Urban reform coalitions: Kampala with Shuaib Lwasa

ACRC defines inclusive urban reform coalitions as partnerships between government, experts and civil society organisations – often directly involving communities and groups most directly affected by the issues at hand – to drive sustainable urban transformation.

In this episode, Shuaib Lwasa, ACRC's capacity strengthening lead and professor of urban resilience and global development at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, talks to Ezana Haddis Weldeghebrael about building and sustaining reform coalitions, drawing on his experiences as founder of the Urban Action Lab (UAL) at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.

He discusses how knowledge co-production became the most important aspect of the UAL's research, along with challenges around bringing together disadvantaged and advantaged groups, and how academics and researchers in the contemporary urban space should play a bridging role between communities and other actors – to identify commonalities between different interest groups and empower communities to advocate for themselves.

Highlighting the importance of decency in urban development, he argues that there is a need to look beyond standardisation to achieve this, and to embrace alternative methodologies and tools – such as reform coalitions and other bottom-up approaches.

Shuaib Lwasa is professor of urban resilience and global development at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. He leads the African Cities Research Consortium's capacity strengthening work and is also co-lead for the climate change crosscutting theme.

Ezana Haddis Weldeghebrael is a postdoctoral research fellow at the African Cities Research Consortium, supporting research across the crosscutting themes of finance, gender and climate change.

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Music: Brighter Days | Broke in Summer

Sounds: Zapsplat

This podcast presents the views of the speakers featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

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