Race to Resilience: African Coastal Cities Are Preparing for Floods

Partner: Cities Race to Resilience

Implementer: ICLEI Africa

Location & Region: Beira, Mozambique and Durban, South Africa

SAA Impact System: Human settlements

Impact: Enhanced disaster response of local communities

In Africa’s rapidly growing coastal cities, climate impacts are hitting hardest where communities can least afford them. In 2022, Durban, South Africa faced catastrophic floods that displaced over 40,000 individuals and claimed hundreds of lives. Across the Mozambican Channel, Beira continues to rebuild after Cyclone Idai in 2019 devastated 90 per cent of its infrastructure and left more than 600 dead.

These events expose the crisis of climate injustice, where those contributing least to global emissions face the steepest costs. Yet, from these frontlines, innovative and impactful solutions are emerging.

Community-led solutions to worsening climate impacts take root

The Designing Inclusive African Coastal City Resilience (INACCT Resilience) project, led by ICLEI Africa, is demonstrating how co-production, inclusion, and local leadership can transform vulnerability into resilience. Working with informal settlement residents, municipalities, and universities in Durban and Beira, the project strengthens proactive, gender-responsive, and community-driven flood resilience, creating scalable lessons for coastal cities across Africa.

(Image: Participants share information at the Beira Learning Lab)

In Durban and Beira, residents are taking climate adaptation into their own hands. In Beira’s neighbourhoods such as Mungassa, communities dig drainage ditches around fragile homes. In Pholani, Durban, residents repurpose carpets to stabilise soil during flooding. When storms approach, schools and community halls double as evacuation centres.

In Beira, each neighbourhood is supported by a Disaster Management Committee – gender-balanced groups of residents who coordinate evacuations, maintain order, and liaise with authorities. INACCT Resilience works closely with these committees to enhance preparedness and connect community structures with formal governance systems.

In Durban, INACCT supports the expansion of the community-based flood early warning system co-designed and implemented in 2015 by residents from informal and formal settlement along the Palmiet River, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and the eThekwini municipality. The system combines scientific flood monitoring and community observations to deliver timely alerts. It already saved hundreds of lives during the 2022 floods.

(Image: An exhibition of the 2022 Durban floods)

Under INACCT, this model is being scaled, including documenting and expanding the community-based flood early warning systems to three additional pilot settlements. Additionally, a community trainer’s CBFEWS training manual has been co-developed with community members, along with a Flood Emergency Response Toolkit and community-led evacuation drills.

In Beira, the Eduardo Mondlane University, the municipality, and Disaster Risk Committee members have produced “climate storylines” that integrate lived experience with scientific projections to visualise future climate scenarios and inform planning.

Bridging local knowledge with city planning

Co-Produced Risk and Resilience Profiles link community knowledge with municipal systems, ensuring that the daily realities of informal settlements directly influence city-level decision-making. However, resilience needs remain vast and urgent. Municipalities estimate that hundreds of millions are still required to repair past damage and build forward better. For residents, each flood or cyclone brings new disruptions and trauma — to livelihoods, education, and health — with recovery measured not only in infrastructure but in trust and cohesion.

(Image: ICLEI Africa visits an informal settlement in Beira, Mozambique)

Looking ahead, a cross-border exchange between Durban and Beira’s informal settlement leaders will strengthen peer-to-peer learning and amplify locally led innovation. These exchanges embody the Race to Resilience vision: communities as co-architects of solutions, not passive recipients of resilience support and aid.

Culminating in a forthcoming open-access Knowledge-to-Action Platform, INACCT is making its lessons and resources accessible to cities across Africa. Its approach proves that when local knowledge, inclusive governance, and scientific insight converge, resilience grows from the ground up, protecting lives, livelihoods, and nature in the face of an accelerating climate crisis.

About CLARE Research Programme

INACCT is made possible through the CLARE Research Programme. CLARE is a flagship research programme on climate adaptation and resilience, funded mostly (about 90%) by UK Aid through the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and co-funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada. CLARE is bridging critical gaps between science and action by championing Southern leadership to enable socially inclusive and sustainable action to build resilience to climate change and natural hazards.

About Race to Resilience

Race to Resilience is the global campaign led by the Climate High-Level Champions, working to catalyse action by non-State actors to build the resilience of the four billion people who are most vulnerable to climate impacts by 2030. The campaign partners with initiatives across regions and sectors that deliver locally driven solutions protecting lives, livelihoods and nature.

About ICLEI

ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability is a global network of more than 2,500 local and regional governments committed to sustainable urban development. Active in over 125 countries, ICLEI influences sustainability policy and drives local action for low-emission, nature-based, equitable, resilient and circular development. ICLEI Africa supports cities and regions across the continent to address the challenges of climate change and build pathways to inclusive and sustainable urban futures.