Resurgence wins at the British Expertise International Awards 2020

“Many congratulations to the team behind this exceptional project. I hope this model of collaboration inspires others not just in Africa, but around the world.”

Emma Wade-Smith OBE, Her Majesty’s Trade Commissioner for Africa

Resurgence have won the International Collaboration Project of the Year Award at the British Expertise International Awards 2020, held at a virtual ceremony on the 21st October. The Awards recognises and celebrates the best of UK expertise in international development, infrastructure and capacity building.

The ceremony was presided over by HRH the Duke of Gloucester and keynoted by James Duddridge, Minister for Africa at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).

The award for International Collaborative Project highlights exemplary approaches to collaboration between UK companies and/or with international partners.

Resurgence impressed the judges for the team’s diversity of focus with the entry for DARAJA, an inclusive city and community localised weather forecasting and early warning service.

The Resurgence partners include: the UK Met Office, Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD), Tanzania Meteorological Authority (TMA), Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) in Nairobi and Centre for Community Initiatives (CCI) in Dar es Salaam.

Watch video of Awards win announcement here

Emma Wade-Smith OBE, Her Majesty’s Trade Commissioner for Africa, said when awarding Resurgence as the winner, in the category,

“As we see the effects of climate change affecting lives and livelihoods across the world, including Africa… and as the UK prepares to host the COP26 Climate Change Conference in November 2021, our efforts have focused increasingly on how we support UK companies helping communities and countries in Africa to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change. We know that partnerships and collaboration are at the heart of getting this right so it’s particularly pleasing to award the prize to the company and project most effectively demonstrating international collaboration. The winner this year is Resurgence for their work in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam building an innovative city and community localised weather forecasting early warning service.”

“This major award caps off two years of hard work and effort from our team, partners and collaborators on the DARAJA project, and we are honoured and excited to share this ground-breaking international collaboration with a wider audience.” says Resurgence CEO Mark Harvey.

Mark Harvey concluded,

“The award by the independent jury is strong validation of the inclusive co-production approaches inspired by Met Office FCDO WISER Programme and the city-systems wide innovation framework of Climate KIC.

Resurgence and our community development partners, KDI and CCI firmly believe that collaboration through co-design is the key to developing local trust and effectiveness in forecasting and early warning forecasting systems. This is a major boost to us as we raise our climate ambition in the run up to COP26 in Glasgow and look to take the DARAJA service to two more continents: Asia and the Americas in 2021.”

What is the DARAJA project?

As recently as last year almost 50% of Nairobians living in the informal settlements in Kenya’s capital city looked up at the sky as their key source of weather & climate information. The residents of Dar es Salaam faced similar challenges accessing relevant local weather forecasts & early warnings to help them prepare for the impacts of floods & heatwaves.

In order to counter this the DARAJA project assembled a unique team of British, Kenyan and Tanzanian meteorologists, community development experts, risk communication specialists, city officials, residents and broadcasters to create Africa’s inclusive city and community localised forecasting and early warning service.

What were the aims of DARAJA?

DARAJA’s goal was to improve the climate resilience of vulnerable populations living in informal settlements in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya by building the capacity of urban intermediary organisations who can interface between citizens and climate information providers.

DARAJA aimed to improve the climate resilience of 20% of poor urban residents in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, amounting to approximately 800,000 people.

This ambitious project carried out the most comprehensive mapping of information flows through the two cities, solely dedicated to extreme weather and climate information services. With a focus on how the authorities and citizens access and convey climate information at that moment in time, over 700 household surveys across the two cities were conducted.

Who are the partners of DARAJA?

DARAJA is a UKAid funded project of the FCDO Met Office-led Weather and Climate Information Services for Africa (WISER) Programme. DARAJA – Delivering Risk Awareness through Joint Action – means ‘bridge’ in Swahili.

The project has been delivered by a consortium comprised of Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) in Nairobi, the Centre for Community Initiatives (CCI) in Dar es Salaam, and led by Resurgence, with the objective of addressing vulnerability to extreme weather and climate impacts in rapidly-growing informal urban settlements.

DARAJA is receiving additional support to scale out of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam into other global cities, from the EIT Climate-KIC, the EU ‘s leading public private climate innovation partnership.

Fellow International Collaborative Project finalists

• British Council – Ceibal en Inglés
• British Council – Teaching for All
• ES Global Limited – Jakarta International Velodrome
• ICF – Putting China in Control of its Carbon Emissions
• Mott MacDonald – The Fleming Fund
• Options Consultancy Services – Maternal and Newborn Improvement
• Resurgence – Developing Risk Awareness through Joint Action (DARAJA)

For more information on Resurgence and DARAJA; consultancy, advisory work and speaker engagements from our team of climate experts, please contact dilupa@resurgence.io