Start Date : 28 Jul 09   End Date : 28 Jul 09 Location: Pretoria, South Africa

UN-HABITAT and its partners will launch the ‘Building Capacities of Local Governments in Africa to Cope with Climate Change’ project on 28 July 2009, in Pretoria, South Africa. The project is to support five African Cities to strengthen local level capacities for responding to climate change through enhanced policy dialogues, synergies between national and local level action, and, regional networking for climate mitigation and adaptation.. The participating Cities include Bobo-Dioulasso, Mombasa, Walvis Bay, Kigali, and Saint Louis. The project falls under the UN-HABITAT Cities in Climate Change Initiative in which two other African Cities, Kampala and Maputo, are already participating as pilot cities. The project’s launch event will be graced by Mayors, representatives of local authorities, local authority associations and national governments.

This event is being organized back-to back with the Africa Local Government Climate Roadmap Pre- Copenhagen Summit being organized by ICLEI at the same venue from 29-31 August 2009. The summit is one in a series of regional Pre-Copenhagen local government summit meetings which UN-HABITAT support. The summit aims to mobilize African Local Governments, to build consensus and capacity, to understand the process and to join efforts towards a strong and global post-2012 climate agreement.

See attached Aide memoire for details of the Launch Event: For further information, please contact david.kithakye@unhabitat.org