But then I'd just like to welcome everyone to today's webinar. This is an informal opportunity to exchange the knowledge between our organizations, get to know a bit about how our different programs work and what the ICLD does in Eastern Africa. And also an opportunity, first and foremost, to meet also a panel of some of the change makers who actually work in local governments in ICLD programs here in Kenya and Uganda and in Sweden. So we are joined by 5M today. So this is an opportunity to be a bit more informed about work before our upcoming collaboration that I think will intensify even more now that we are collaborating in the climate network and looking at some options about to collaborate in Blanda as well. I'll start by leaving the floor to Mr. Philip Osamun. Please. Thank you so much, Joel. Can you hear me? Yes. Great, great. So thank you so much, Joel and Ramanus, for putting this together. And let me first recognize Johan Bidja, the director of ICDLP. We are really very happy as Stockholm Environment Institute to co-host this webinar today. It is, for me, my real pleasure because this is a discussion we've had for some time. And to see coming into reality is something that's exciting because it speaks to a lot of opportunities that we have around collaboration. But it also speaks to a lot of things which are important to us. Many of you, of course, know that Africa is one of the fastest urbanizing regions in the world. At the same time, Africa is urbanizing during a period when we also have to deal with major, major environment challenges. When we talk about the trip of planetary crisis, we have challenges of biodiversity loss, which are linked to issues around having more people within our urban centers having access to nature that is declining rapidly and is an area of concern. We have major challenges to do with pollution and waste management. Many cities across the region, of course, are struggling in a massive waste and how to make sure that that is managed sustainably. And, of course, our third area, which is, of course, now very critical to everyone, is the challenge of climate change. And cities, of course, as cities grow, they're also the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. But at the same time, climate change is creating a lot more challenges when it comes to urban burning, issues of disaster risk, water access, and these kind of challenges. So that speaks to why we are doing this webinar together. Stockholm Environment Institute, the Africa Center here is best in Nairobi. We focus really on three broad areas. So two of those are very important, which is energy and climate change and also sustainability, which is the program that's being led by my colleague Romanus Opeo, who is all co-hosting this webinar together with Joel. So I just wanted to emphasize that it's become very important for us to provide platforms where there's reflections around what we are doing, particularly, of course, trying to understand how the research that we do can help inform policy and, most importantly, also enable decisions around actions by government and local authorities. This is one of those platforms where we would like to review that. But, most importantly, also, we realize there's quite a lot of value in terms of exchange of experiences. In this situation, we are quite privileged to have our colleagues from West Indieshu, our colleagues from Ntebe, and our colleagues from Non-Chopping, because then we're having a platform that allows a South-South exchange of experience and North-South exchange of experience, because some of these challenges are very common. So with that, I would not take much time just to thank all the colleagues that have been able to join today, and welcome you. I'm obviously also looking forward to the discussion that is coming up. And to thank our colleagues also from ICLD for the wonderful partnership that we are building, and, of course, our colleagues from the cities that will be sharing lessons today. I'm looking forward to also really learn what's going on on the ground. Thank you so much, and back to you, Jair. Thank you, Philip. And I'll be in the door to Mr. Johan Lilje. Thank you so much, Johan. And thank you, Philip Osano, which is the Center Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute in Africa. We had a good dialogue in January, and now we are materializing a little bit of this collaboration also with this initiative that you have taken with this webinar. I believe this is really an opportunity to strengthen the ties and the collaboration between the Stockholm Environment Institute Africa and ICLD. For us all, I think this is a valuable occasion to get inside into each other's work and meet some of the change agents, which is the local governments. And that is also the ones who really work with the challenges around the local democracy and the environment. So I look forward to this, and it's really exciting to be part of this event. So let me take an important note at the start of this event. The time, as we said, to act is now. And the local democracy plays an important role to make it happen. And it's more and more recognized also by the UN as well as many national governments that the local governments are the key. Climate change, raising conflicts, and the decline in democracy index put the world with all its citizens in an enormous risk, short term as well as long term. And that can jeopardize all the efforts to become a sustainable world. So to invest in twinning projects between municipalities that are learning from each other, but also adding the component of external competences such the ones provided by organizations such as Stockholm Environment Institute creates a platform for tangible and concrete change and development to happen. And that is exactly what the world needs. So I am really grateful for the partnership with SEI and I'm convinced and really, really confident in that we will be able to contribute to each other's mission. And I know that we can achieve great results together. So local democracy that adheres