Sustainable African cities: multidisciplinary research to meet health, demographic, economic and political challenges

This online Bordeaux Summer School is designed for graduate and doctoral students as well as professionals involved and interested in sustainable development in Africa, and especially the unique challenges facing African cities. These challenges include: rapid urbanization within a context of limited economic growth, increasing vulnerability to climate change, uncontrolled road traffic and the expansion of polluting industries.

Course content is delivered remotely and will provide participants with a critical and complementary analysis of the evolution of African cities over the past 20 years, as well as the challenges and opportunities for the next ten years in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda, and especially SDG-11 on sustainable cities and communities.

Throughout the summer school, participants learn in a variety of ways thanks to:

• Lectures and discussions with experts on major development and sustainability issues for African cities over the next ten years;
• Multi- and interdisciplinary discussions and debates on diverse policy and development sectors (health, food security, urban governance, technology, climate and environment, etc.) and on interventions towards reaching the SDGs in these fields;
• Collaboration within a multidisciplinary group on an interdisciplinary project (health, demographics, economics, political approaches) that addresses a key topic for sustainable African cities.

Participants will have access to the most recent data and knowledge, as well as fresh insights into public policy processes, development challenges, and multidisciplinary interventions aiming to reach the SDGs in African contexts. They will also have the opportunity to interact and connect with the experts, researchers and professors present.