Advancing Africa’s Response to
Urban Climate and Health Risks
CASCADE is an African-led research consortium working across five cities to understand how climate and health risks connect, and how research, lived experience, and shared learning can inform locally relevant responses.
African Cities
Policy and community engagements
Fellows supported
What we do
Understanding risks and shaping responses together
Climate variability, extreme events and longer-term climate change interact with the social, environmental and governance conditions of African cities. These interactions can create interconnected and cascading health risks. Housing, water and sanitation, food systems, livelihoods, inequality and health services influence how those risks unfold, who is most affected and what responses are possible.
Across Accra, Cape Town, Harare, Johannesburg and Kampala, CASCADE combines research across climate, health and social sciences with knowledge grounded in city practice and lived experience. Research and engagement are revealing how risks develop and cascade across urban systems, while residents’ knowledge and city actors’ experience help shape research priorities and the understanding of practical responses.
Capacity Strengthening
Strengthening African research leadership
Fellows share how research, mentorship and collaboration are shaping their skills, practice and careers.
our approach
Toward a more resilient future
CASCADE’s work connects research with the experiences, priorities and practical knowledge of people living and working in African cities. Through shared learning, the consortium is deepening the collective understanding of climate-health risks and effective responses.
Making connections visible
City Learning Labs in Accra, Harare, and Kampala bring researchers, residents, and public officials together to map interconnected climate and health challenges. By linking flooding, waste, and food security to local governance and livelihoods, these exchanges help prioritize future research and action.
Research shaped through residents’ knowledge
In Khayelitsha, Cape Town, residents identified diarrhoeal disease as a major risk during floods. This insight refocused the project’s Responsive Dialogues. Residents and researchers are now co-developing health communication tools built on local knowledge and household experiences.
EXPLORE OUR RESEARCH
Five cities, shared learning
- Accra, Ghana
- Cape Town, Western Cape
- Harare, Zimbabwe
- Johannesburg, Gauteng
- Kampala, Uganda
Our Partners and Funders
CASCADE is funded through the second phase of the Developing Excellence in Leadership, Training and Science in Africa programme and implemented by the Science for Africa Foundation, with support from Wellcome Trust and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).