to core values of participation, equity, transparency and accountability can make a difference for citizens that the local governments are in position to serve. So I look forward now to listen to all the panelists with all their different experiences. And I want to underline again, thank you for all of you who are participating in this panel, both from SEI as well as from ICD, but most so from the different municipalities who will share their experiences. With those words, I hand back to you again, Jovan. Thank you. Thank you, Jovan and Phillip. And I also forgot to introduce myself. I did that in the beginning, but not when I was here. So my name is Jovan Van Eschand and I work as quality insurance manager for the ICLD. I usually sit in our office in Visby, which is on the island of Gotland, a Sweden's largest island outside the Baltic Sea coast. But during this month, I've been visiting the SEI Africa office here. And I have a guest office here and have been very graciously received by Phillip and Ronas and colleagues. So thank you for that. The agenda for today is that we, following these introductions, we will now hear from Ronas, who will give an overview about the work of SEI Africa and Eastern Africa region. I will then give a walkthrough of what the ICLD does in Eastern Africa and also explain a bit more, concretely, how our municipal partnership program, the twinning program works in practice and how projects are planned. Then we'll go to the panel discussion. But with that said, Ronas, I leave the floor to you. Go ahead. Thanks, Joel. Also, let me just join also my colleague, Phillip, for welcoming you. So we are really happy to be with you here. And also, I just want to acknowledge my colleague, Nelson Ekane, who was very instrumental in linking SEI and what ICLD is doing. So I'll just do a small short overview, a snapshot of some of the work we are doing, especially in the urban front, since our work will be to look at the twinning. So it was just time to set ground for some of the work we're doing and the Sassanababanesha program. As Phillip had highlighted earlier, we have other two programs. In the Africa sector, we have three programs. We have natural resources and ecosystem. Nature is the mother of everything. So even urban areas are in the nature. So that's the mother of all our programs. Then under the nature, over the nature, we have now the Sassanabanesha, and also we have climate change and energy. So those are the three programs. So for the purpose of this particular webinar dialogue, I'll focus on the works we are doing under Sassanabanesha. So I'll just let me just hope you can see the slides. Let me do a slideshow. Yeah, so currently I'm leading the Sassanabanesha program and I'll just give some of the highlights of some of the work we are doing. This is one of the project called City Health and Well-Being, which is short and chill, which we are doing in Nakuru and we are keen to look at how the shaping urban areas are actually affecting people's health and well-being. So this is a study we are doing in Nakuru in Kenya, but also in Dontani, in Thailand, focusing on secondary cities. As you know, most of the urbanization happened in the secondary cities. The primary cities are already developed and maybe there's no more space to bring in more people in those particular urban space. So that's one of the projects we are doing in Kenya and Nakuru is the fourth largest city in Kenya. It's the youngest city in Kenya. It was given as city status in December, 2021. So it's only two years old in terms of official city status. Another project is on the some work we are doing in the Asalaam. We are doing the best air quality study survey in the Asalaam and it's something which is also very interesting to see how do we engage with other partners and here we are engaging with the Asalaam Institute of Technology just to build capacity and work with the capacity of our partners so that we are able to look at the sustainability of this particular project. So this is a study which we are focusing in the five municipalities within the Asalaam city. So it's something which we are almost, we're almost winding up this particular project but now we are working on the sustainability component of it so that it can go beyond the project phase. And then there are the five projects which I just wanted to look at is the Equitable Mobility Project which we are focusing two cities in Kenya, Nairobi and Mombasa. And here we are looking at the mobility needs of people who are living with vulnerable, the vulnerable mobility needs of the vulnerable community. The vulnerable community here are looking at people living with disability, we are looking at the elderly, we are looking at the children and people, the urban poor, who might have difficulty in moving from one point to another. And here we are looking at how do we engage people so that the users of this mobility infrastructure are able to connect with the professionals, the transport engineers, the urban planners to understand their needs so that when we are designing this kind of solution, we take into account their needs in those particular areas as we extend the mobility infrastructure in our cities. The fourth one is the project we are doing we did in Senegal and Kodivore which we are looking at the National Determined Contribution Implementation. And here we are using an inch of waste as an entry point to look at how does it contribute to the NDC for Senegal and Kodivore. So this is also an area where we think it's very important as a coverage of what we are doing. And then the fifth one is the disaster displacement which we are also working in Ivashia town which is one of the town within the Rift Valley and we are looking at how the issue of weather pattern also this is a particular weather pattern how it affects people living around the Lake Niaivasha area. So this is just a snapshot of what we are doing. I know my colleague Nelson might later talk about some of the work he's been leading in Rwanda and also in Tasania just you can also talk