.
The fourth edition of the Guangzhou Award was a remarkable show of these links between innovation and learning from different stakeholders. This publication is an attempt to extend the prestige of the initiatives that were shortlisted for the award, and to spread their legacy to even broader audiences."

Promoting Innovative and Sustainable Start-ups

Posted on by erik

From the 11th to 13th of December, 2014, the 4th Connective Cities Dialogue Event took place at Betahaus, Berlin and brought together German and international local stakeholders who are directly connected to the field of local economic development and start-up promotion.

The participants consisted of city officials in charge of economic development and representatives of start-up promoting institution from German and Asian cities.

For urban socio-economic cooperation, applied research and knowledge work, as well as for the creation of new labour ecosystems or community-based businesses, co-working spaces, incubators and innovation labs are increasingly relevant concepts. They demonstrate new ‘grassroots-driven’ practices of urban coordination, collaboration-centric architecture and technology-based work. The co-creation of socio economic environments following principles of e.g. peer-to-peer commerce and collaborative consumption, is a blooming phenomena that demonstrates the demand for new approaches of life long learning, urban development as well as regional economic development support practice. These functions state that mentioned approaches are relevant and integrative instruments for fostering urban initiatives.  

How to make cities safer

Posted on by erik

This report presents the key insights, lessons and recommendations of a South African delegation that participated in a study tour on urban safety and violence prevention to Brazil and Colombia in April 2014. The study tour was organised by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), as part of the Inclusive Violence and Crime Prevention Programme (VCP), in partnership with the South African Cities Network (SACN) and the Department of Cooperative Governance (DCoG). The delegation consisted of representatives from the member cities of the SACN as well as selected national government departments (see annexure A for the list of participants).