13th April 2018, Maputo, Mozambique

For over a year, Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, has been working to strengthen its urban resilience through the Making Cities Sustainable and Resilient Action, an initiative supported by the European Commission (EC) and led by UN-Habitat and UNISDR. In light of the tragic events this February in the poor neighbourhood of Hulene where a dump collapsed due to heavy rainfall, Maputo’s municipality is even more committed to moving forward on its resilience strategy and actions.

Under one of the main results of the EC supported Action, Maputo is implementing UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Tool (CRPT) - a multi-actor and holistic resilience analysis that results in concrete actions to build long-term resilience in the city.

To implement the CRPT, the municipality has been collaborating closely not only with staff from UN-Habitat and partners on the ground, but also Barcelona City Council under the framework of a city-to-city agreement. In an interview recorded during the field visit, Mayor David Simango spoke of the Maputo-Barcelona-UN-Habitat triangular cooperation, “What we have done, what we are doing with Barcelona, ​​I think can be a model to be followed by other African cities and the world” (full interview).

'Recordings and sound provided by Barcelona City Council'

The field visit this month will be followed by a training session held in UN-Habitat’s Barcelona office where representatives from Maputo and the other 3 pilot cities (Dakar, Asunción and Port Vila) working under the Making Cities Sustainable and Resilient Action will share experiences, best practice and challenges with view to scaling up the Action.

Commenting on the progress in Maputo, Esteban Leon, Head of the City Resilience Profiling Programme added, “the commitment from Maputo and the other pilot cities to this process is exemplary. We hope to replicate this model across all cities engaging with UN-Habitat through the CRPT to achieve the vision set out in the SDGs and New Urban Agenda.”