about that but in a snapshot is just what I wanted to share. So this is the city health and well-being we are just looking at how different land uses profile people's health and well-being in Akuru. And here you can look at some of the open spaces and what we have this is one of the open space we have within the city called Nyaya Gardens and also we look at the other areas there, the mall. And we are trying to measure the air quality between different land uses and we find the commercial areas because the way it attracts motorized transport it actually contributes to a higher pollution within the resident who use the portfolio as compared to an open green spaces which has a least air pollution dump area. So this also look at how do we balance of course there are demand for a lot of land uses but we need to balance to ensure that even if we expand we also take into account those particular measures. So this just some of the sensors there the low cost air quality sensors just to measure the air quality in those particular areas. And also we are using also the heart rate for ability to watch look at the physiological in terms of how people feel stressed as they move around the city in different land uses. So this is the work we are doing also in Dasalam this is why we are using the issue of a particular matter pollution look at PM 2.5 and also PM 10. And this just a table showing the areas where they are concerned. They are showing areas which are beyond the recommended, the recovery level of air quality of PM 2.5 and PM 10 by WHO standard which is the kind of pollution we have in those particular areas. So the issue of concern if you look at the other five municipality you see some reddish or some brownish which shows the some concern in terms of the air quality level in those particular areas. So we had the ground measurements using the air purple sensors and also some of the sensors which were actually assembled by our partner, Dasalam Institute of Technology. And on the right side we have the remote sensing data just to measure the remote sensing data and the ground measurement data. And actually there was some similarity in terms of the areas of concern about the air quality based on the ground measurements and the air quality data. This is just an example of what we are doing in Dasalam. So this is the air quality, the liquid of mobility which we did in Madari which is one of the informal settlement in Nairobi and Likoni which is one of the informal settlement in Mombasa and here we are also trying to look at the profile of how people perceive the issue of safety and also the ground measurement to see the perception and ground measurement and at times we find that these are much between how people feel about certain areas in terms of the air quality and safety as compared also to the ground measurement. So this is just one of the work we are doing in Nairobi and Mombasa. So the MDC work, the SCI we are supporting component three where we are providing technical assistance to counter the distortion running of the biogas and compost plant. And this is just the project in Kodiwab and Senegal in terms of look at how the installation was done. And so engagement of various people, various players the local authority and also the community in terms of how they should be able to address this by ability to estimate some of the greenhouse gases emission in that particular area to see how that also contributes to the reduction of them in the meeting of the MDC in this particular, in this particular two countries. So this is the fifth year project which is the disaster displacement in Mombasa and here you're trying to look at how people feel about their areas and how they feel in terms of the extension of the lake and how the water level is actually affected livelihoods especially the women, the children and all how this also impacts on their health. So this is very important in terms of helping the policy makers to appreciate the evidence-based decision making by collecting information in terms of how in future we should be able to approach this in terms of addressing such kind of disasters and also by picking the key environmental factors for the perpetuating. So also in the SCI adjusts also water for later apart from the project we are doing we also have some tools which can be very important because we have your partners here from the local authority both in Africa and from Sweden. So these are some of the tools which we can also share with our partners. One is the revamp which can help actually planners to estimate the results and the use of potential available in a city's waste water data. It's a very powerful tool and if you get time you can also engage with it from our website to see deeper in terms of how it can work. Also recently we have the urban toolbox also which also helps in decision making and also looking at the co-design element in terms of bringing people and we are talking about democratic space and the local governance. It's very important to in terms of how do we engage the decision makers, the community in coming up with safe and inclusive urban spaces. So this is one of the tool which also you can consider looking and seeing how it can help us in terms of decision making and working around. And then you have the CDSG synergies which also are very important tool for looking at how all the, as you make your targets in CDSG you see how one target can also help in achieving other targets in terms of look at the synergies between the SDG targets in different areas. So this is just one of the, some of the few tools which I just wanted to highlight as part of what SCI can offer and what we are using to help in our spaces. So lastly, in terms of policy intervention because we do research to inform policy and decision making and they are using just the lens of the ICLD in terms of urban governance. I think it's very important to look at urban governance and also city development takes place and how do you also engage in terms of citizen science how do we bring people on board to ensure that we