Against the backdrop of escalating climate threats and deepening urban inequality, the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE) hosted the 2025 SAICE Environmental Engineering Division (SEED) breakfast in July. The event drew leading voices in science, technology and urban development into one shared conversation – how can African cities lead the way in climate-smart people-centred infrastructure?

Held in KwaZulu Natal, a province that has weathered some of South Africa’s most severe climate shocks, the event marked a renewed call for civil engineers, planners and policymakers to adopt a radically inclusive, context-driven approach to climate action. In Southern Africa, more than 30 million people are suffering from severe drought with widespread crop losses due to extreme climate change[1]. Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana have declared a state of emergency due to drought with millions in need. In North and West Africa, flooding and temperature fluctuations are having a severe impact across societies, economies and communities[2]. According to the UN World Meteorological Organization, the average surface temperature was 0.86 degrees centigrade above the 1991-2020 average on the continent.

SEED Chairperson, Mathapelo More, opened the session with a systems-focused message about climate adaptation in the African engineering context. “We need to move towards systems value,” she said. “Whatever human and business activities we do must be within what the natural environment can provide.”

Reflecting on planetary boundaries and the risks of global overshoot, she added: “We can’t keep waiting for money to arrive. The Global South receives five to ten times less adaptation finance than needed, so what can we do in our space as Africans? This is the question we need to be answering and how we need to be thinking. Because clearly, the money isn’t flowing our way, and we can’t wait.”

Keynote speaker, Sibo Mabuze-Kaluw, co-founder of Africans Changing Africa, an organisation dedicated to driving positive societal change on the African continent, challenged engineers to fundamentally rethink what a resilient African city looks like. “Africa is urbanising faster than any other region,” she said. “But are we building cities that can survive the next flood, drought or heatwave?”

Mabuze-Kalow contrasted the continent’s rapid growth and digital fragmentation with slower, broadband-based development in the Global North. “We can’t import blueprints. Our urban population is still growing at 3.5% annually and many of our people live in formal settlements, off the planning radar. Our infrastructure is still being built in real time.”

In 2010, the percentage of Africans living in urban areas was around 36% but this number is expected to increase exponentially to 60% by 2050. This urban population growth will expect cities on the continent to ‘absorb an additional 600 million people, reaching a total of 1.2 billion’[3]. Currently, 700 million people live in urban areas, and this number is expected to reach 1.4 billion by 2050 at a rate of growth that has never been seen before in human history[4].

Mabuze-Kalow’s vision of climate-resilient urbanism was practical and deeply rooted in citizen participation:

• Data-informed, people-centred planning using GIS, drone mapping, and community-sourced data via WhatsApp or USSD;
• Climate-smart infrastructure that adapts in real time, including IoT flood sensors and predictive heat modelling;
• Digitally managed utilities for smart metering, energy access and waste optimisation;
• Inclusive mobility platforms that integrate walking, taxis, and GPS-tracked transport with digital fare systems;
• Multilingual, low-tech systems that serve the digitally excluded.

“These aren’t billion-dollar projects, they’re smart, grounded and African,” she said.

Climate shocks are also playing a significant role in worsening transport inequity. Vuyi Majola, Public Transport Integration Specialist at CityCon Africa, expanded the conversation into the mobility space. Her focal example, the Tugela River Bridge in rural KwaZulu-Natal, captured the vital importance of infrastructure and mobility as a justice issue.

“Imagine a 15-kilometre trip to a clinic suddenly becoming a 163 kilometre round trip because the river floods and the bridge becomes impassable,” she said. “The bridge is there, yes, but people can’t cross it and have been rendered immobile. This is both an engineering problem and a dignity problem.”

She illustrated how a lack of mobility disproportionately affects women and low-income families. “Women walk more than men in this country, and when mobility systems don’t work, its women who are left behind, unable to reach clinics, grants or schools.” 

Majola emphasised the importance of basic tools for resilience which included SMS alerts from ward councillors, community-based data collection, and pedestrian bridges that ensure access even when the river swells. “We don’t always need complicated technology, sometimes the solution is as simple as a walkway,” she said. “Let’s stop building for communities and instead build with them.”

CEO of CityCon Africa, Andile Skosana, challenged engineers and planners to build bridges between disciplines. “We need to have controversial conversations that are both cordial and courageous,” he said “Too often, we design technically perfect infrastructure that fails socially. The bridge is still standing, yes, but the people it was meant to serve are stuck on the other side.” 

He echoed Majola’s point that engineering decisions are ultimately social ones and proposed a move from transport-oriented development to development-oriented transit. This approach acknowledges the reality that informal mobility systems like taxis and walking often pre-empt formal infrastructure and asks that future development is built around how people move so it doesn’t miss the point.

The final keynote came from Professor Debra C. Roberts, an acclaimed South African scientist and practitioner widely recognised for her pioneering work at the intersection of climate science, urban sustainability and policy. “We’re already living in a dangerous climate,” she said. “Even 1.5 degrees isn’t safe, it’s just less dangerous than 2 degrees – every tenth of a degree matters.” 

Drawing on the latest synthesis report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Roberts laid out the reality. Global emissions must fall by 60% by 2035 to have any hope of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade and Africa is heating twice as fast as the global average. Adaptation is not enough, there are now hard limits with ecosystems and people are too vulnerable to adjust. 

“Design smarter, build bolder and lead differently,” she said, “Don’t ask if it will work instead ask if it will adapt or survive. The science gives us a work programme, now we act. Nobody can sit this out – not citizens, not city engineers, not insurance companies, not national governments. Everyone must lead.”

Infrastructure designed today must be built for an unpredictable, warmer and more unequal world. 

Closing the event, more re-emphasised the need for local leadership and shared ownership. “The time has come to act, to identify who needs to be in the room, to share practical tools and build systems that serve African realities.”