Urban95 Academy expands to Africa in partnership with the African Centre for Cities

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Urban95 Academy expands to Africa with a second region-specific hub of the programme in partnership with the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town.

The Urban95 Academy leadership programme, an executive education programme for city teams, first launched in 2021 by LSE Cities and the Van Leer Foundation, will now reach and support a growing network of urban leaders throughout Africa. This expansion is being delivered through a partnership with the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Selected participants access a fully-funded leadership training programme focused on how to design and deliver better cities for babies, toddlers and their caregivers.

After a successful launch of a dedicated Latin America Programme last year, the Urban95 Academy is now embarking on a new chapter delivering a programme tailored to the interests and needs of municipal leaders in Africa who want to engage with child- and care-centred urban planning and policy making.

To date over 1500 municipal leaders representing nearly 500 cities from 84 countries have participated in the Academy, all with the shared goal of gaining tools to develop and deliver more care and child-centred cities.

Over 300 urban leaders from 100 city teams from Africa have taken part in the programme so far, including teams representing Lusaka, Zambia, Lagos, Nigeria, Kampala, Uganda, Mombasa, Kenya and Cape Town, South Africa (see the full list of participating cities on the Urban95 Academy website). Participation from Africa city teams has consistently shown enthusiasm and a demand for knowledge around child-centred urban policy and planning as well as a desire to connect with other municipalities that share common goals

Together, the Van Leer Foundation, The Africa Centre of Cities and LSE Cities will be developing a tailored learning experience for city leaders in Africa with region-specific case studies, local faculty, knowledge and technical partners.

Applications are now open and the deadline to apply to participate in the Urban95 Academy Africa programme is 24 September 2026. The course will begin online in October 2026 and selected teams will be invited to travel to Cape Town to participate in a residence week at the University of Cape Town in March 2027. All aspects of the programme are fully funded and free of cost to participants.

The Van Leer Foundation is scaling Urban95 to put care at the heart of how all cities are designed and governed. Expanding the Urban95 Academy to Africa, with our valued partners LSE Cities and the African Centre for Cities, is a major step forward in achieving this goal. It puts African city leadership at the centre, with local knowledge on building the villages of care that families depend on every day. We are excited to support a powerful and growing community shaping cities for young children and their caregivers.

The African Centre for Cities is proud to partner with Van Leer Foundation and LSE Cities to bring this programme to city leaders on the African continent whose work addresses the inequities stemming from dysfunctional urbanisation trends. These challenges are felt most acutely by children whose needs are often given scant attention in current, usually, reactive planning processes. The U95 Academy seeks to change this through its focus on the needs of children and their caregivers. We are glad to support the U95 Africa programme and continue growing the network of cities who are adopting a proactive stance to develop infrastructures of care.

Executive education is a powerful tool for building capacity in city government. With the Urban95 Academy, we have seen it can be particularly effective around the unifying topic of improving the lives of children in cities. We are grateful for our continued collaboration with the Van Leer Foundation, a stalwart in the early childhood space and also to be partnering with The African Centre For Cities and tapping into their deep knowledge of the region. This expansion marks an important opportunity for the programme to reach more cities in Africa.

Based on data collected from previous Urban95 Academy cohorts, African cities reported challenges related to access to necessities, poverty, lack of access to adequate healthcare and childcare, malnutrition and a lack of urban infrastructure sensitive to the needs of children.

Projects coming out of the programme directly address these challenges. Examples include conditional grants and nutrition programmes that encourage school attendance, designing childcare spaces for 0–3-year-olds into community planning and school infrastructure, public-private funding structures to provide affordable childcare provision and rebuilding social support networks through investing in public spaces parks and playgrounds.

With this regional expansion of the Urban95 Academy into Africa, more local governments will have the opportunity to build capacity around inclusive, human centred and sustainable child-friendly urban design, to share knowledge, and collaborate with other cities around the priories of creating urban spaces where young children and their caregivers can thrive.

About the Urban95 Academy

The Urban95 Academy is a fully-funded executive education programme for municipal leaders worldwide to learn and develop strategies to make cities better for babies, toddlers and their caregivers. The programme was first launched in 2021 by LSE Cities and the Van Leer Foundation.To date over 1500 municipal leaders representing nearly 500 cities from 84 countries have participated in the Academy.

About the African Centre for Cities

The African Centre for Cities is an interdisciplinary hub at the University of Cape Town with a mandate to conduct meaningful research on how to understand, recast and address pressing urban crises. For more information, visit www.africancentreforcities.net/ or follow us on our social networks FB (/africancentreforcities), IG (@africancentre4cities), X (@UrbanAfricaACC) and LI (/african-centre-for-cities).
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