address their needs and also we are able to work with them as we make decision and change spaces so even the leaders it's very important to have them in this particular area. And then lastly, we also look at how we lead the results and also the uptake of those results in form position making and more important shaping the policy landscape and development in different areas. So these are very key things where SCI we are keen in terms of how do you work with users of our needs or of our research or the people who are likely to benefit from our research intervention and also use of our tools and issues how we move around and how we inform that. So I just want to clear finish with this by just highlighting that it has a look at some of the key issues especially for the future urban growth there. And we thought that from the land users perspective it's important to look at the energy sector how do we handle this particular sector? Residential because there will be demand for residential as urban areas increases. So to very important to look at how do we plan for this particular area how do we engage different stakeholders in this particular waste management because of course as we increase population as we increase demand we also increase consumption which also increase the issue of the waste. So it's very important to look at how do we handle this particular area? Also transport is very important because we know of its contribution to the pollution. So how do we manage this? And lastly the urban agriculture because our urban spaces is eating up to the urban areas which has an impact on agricultural land users. So this will become very important even as we train as we understand this particular aspect to see how do we focus our energy in searching out this particular sector. And of course I can't forget industrialization because we're industrializing urban areas it becomes an important sector as we think of this. So thank you Jail and thanks everybody for your listening. Thank you Romanus and I think all colleagues at ICLB can see that there's a lot of common topics that are addressed by ACI Africa and ICLB in our projects both in terms of waste management equitable mobility that you mentioned especially in terms of caring for vulnerable groups. I just did a training two weeks back in a public safety audit tool here in Kenya that we produced which is one example of how we also try to convert research into practical tools for local governments which is also a big focus for ACI Africa to use research but use it practically and to have the possibility to convert it also into policy. So thank you Romanus. I'm going to share my screen and as always I use my colleague Robin to tell me I'm sharing it correctly. Yeah. Looks good. Okay, perfect. So I'm going to start by just as a precursor to the panel also giving an overview of how our training program works but focus on what projects we have in eastern Africa. So the training program the municipal partnership program as we call it is our primary program in which we support collaborations between Swedish and international local governments to work for inclusive participatory local governments. They address a wide range of topics. We will focus today on a few partnerships who address climate and environmental issues in eastern Africa and we'll be joined by that by the panel later.  So we support projects across 23 different countries in total we are 20 employees that are all based in Sweden. So we have no country offices in collaboration countries. And here is our team in the picture during conference in Goplin where we have our headquarters. And while we are fully based in Sweden we do have some local partners, program mentors and partner organizations in cooperation countries like SEA Africa. So there is a presence but there's not a direct presence from the SEA employees. Our financing comes fully from SIDA which as you know is a Swedish development aid agency. And the role that makes ICLD unique as an organization is our mandate to support Swedish local governments to engage in these twin partnerships. So that's done through the municipal partnership program. So that is our primary focus, that programs are primary focus but we as part of supporting local governments in that program supporting twin and twin partnerships we do three different things at the ICLD. We finance and enable the twinning projects. We train local governments, officials and politicians and we support research into local democracy that is still used to convert the research into practice and informed decision makers in our programs. So these three approaches have historically been separate programs but in recent years they've been more and more tied together into a joint ICLD approach. So what's called the ICLD approach today is the use of twinning training and research together to support local governments in our municipal partnership programs. And we see that the twinning and peer-to-peer learning between Swedish and African local governments can reach further and can get stronger results if you also add capacity building and load on the source from research but that's not how it always has been. So the partnerships we have are spread out across Asia, Eastern Europe, Southern Africa and East Africa. And we're also looking to engage in Latin America. So we have a broad engagement but if there's one place that could be viewed as a second home for the ICLD I think we could say it would be here right here in Kenya. And not just because I'm here or because our Secretary General and my colleague Ida Jensson used to live here but because Kenya is the largest collaboration country for the ICLD. This is the country where we have the most amount of municipal partnerships we have as well in total right now which addresses a wide range of topics like waste management, youth inclusion, general quality. We also have several local governments engaged in training programs. We have large research projects here in partnership with the University of Nairobi. And we also have valuable partners locally like