Associated organisationsAIMS - African Institute for Mathematical Sciences · Imperial College London · IND Mouhamadou Sylla 280704 · McGill University · University of Cape Town · University of Ghana · University of Massachusetts AmherstEurope PMC affiliations are not treated as award recipients or mapped locations.
Funding£6.4M
PeriodOct 2024 — Sept 2030
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
Four African cities are testing new policies and technologies to protect their most vulnerable residents from climate-driven health threats like heatwaves, floods, and disease outbreaks. This matters because climate change hits Africa’s fast-growing cities hardest, yet most adaptation strategies ignore who suffers most. The poor, women, and informal settlers often face the worst health risks but have the least say in solutions. Current knowledge comes largely from outside Africa, missing local realities. If successful, the programme will produce concrete tools: an open-access data platform that tracks inequalities in climate-health risks across African cities, and a set of proven interventions—from early-warning systems to green infrastructure—that cities can adopt. It will also train a new generation of African researchers and practitioners, building lasting institutional capacity through the African Urban Research Initiative hubs. The work is applied and policy-focused, not fundamental science. Its direct aim is to trigger real-world change: city governments that use the evidence to redesign drainage, cooling, and health services equitably, and international funders who shift resources toward locally-led adaptation. The impact will be measured in lives protected and inequalities reduced, not in laboratory discoveries.
View original technical description
Our programme aims to generate novel transdisciplinary knowledge and trigger policies and practices that enhance resilience and adaptive capacity to the health effects of climate change in Africa’s cities. We treat equity as an essential component of climate adaptation, because inequalities are unjust and hinder sustainable development. In partnership with policy and societal partners in four cities in Africa, we will co-produce novel and transformative knowledge on how climate change affects environmental risk exposures, and who are vulnerable to these risks. We will identify existing and new technologies, infrastructures, policies and practices that can enhance resilience and support adaptation to climate-change-induced health risks, and evaluate their feasibility, efficacy, enablers and equity in our focal cities. We will significantly strengthen individual and institutional capability for world- class climate change and health translational research and practice in Africa by mentoring early-career researchers, generating and disseminating learning materials for students and practitioners, and incorporating climate and health research in African Urban Research Initiative hubs. We will also create an interoperable and updatable open-access data platform to monitor inequalities in climate-change health risks and vulnerabilities in Africa’s cities. These steps will generate transformative Africa-led knowledge and policy impact beyond the lifecycle of the programme.
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