As the world is becoming increasingly urbanised (the UN estimates that over 50% of the world’s population resides in urban centres and is expected to rise to 68% by 2050), climate change will have implications for rapidly expanding towns and cities. Worldwide, cities are already experiencing increased flooding, heat waves and extreme weather events. As more people move to cities, they are often forced to settle on increasingly unstable land, in informal settlements which lack the infrastructure to support residents. In many instances, weather and climate information services do not reach the populations of informal settlements or, if they do, residents don’t find the information useful or trustworthy, or find it too technical to interpret.

 

DARAJA is designed to reach the most vulnerable groups in informal settlements exposed to storms, floods, heatwaves and chronic water stress. It does this through existing formal and informal community groups that represent the more marginalised of informal settlements, including women, savings and loan groups, youth groups, disaster risk communities, disability support groups and faith-based groups. It does this by supporting community structures that already exist rather than creating anew. This in turn strengthens pre-existing community support mechanisms in the informal settlements. 

 

The improved resilience of those living in inadequate shelters benefit city officials especially as conditions are likely to worsen, placing greater demands on municipal services and resources. Rather than creating a new aid-like structure in lieu of adequate state weather services it has worked with the existing services, identified the gaps and pulled in other key informal settlement stakeholders like the Red Cross. Connecting these disparate actors helps them carry out their own responsibilities and missions effectively while delivering a comprehensive and sustainable system.

 

 

Diverse network facilitation: DARAJA pulls together vulnerable urban residents; national weather agencies providing residents with climate information; civil protection and disaster management agencies working on safety; infrastructure operators working on the built environment; and media houses, telecommunication companies and schools disseminating information, all in one connected information-sharing network. 

 

Community Co-Design: Each weather forecasting service in Kibera and Dar es Salam was designed following workshops with media stakeholders, community members and city authorities. Frequent feedback sessions are also held throughout to continue to refine the service. To ensure inclusive design and implementation, DARAJA works with women and savings groups, faith-based groups and youth groups, among others. Communities take part in the housing and community improvements themselves. KDI and CCI closely supervise these improvements to ensure safety protocols are followed but will also conduct follow up assessments to make sure that the improvements are safe and secure. Trainings are also provided on community health and safety, as well as awareness raising so that community members know when to consult professionally trained experts on housing reconstruction and repairs (electricians, contractors etc.) 

 

Localisation: Weather and climate services are tailored according to community needs. Local leaders, selected by their community, are trained to interpret forecasts. A local communication system was created to trained local leaders share weekly and severe weather forecasts in an easy-to understand format through messages disseminated by SMS, word of mouth or phone calls. Moreover, the community leaders and local radio stations are instrumental to understanding the actual impacts of adverse weather conditions in the informal settlement and advising residents effectively. 

 

Resilience Response: The project alone does not focus on just delivering information, but also seeks to encourage behavioural change so that communities can empower themselves to prepare. Following forecasts, residents take actions as cleaning drains, making repairs to their homes, and moving valuable possessions out of harm’s way to protect their living environment and homes. These actions are closely supervised and tracked through 7 local partners, KDI and CCI. Moreover, CCI has improved sanitation infrastructure by installing concrete walls to reduce risk of collapse during heavy rains and high wind, as well as introducing different sanitation options that if unaddressed would accumulate waste and risk flooding during heavy rains.

 

The lead agency for the project is Resurgence, a global design, communications and consulting not for-profit social enterprise. It specialises in managing urban climate risk and resilience. It helps cities and communities protect themselves from the impacts of climate change by helping weather forecasters and city planners transform data into climate action.

 

Resurgence partners with two local housing organisations in Kenya and Tanzania. In Nairobi (Kenya), it partners with Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), a community development and design not for-profit organisation. KDI employs community resilience experts, engineers, architects, local community organisers, community and operations staff. In Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Resurgence partners with Centre for Community Initiatives (CCI). This is a notfor-profit organisation that builds the capacity of urban poor communities to improve the quality of their housing. In parallel with its work on DARAJA, CCI has been introducing affordable housing schemes in Dar es Salaam. These schemes enable the urban poor to acquire permanent shelter loans through the Jenga Fund. This is a low-cost loan scheme operated by CCI that provides funds for land acquisition and house construction.

 

Resurgence’s operating costs are covered by a combination of foundation grants and non-profit consulting income. 

 

 

 

It has an annual budget of $300,000 USD which covers six major cities in six countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia). Kenya and Tanzania were the pilot projects and are currently the most developed.

 

Resurgence has recently secured a $250,000 grant from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation for additional support for DARAJA in three cities in East Africa: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. 

 

Residents spend about 50,000-100,000 TZS ($21 USD - $40 USD) in Tanzania for housing improvements. KDI funding is not focused on housing improvements (these are led by residents themselves) but rather secures financing for improvement of public spaces and community spaces in informal settlements. Residents will contribute 5% of the funding to these projects either through loans or paying in-kind by providing on-site labour. 

