Houses constructed in a waterlogged area in Kampala city suburbs (Photo: UCSD)
World Habitat Day 2025, observed on October 6, will highlight urban crisis response amid growing challenges such as climate change, conflict, and inequality. Organised by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), the global observance will be hosted in Nairobi, Kenya, bringing together policymakers, innovators, and communities to showcase tools and strategies for sustainable urban development.
According to UN-Habitat, this year’s theme emphasises addressing multifaceted crises threatening urban stability and livability, making it a critical platform for organisations aligned with sustainable development goals.
East Africa’s towns and cities are growing rapidly, offering opportunities for economic growth but also exposing residents to deep social, infrastructural, and environmental pressures. The region’s urban future depends on how effectively governments and communities respond to the crises of inadequate housing, overstretched services, climate risk, and inequality. Addressing these challenges requires pragmatic investment, inclusive governance, and drawing lessons from other parts of the Global South.
As we mark World Habitat Day 2025, in East Africa, we need to ponder over some key questions: How do we make these cities and other urban settings livable and stable for all? Does East Africa focus too much on infrastructure at the expense of little on equity? To what extent are the East African Community Partner States really prepared to integrate the voices of women, youth, and informal workers in urban planning?
Upgrading the informal city
A significant proportion of East Africa’s urban residents live in informal settlements, which often lack secure tenure, sanitation, drainage, and basic services. These conditions perpetuate poverty and expose households to floods, disease outbreaks, and eviction risks (UN-Habitat, 2020).
Incremental upgrading—through provision of secure land rights, small-scale infrastructure, and community-led planning—improves safety, opportunity, and stability. Successful projects across African cities highlight that involving local women’s groups, youth, and informal worker associations ensures that interventions respond to diverse lived realities (World Bank, 2022). For example, addressing youth unemployment in the growing cities and urban areas across East Africa is a major challenge calling for long-term supportive policies and plans.
Climate risk as a planning priority
East Africa is already experiencing climate extremes. Recent floods in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania showed how unplanned expansion and weak drainage intensify disaster impacts (Relief Web, 2024).
Building resilience requires investment in green-blue infrastructure—wetlands restoration, retention basins, and permeable pavements—combined with enforcing land-use policies that protect the remaining wetlands, natural waterways and the urban greenery. Intersectional adaptation must account for the fact that women, children, and low-income groups often live in flood-prone areas and are disproportionately affected by displacement and loss of livelihoods (UN Women, 2021).
Health, heat and flood resilience
Rising temperatures, though unusual, are a flaring new phenomenon that threatens public health, particularly for vulnerable groups such as outdoor workers, the elderly, the sick and children. Ahmedabad, India’s Heat Action Plan—introducing early warning systems, public cooling centres, and targeted outreach to at-risk groups—demonstrates the life-saving potential of low-cost preventive approaches (Knowlton et al., 2014). In East Africa, similar measures should integrate gender-sensitive communication and ensure accessibility for the vulnerable, people with disabilities, and children who are often overlooked in emergency planning.
In the same way, the effects of extreme precipitation, rising water levels causing displacements, floods, and tropical storms on vulnerable communities across East African cities need action. These could be mitigated by scaling up locally-led, cost-effective mitigation measures that strengthen nature-based capacities.
Mobility, inclusion, and public space
Social exclusion and unequal access to services often fuel instability. Medellín, Colombia, pioneered “social urbanism,” using cable cars, integrated bus systems, libraries, and parks in marginalised neighbourhoods to reduce violence and improve cohesion (Brand & Dávila, 2011).
For East Africa, inclusive mobility must go beyond transport to consider safety for women and girls who have to walk long distances in search of (affordable) water from dawn to dusk, affordability for low-income groups, and universal design for people with disabilities. Investments in public space and mobility that reflect these needs not only enhance equity but also strengthen urban stability.
Finance and governance
Strong governance and stable finance underpin all resilience strategies. Municipalities in East Africa often lack predictable revenue streams and the capacity to plan at scale. Strengthening local taxation, improving intergovernmental transfers, and accessing climate finance are critical (World Bank, 2022). Intersectional approaches also demand participatory governance, where marginalised voices are actively included in decision-making to avoid perpetuating inequality.
Adapting lessons from the Global South
The experiences of Medellín in Colombia and Ahmedabad in India highlight that inclusion, preparedness, and visible improvements are central to resilience. However, these models cannot be copied wholesale; they must be adapted to East Africa’s diverse cultural, political, and resource contexts. By combining slum upgrading, climate resilience, public health preparedness, and inclusive infrastructure—underpinned by intersectional governance—East Africa can transform the risks of rapid urbanisation into opportunities for building stable, livable cities.
References
- Brand, P., & Dávila, J. (2011). Mobility innovation at the urban margins: Medellín’s Metrocables. City, 15(6), 647–661.
- Knowlton, K., Kulkarni, S. P., Azhar, G. S., et al. (2014). Development and implementation of South Asia’s first Heat-Health Action Plan in Ahmedabad (Gujarat, India). International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 11(4), 3473–3492.
- ReliefWeb. (2024). East Africa floods situation report. Retrieved from https://reliefweb.int/
- UN-Habitat. (2020). World Cities Report 2020: The Value of Sustainable Urbanisation. Nairobi: UN-Habitat.
- UN Habitat (2025). World Habitat Day 2025: https://urbanoctober.unhabitat.org/world-habitat-day-2025
- UN Women. (2021). Gender and climate adaptation in urban contexts. New York: UN Women.
- World Bank. (2022). African Cities: Opening Doors to the World. Washington, DC: World Bank.