Climate Change Resilient Equitable Healthy Cities in Africa (CLARITY-Africa)

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.