All Things Urban

This event aims to promote sustainable collaboration between cities and innovation ecosystems across the UK, South Africa and Kenya to address urban challenges and improve citizens’ lives. Why Urban Innovation in Practice? The Connected Places Catapult (CPC), in partnership with UN-HABITAT, are inviting you to the Urban Innovation in Practice event. The aim of this event is to promote a sustainable collaboration between cities and hubs across UK, South Africa and Kenya to address urban challenges and improve citizens’ lives. This key event will promote collaboration between different stakeholders in UK, South Africa and Kenya to exchange experiences and knowledges and best practices relating to urban innovation. This event will also include a roundtable discussion which will discuss how donors can engage with city managers, tech hubs, civil society, and the private sector to enable donors to build a thriving innovation ecosystem in African cities. What is Urban Links Africa? As part of the UK government strategy is to establish long-term and mutually beneficial partnerships with African nations, Connected Places Catapult, the UK centre of excellence for urban innovation, is running an ambitious £2.5M programme, Urban Links Africa (ULA), funded by UKRI through the Global Challenges Research Fund. The programme facilitates a sustainable collaboration between the UK, South Africa, and Kenya, bringing together six cities and tech ecosystems to address challenges in African cities and improve citizens’ lives. Challenges include sustainable mobility, solid waste management, wastewater management and urban flooding. ULA funds and supports 7 impact-driven UK-African equitable partnerships to develop joint tech solutions to these challenges. The project has benefited from ULA’s support in 6 cities: Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban. Speakers - Nicola Yates OBE, CEO, Connected Places Catapult - Sir Michael Bear, Former Lord Mayor of London and Special Advisor to Connected Places Catapult - Eduardo Moreno, Chief of Knowledge and Innovation Branch, UN-Habitat - Oumar Sylla, Director, Regional Office for Africa DATE: 4 March, 2021 START TIME: 10:30 am END TIME: 1:00 pm

The new Connected Places Catapult accelerates smarter living and travelling in and between the places of tomorrow. We focus on growing businesses with innovations in mobility services and the built environment that enable new levels of physical, digital and social connectedness. The Connected Places Catapult operates at the intersection between public and private sectors and between local government and transport authorities. We convene the disparate parts of the market to help innovators navigate the complexity of doing business, creating new commercial opportunities and improving productivity, socio-economic and environmental benefits for places.