I guess Africa, like UN Habitat, Floam Initiative, et cetera who we do activities with and strengthen capacity building. If we zoom out a bit to the region we can also see likewise that Eastern Africa is actually our largest collaboration region. It just passed Southern Africa last year. So we can see, especially in Uganda and Tanzania we have a lot of partnerships and projects and we can see a big interest around environmental issues inclusive urbanism, climate action and to systematize the work with the sustainable development goes. So several of our partnerships revolve around making actions on those topics. And we have done several research projects about these topics as well. We supported a research project into inclusive and sustainable waste management that focuses on the role of waste pickers in Kenyan. We're just starting another one, participatory methods around both local reviews. There's several exciting projects going on here and I encourage you to check out the Knowledge Bank at the ICLE website. You can search for the Eastern African Project there. But today we will focus on the twinning partnerships in East Africa. So I just want to give an overview of how they address topics around climate challenges and local environmental issues. A municipal partnership is a results oriented twinning collaboration. So usually the partners do a three year project together where they address challenges that are quite different in context but are similar locally. So if you just waste management, similar topic, but you have different kinds of challenges and then you have exchanges and collaborations and all that. You can also be increasing young people's ability to influence climate issues, which I know is focused on. And the partnerships, they involve both the political level and the civil servant level. So there's always a representative of the political majority and the opposition part overseeing the project in the steering group to get continuity and good angry for the project. The partners develop their project went together. They conduct two exchange trips per year with the project group in the steering group. And during that time, they have exchange of methods, ideas, best practices and most of them also get some support from the ICLE in terms of input through research and such. And the goal of the partnerships is to address the local issue, like waste management, by using democratic processes and to institutionalize that change. So the end result of a partnership could be a new policy that's implemented or a practice that's changed in the local government for how to address these issues which make it act more democratically in line with democratic core values. So the topic itself, the topic itself for the project can depend on the priorities of the local governments. And that also ensures some local ownerships of the priorities as well. This is something the local government wants to address and they do that through democratic processes. So when planning a project, the focus is to address the specific project area with processes that promotes these four values of local democracy. So if you're letting a waste management project, for instance, here's a list of examples of topics we have in our projects in East Africa. If you would do a project on waste management, then you would plan your project with your partner over a three-year period. You would do exchanges with share experiences and methods about to address it. And the outcome could then, for instance, be a new practice or policy for how to include and treat waste pickers or equitably formalize their role in the government. That would correspond to equitiveness. Or the local government could try in a participatory process with a partner and find ways to engage citizens better. Or you could promote transparency by improving communication platforms, by sharing information, or you could find new ways to for complaint mechanisms, performance monitoring, et cetera, that corresponds to accountability. So you would address these specific topics that are your priorities, but you would do it through these four values that's local democracy. That's how we plan and I say I would push it. And one of our upcoming initiatives where we're collaborating with the S&A Africa to support municipal partnerships is within our new climate action network. So in the networks, that's basically us grouping together the three to five 20 partnerships working on similar projects. So they're addressing climate topics through democratic action, democratic processes, but getting supports in terms of training and expertise from the CIF to get in the place of these. So it's a way to find a joint way to do trainings and capacity building and also commission research project to that topic. So one participant that we have today is actually from this climate network, which is the lower government in Uganda. So to make this a little bit more concrete how the training program works, we've invited the panel and we will listen to some input from actual change makers from our projects in Kenya and Uganda. Let me just stop sharing the screen. So that's the basic alfine of how the municipal partnership program works and what we do in Eastern Africa. But to get to the more concrete part, I would like to invite our panel. And for the panel, we have three participants who are working on topics related to environmental issues. And Nelson, you have raised your hand. Yeah, thanks Joel. Just to add on what Romanos presented, which I think is important for you to know. And I think perhaps Johan and others from ICLD were informed about that in our previous meetings is that we at SCI have been also engaged in international training programs. So it has been a core part of our work over the past couple of decades. So on different issues on climate change, adaptation and mitigation in Western Eastern Africa, on financing local infrastructure initiatives in mostly East Africa and Southern Africa. And most lately was on sustainable urban water and sanitation integrated processes together with NIRAS. So