Mutare City council has been selected to participate in an inaugural Multi City Challenge Africa public engagement initiative, aimed at tackling pressing urban challenges.
The open innovation challenge is an open call for the public to share solutions, in a bid to build a pool of ‘collective intelligence’.
This inaugural challenge is facilitated by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Global Centre for Technology, Innovation, and Sustainable Development and The Governance Lab (The GovLab) at New York University Tandon School of Engineering.
Mutare City is one of five African cities participating in the 2020 Multi-City Challenge Africa public engagement initiative, together with Kano of Nigeria, Accra of Ghana, Kampala of Uganda and Bahir Dar, Ethiopia.
Kimberly Sithole chairperson of the local Multi City Challenge coordinating committee, said it presents a unique opportunity, in tandem with councils’ deliberate strategy to mainstream citizen participation and inclusion.
“We are entering into the Open Challenge beginning tomorrow 4 November until 4 December where residents stakeholders, academia, researchers, the corporate sector, even media. We are calling them to come and give their solutions to the problems that we would have identified.
“For the City of Mutare we are focusing on urban resilience. It’s an opportunity for young people who have ideas but feel that they are left behind, now they can just click on the website and submit innovative solutions to build resilience,” said Sithole.
The Multi-City Challenge Africa builds on successful implementation of the City and Multi-City Challenge model in Latin America, the US, and Europe. African city leaders will have the opportunity to work with other cities, pooling the expertise from their communities in this first-of-its-kind public engagement effort across cities.
UNDP says it is prioritizing sustainable urbanization across Africa, especially in the devastating context of COVID-19. Africa’s urban population will triple to over 1.3 billion people by 2050 – so inclusive and sustainable cities are a priority.
Under the Multi-City Challenge public servants are extensively trained on citizen engagement, curriculum on problem definition. Building on these training, each city is given an opportunity launch an open innovation challenge.
“City residents can submit innovative ideas for how to best solve priority issues such as digitalizing the informal economy; building urban resilience; and improving waste management.
“The initiative is open to residents in these cities, which were chosen as they are all leading efforts around urban innovation,” said UNDP in a statement.
“This is no longer a City of Mutare but a national program which we want people to support through an open challenge which will be established in few weeks’ time. We need to raise the national flag and inform the nation,” said Mutare City Council Spokesperson Spren Mutiwi.
Meanwhile, City of Mutare also scooped a service delivery excellence award from Contact Centre Association of Zimbabwe (CCAZ), which Sithole said shows gains of deliberate citizen engagement and inclusion strategies employed by council management.
GovLab mission is to improve people’s lives by changing the way we govern to strengthen the ability of institutions — including but not limited to governments — and people to work more openly, collaboratively, effectively, and legitimately to make better decisions and solve public problems.