 

Funding is secured for this project until its scheduled completion in 2025. 

 

Between September 2018 and May 2023, this project has: 

DARAJA has won two significant independently judged awards: from the Global Resilience Partnership (Innovation in Resilience) and from British Expertise (International Climate Cooperation). 

 

1.1 Actors are identified, and partnerships established to co-create and co-deliver enhanced weather and climate information services and resources at city and national level. 

 

1.2 Partners from target countries and the Eastern Africa region exchange practical learning and knowledge on co-production weather and climate information services approaches in vulnerable urban communities. 

 

2.1 Inclusive weather and climate information services are co-created and enhanced to respond to user risks, needs and preferences. 

 

2.2 New or enhanced weather and climate information services are sustainable. 

 

3.1 All actors have increased awareness, and access to resources on adaptive or risk reduction actions to take at individual, household, community administrative levels. 

 

3.2 Response Action Plans are co-developed/ agreed at community and administrative level in target communities. 

 

Several case studies and evaluations have been undertaken by the World Bank, Adaptation Research Alliance, WMO, British Expertise International, UNDRR (UNDRR 2nd and 3rd report) and Met Office.

 

In Nairobi, Kenya, it is estimated that 60-70% of the city’s residents live in informal settlements. 44% of those are less than seven kilometres away from the National Forecasting Center and yet still have no access to weather forecasts, let alone early warnings. In Dar es Salaam, figures suggest that over 70% live in informal settlements. Both cities experience regular flooding during periods of heavy rain – as Nairobi and Dar es Salaam continue to expand, this is becoming increasingly a pressing issue. 

 

The barriers and challenges varied according to location. In Nairobi (Kibera), there were strikes from city government officials due to a political crisis in the city and slow response times. This created delays in the issuing of weather and climate information that community leaders depend on to then advise and report to informal settlers. This challenge subsided when the strike ended. In Dar es Salaam, the main challenge was by the community and the government leaders agreeing on using the Community SMS communication system as the primary channel for early weather warning updates towards the community.

 

However, the current reality is that most international agency funding is still directed towards rural areas, and low-income residents in urban areas remain under-served and often forgotten.

 

In weather and climate services, DARAJA is certainly innovative as it is one of the first projects that focused explicitly on urban populations when usually these services tend to focus in rural areas. Moreover, it adopted a system-wide approach to all activities that has brought together a number of national, regional and city-level settlement actors. The connection and integration of different services means that informal settlements can be safer in several ways: housing, health, sanitation, and so on. 

 

The extent of the multi-stakeholder co-design process has produced an innovative product with localised languages and icons that is delivered through trusted channels to informal settlers, rather than ‘official’ channels used by government officials. DARAJA challenges outmoded approaches to early warning information dissemination which tends to be top-down and instead creates a more cohesive dissemination and feedback network across a dense urban network. Finally, the co-creation aspect has led to the development of new local sub-brands, visual identity (the DARAJA logo), a public awareness video campaign with DARAJA recruited community group, Weather Mtanni and filming by local artists, which has helped galvanise local communities and the media.

 

Resurgence is interested in scaling DARAJA and to some degree already has. It is planning to reach 25% of the one billion residents of informal settlements by 2027. 

 

The DARAJA Service is currently being adapted for deployment into small island states via an urban demonstrator for the Caribbean. This is based in Kingston, Jamaica and financed by the World Meteorological Organisation CREWS Initiative and the InterAmerican Development Bank. 

 

DARAJA has recently been awarded to start a two-and-a-half-year grant by FCDO to scale the service up in East Africa. The objective of the DARAJA regional East Africa Scale Up Programme is to support ICPAC (a Climate Center accredited by the World Meteorological Organization that provides Climate Services to 11 East African Countries) and its NMHS partners in the Greater Horn of Africa to improve, through co-production, the uptake and impact of urban weather, climate and early warning information with specific regard to Informal settlements, city services, including the utilities and infrastructure that serves them. They will have a special focus on extreme heat and drought forecasting and reduction, and support to local and 13 innovative climate financing underpinned by robust impact evidence. The target countries and cities include Sudan (Khartoum), Uganda (Kampala), Tanzania (Dar es Salaam), Kenya (Nairobi), Rwanda (Kigali) and Ethiopia (Addis Ababa). DARAJA also currently works with Slum Dwellers International (SDI) in a number of these locations to implement its services. 

 

In terms of transfer work, Resurgence believes that the World Habitat Awards could expose them to wider networks that are urban-based which could serve as a platform for their operation with housing-based organisations in an urban context. The second aspect is how to make it workable and appealing to finance locally, rather than dependent through international funding. Resurgence would like to learn from other urban financing initiatives to apply to the weather and information service space.