these are I would say experiences or activities that would add value to what we do at ICLD. So it's important to know there's a wide variety of actors in the region that we build on. So that we bring along with us as well. Yeah, and I think your experiences in your network will be a perfect contribution to the work of the municipal partnerships and the transaction. So thanks for that, Nelson. So to invite the panel, I just want to make sure first that the setup of the panel is that they will start with a short presentation about three minutes each. And they will describe a bit of their work in the municipal partnership program. We will then have a discussion together for about 10, 15 minutes. We'll open up for some follow-up questions from the panel. So please just raise your hand if you have any questions and you can do that during the presentations as well. And I would like you to ask your question. So in our panel today, we have two participants from a partnership that's worked on two projects actually together since 2016 and they're currently in their final year. And we have one representative from a new partnership with an upcoming project we're also part of the Climate Action Network. So allow me to first introduce the participants of the partnership between North Shipping and Wasim Nisjib. And we're happy to be joined from the Swedish side by Turas Dandey, who is an investigation engineer in environmental issues at Nodravapir, which is the municipal company for water waste and broadband in North Shipping. She's been coordinating the partnership since 2022. And we also have Jimmy Camboy, who is general manager for technical services of El Greta Water and Sanitation Company, El Dovas. And he's been a member of the project group of the partnerships since 2018. And last but not least, we are also joined by Simakula Sampson from Tebe in Uganda. He's an agricultural officer and environmental inspector. And he's been a member of the Inception Group for the planned upcoming projects between Tebe and Kulman municipality. And I'd like to start by inviting Tura and Jimmy to take the floor and to give us a brief presentation and introduction of your projects. Please go ahead. Thank you very much and thank you for inviting us. I hope you all can hear me. And I think that I'll start by making a brief introduction and then Jimmy will add on this. And we start with the beginning, that the agreement between Norrköpingen-Eldereth in Washington-Gisju County was established in the year 2014 thanks to a former Kenyan ambassador in Sweden. It was her initiative that the thought of a partnership was planted. And together we started a dialogue of possible and suitable issues to address in such a partnership. In the end of an Inception phase, both parties agreed on the waste management and the project Noverelde that is short for Norrköpingen-Eldereth started in 2015. In Norrköping, both the municipality itself and Noda, the company where I work, are involved in this project. And our Kenyan partner is the Washington-Gisju County and there are also several people from the municipality in Elderett and Eldervas. They are also included. And Eldervas is the, it's likewise Noda, the same company, but in Elderett. And as Joel said that the first part of the project, it ended in 2019 and since 2020 we work with a second part of this project for another three years and due to the pandemic period, it's a bit delayed. So this project will finish during next year. And our overall objective is to contribute to sustainable and cleaner environment by supporting the administration and the inhabitants to be experts in provision of sustainable, solid waste management services with adequate infrastructure based on the needs of the communities through a creation of an environment for stakeholder participation. And so far we have raised the awareness of solid waste management within the community as well as within the county and municipality. We've seen several improvements that have been made to strengthen the organization of waste management, especially by the so-called private collectors of solid waste. They have formed a society to share and raise the knowledge of waste management to maintain a structure in the garbage collection and also to help each other with loans for investments when needed. And the main objective remaining is the landfill in this area, how to take control and create conditions for sustainable and good management of this landfill. Here, important steps have been made like acquisition for an extra area for sorting out items and investing in a compactor. And I think I will leave it to you, give me to Ed, Ed, more about the start of the project and what you've seen for such a result. Thank you, Chora. I hope you can hear me well. Yes. Yes, so I totally agree what you've said so far that through the project, you've been able to establish the partnership. But basically, maybe to go back a bit to the history is in the year 2013 there was a new constitution in this country and therefore there was an enactment of a new constitution, a new devolved system of government came in and the old municipalities were faced out. So during that transition, the issue of solid waste management was not well managed and there was a bit of chaos if I call it that solid waste management in this town was being managed basically by the street children that the county government was basically on a daily basis engaging the street families to do street cleaning, waste collection. So there was no proper structure in terms of waste management. And at that time the town and even the residential places were quite dirty. The waste, what she's calling the landfill was basically a dam site and it was actually fully full of waste. There was no space. So the situation was actually dire. And therefore when this partnership came into place, the main challenge was to address this issue of solid waste management in the town. And what was done was basically issues of sensitization, sensitization both of communities, sensitization of the staff, ourselves