The dialogue event - organized by Connective Cities together with the Qudra program and UCLG-MEWA - enabled 38 Turkish and 9 German representatives of refugee-receiving cities and communities to exchange experiences on the challenges and opportunities of integrating refugees. In working groups of interested municipalities, 6 first project ideas were developed together.

Taking the opportunity to address the diversity of local actors from Africa at the Africities Conference and get into exchange. Towards that end, Connective Cities participated in the exhibition at Africities and took first steps to prepare for the next phase of the project.   

Experts from Helsinki (Finland), Sosnitsya and Kiev (Ukraine), Berlin-Lichtenberg (Germany) and numerous other cities met in Berlin for this year's network meeting to share their good practices at a Connective Cities peer-to-peer session. 

With a digital umbrella strategy, opportunities of technological change are to be made available to the city of Nuremberg to make the city more innovative, sustainable, energy-efficient, economically competitive and socially inclusive.

Five Southeast European capitals - Zagreb, Sarajevo, Podgorica, Skopje and Tirana - have joined hands with Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, to jointly work on the topics of energy efficiency and climate protection. This network is fostering change and innovation by raising awareness on saving energy.

Subject to the commissioning of the BMZ, preparations are already underway for the new phase of Connective Cities starting from April 2019 and for the selection of topics for the future regional learning processes in the five world regions Sub-Saharan Africa, Maghreb/Middle East, South Eastern Europe/South Caucasus, Asia and Latin America. To this end, international and national city associations will be involved in a needs analysis in the coming weeks in order to identify and prioritise the relevant urban development issues from the point of view of regional actors.

The “Partnership Projects for Sustainable Local Development” (Nakopa) programme of the Service Agency Communities in One World of Engagement Global financially supports municipal partnership projects between a German city and a partner municipality in the Global South. As part of the current call for proposals German cities are invited to submit an expression of interest by Friday, 22nd February 2019.