100 Resilient Cities (100RC) is a project by the Rockefeller Foundation that is helping cities around the world tackle everything from rising sea levels and coastal erosion to housing and energy challenges, according to a CNN report. And Africa is on the front lines of this in terms of urbanisation. “People are moving out of the villages and into the cities at a pace unprecedented in history,” said Michael Berkowitz, president of 100RC.

His network is working closely with eleven cities across Africa to develop a model for what a new, more resilient urbanisation might look like and has allocated USD 164 million to fund a chief resilience officer for each city to draw up a resilience plan.

As CNN reported, the Senegalese capital Dakar has now become the first of the eleven African cities to introduce a resilience strategy. Recognising that climate change is the biggest threat, the plan focuses on waste management, improving public transport and reinventing green spaces that have fallen victim to urbanisation.

Berkowitz recognises, however, that a resilience strategy is just the first step.

“The things that really make a city resilient – more cohesive communities where neighbours check on neighbours, better transportation, mobility, improved air quality, better built environment and architecture – these don't happen in a year or two, or even three. That's the work of a generation.”

Nonetheless, he believes that Dakar could become a model of African urbanisation. “It feels like there’s a lot of energy going in the right direction.”

The other African countries in the 100RC network are Lagos, Luxor, Cape Town, Durban, Kigali, Accra, Nairobi, Enugu, Addis Ababa and Paynesville.