involved the politicians like Joel mentioned, that was very key because they had to, there was need to bring on board the decision makers both in terms of the staff and also the politicians, including the members of our county assemblies. So all this was done under the project and through the sensitization and the trainings that were done, there was buying and ownership among us the entire populace. There was also training both here in Eldorad and through exchange visits. We had exchange programs, staff from more shopping visited Eldorad. Some of the staff from this town, including myself, managed to visit a no-shopping where we were able to see fast and now proper solid waste management works. We've also received a lot of technical assistance and technical support. Even the compactor that he talked about was actually as a result of the support that we received from the team from no-shopping, including as well, the expansion of the sanitary landfill. The space was quite small and therefore there was need to redesign that landfill and the team from no-shopping were quite helpful in terms of coming up with the design of that site. Whereas it's not yet fully implemented, but at least the space has been acquired and there is preliminary design in terms of what needs to be done at the west side. There's also been a lot of media activities involving sport personalities and this has been done gently between us and also no-shopping. We've used some of our athletes to do promotion of solid waste management, engage the media. So this has created a lot of awareness amongst the population because of course, as you know, this country and this city itself is a city that has a lot of sport, especially athletics. So we've used our athletes to promote solid waste management. And through this also we've seen the counter government, especially the politicians are willing now to allocate resources to management of solid waste. So I would say yes, we had quite a number of challenges at the beginning and through the partnerships, we have clearly been able to witness an enormous change whereas still work in progress is fairly at the dump site. But in terms of the town, the city is actually quite clean. There's a lot of uptake. And at the moment there are youth groups, women groups that are being involved in terms of waste collection and waste disposal, sorting of the waste at the waste disposal site. So there have been a lot of improvement and we are happy so far. Thank you. Thank you, Jimmy. And I'll leave the floor to Samsung to give a brief introduction of the entire project and then we'll get to some questions. Samsung? Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, please go ahead. Yes. Yes, thank you very much. And I thank you for having invited us to this panel. Very briefly, Intervei and Kars-Krona are a young partnership, but Intervei has been under the ICLD partnerships for some time with another city. But with the Kars-Krona, we are beginning a new partnership. And basically we are still in the inception phase and we are working on the application for the project phase. But we've had one of the exchange visits and we've got to know each other better and we're having another visit in the near future. Our project is mainly on the climate change actions, but specifically looking at the school children because we believe that in a couple of years, 10, 15 years, this school children will be taking over everything, management of the cities. So we are trying to prepare a new group of people and they're trying to define climate change to them and make sure they understand it right from an early stage so that we inculcate the idea in their minds quickly. And this was initiated because of the similarities we have between Intervei and Kars-Krona. We are all kind of penicillers into water bodies. I was in Lake Victoria and the Baltic Sea in Europe. And we had similar effects or challenges climate related. One was the rise in the sea levels which affected us in very many ways. It affected mobility in our two cities. It affected fishing, which is a major activity in our cities. It affected education. The student couldn't go to school because of the rise in the lake levels. It affected health services. It affected agriculture in the urban areas because our town depends a lot on urban agriculture. So we thought these simitors will help us come to a similar project and they have. So we have defined our problem now and we are working on our application. So basically that is our project. And we are looking forward to this project and we thank ICOD for the support rendered for us so far, technical and I think by the end of August we shall be able to submit the application for further processing. Thank you very much, Joel. Thank you, Samson. We'll get to some questions now to the panel. And if anyone has a part of a question, you can please raise your hand. And I'll start by posting some questions but just please put up your hand with those something that comes to mind. I wanted to start with a question to Tura and Jimmy. So you mentioned some things that you've been learning from each other that's been of benefit to the project. Some very concrete things. You've been working together on this project since 2016. So I just wanted to ask, what does it mean for the project to have partner working alongside that you've published that like benefit to work and how has the essentially worked for several years together? How has the peer-to-peer learning in exchange to develop over time between your audience? So Jimmy or Tura? Jimmy has been since 2018 so... Yes, thank you. Thank you, Joy. I can actually respond. I mean, it's developed over time. Like I mentioned, it started first, of course, by identifying what the real problem was, the challenges that were there on the ground and the partnership really, the teams worked together to look at what were the real challenges and what were the possible solutions in terms of what needed to be done. Of course, looking at the constraints that were there at that point in time. Of course, the