Alok Sharma MP, President of COP26, and Jane Marriot, UK High Commissioner to Kenya, visited Tomorrow’s Cities partner Kounkuey (KDI) in Kenya to learn about their work on risk mitigation in informal settlements.

Sharma and Marriot were in Kibera, where they met community Weather Champions working as part of the Dajara project. KDI’s Dajara project addresses the vulnerability of informal settlements in rapidly urbanising areas to extreme weather events like flooding. Through the Dajara project, Weather Champions disseminate information to their communities, helping residents to proactively prepare for hazards.

In a tweet, Sharma said: “Pleasure to meet the team at the Dajara project this morning and to see climate adaptation initiatives first hand. Adaptation & resilience is a key #COP26 goal, so it was great to see partnerships on the ground today working together to bring solutions alive”.

KDI is a community development and design non-profit. They partner with under-resourced communities, such as Kibera, Mukuru and Mathare, to advance equity and activate the unrealised potential in their neighbourhoods. As part of Tomorrow’s Nairobi, KDI are supporting flood modelling work, vulnerability analysis and looking into the intersections between hazards and developing multi-hazard systems.

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