Steering Low-Carbon Growth in Emerging African Cities: Insights from Dar es Salaam

By the end of the 21st century, over 30 African cities will have populations exceeding 10 million people, placing them among the world’s largest megacities. The region’s rapid urbanization will stimulate investments in new urban infrastructure, including power plants, roads, and residential buildings, which will push city-level energy use and carbon emissions to new levels. The region’s impending urbanization and infrastructure growth presents an opportunity in the global fight against climate change. By coordinating efforts now, urban planners, infrastructure service providers, and municipalities can “get it right” and invest in sustainable and low-carbon infrastructure to avoid locking into carbon-intensive patterns of urban growth.

Using findings from interviews and stakeholder workshops undertaken over three months of fieldwork in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, this presentation explored three key questions: What role do African cities and municipal governments play in producing low-carbon urban growth? Which institutions or governing bodies should take the lead, and why? And what are the opportunities to scale up investments to finance sustainable technologies and infrastructure? The presentation elucidated possible governance and financing options for Dar es Salaam as well as their relevance for other cities in the region.

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Speaker

Chibulu Luo is the recipient of the 2018-2019 Graduate Fellowship in Municipal Finance and Governance. She is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto. Chibulu is also a former Young Scientist with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA); a Doctoral Research Awardee with International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Canada; a Doctoral Scholar with the University of Toronto’s Centre for Global Engineering; and a researcher with the Engineering Education for Sustainable Cities in Africa (EESC-A) project within the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering.

Chibulu has worked extensively in environmental policy and development, including with the Earth Institute at Columbia University, the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and the World Bank. She holds Master’s degrees in Engineering Management and Mechanical Engineering.