political will, the counter-government was new. There were challenges of resources. The dam site was, there was no space. There was basically no structure. So there was need to first identify the problem, develop a work plan in terms of what needed to be done and what needed to be done when the resources that were required, who was to do what and then the issue of exchange programs, training and sensitization. Once that was done, then there was the issue of sharing of ideas, comparing what was being done in no-shopping to see what could actually be imported, what could be borrowed from no-shopping to be done here. And thereafter, there was now the element of the actual implementation. And here, having done the sensitization, especially of the political class, there was goodwill from all the stakeholders. And therefore, when we went to the community to talk to the members of the public, to talk to youth, women and several groups, there was a lot of positive reception in terms of the project implementation and the ideas that were being brought on board. And then lastly, the issue of the necessary equipment, looking at the compact, what needed to be done at the site, the staff capacity building, the trainings, the capacity, in fact, there was also a recommendation to recruit new staff. Because like I said before, there were no staff. The solid waste management function was basically being done through the street children. And therefore, there were no skills there. So at the beginning, there was need to bring on board skilled personnel who would be able to really run the systems. And after that was done, the trainings were done, and then of course acquisition of the additional site, acquisition of the equipment. Then now we are in the face of monitoring and devolution. And I would say so far it's been quite encouraging. Yeah, I don't know if Tora needs to add something. Thank you, Jimmy. I think of this, as you said, it's been quite a journey from the beginning to now. And what we learned by comparing how you had, how the organization for handling the waste management in Washington issue, compared to how it's handled in the noise shopping, there were many differences. But for example, we could see that Nudra, the company where I work, we are the company dealing with water and sanitation. But we're also dealing with the waste. We are the one managing the solid waste in noise shopping. And Jimmy's company, L.A.s, they are doing the exact same thing that we do regarding water and sanitation. But they don't have the waste management. And but during these discussions, you and your colleagues, you could see that this could easily fit into our work. It could fit in our organization. And that was quite interesting to see both for the colleagues in the both companies, but also for our politicians, both in Sweden in noise shopping and in the Washington issue county because the possibility to add the waste management into your company, it was already there, right? But it hadn't been implemented. So this is something that has been going on for a few years now to see if it could actually be implemented for real. So that is one of the big discussions that we have had. And also a question how to finance the collection of waste. In noise shopping, we, from Noda, we send a bill for the water to our customers. And we also have sent a bill for collecting waste to our customers. And that is also that we've been discussing with you because your elder boss is the company in order to send the bill for the water. And maybe this could be the ground for adding the fee for collecting the garbage as well. But these kind of structure, what's called structure organizational changes, it takes often time. So it's good to have these projects for a few years because you have to have the time to both have the starting discussion, the really deep discussion and then to implement it in the end. So you need time for these changes. Thank you. And that's also something that's an important part of every ICLD exchange. If you do these projects over a period of time, you try to institutionalize the change into the organization. But before I get to something, I just want to follow up with Ginny. So following the completion of your project since it's ending soon, how do you work to ensure sustainability of results that you contributed to with the project? So you see that things you've learned and changes you've done are still in place in a few years following the completion of the project. Yeah, thank you, Joel. And I want to agree with what Tora said that one of the biggest discussions that we've had so far has been the transfer of the solid waste management function from the county government of Washington issue to elder water and sanitation. That's elders. This has not happened so far because one of the challenges that we've had and Tora has mentioned is it has taken a bit of time. Last year there was change of government. So we have a new governor in place, new political leadership in place. And therefore that discussion has been put on hold because then we need to restart again to sensitize the new team to bring them on board. But it's one of the key ideas that we feel that needs to be implemented for us to sustain the gains that we've met so far. But the function of solid waste management will be able to help us similar to what is being done in Udra. And if that is done, it will be able to, we will be able to manage it in a sustainable manner because we will be able to collect to build for the service through the same way we do for the water and sewerage services. And if that is done, of course the institution of elders will be able to manage that function and it already has the structures all the way to the community level. The other way we will basically do is of course to inculcate the issue of continuous community sensitization so that it does not become a project based activity but it should be a continuous activity that is goes and in hand with solid waste management that the community must be continuously sensitized and training and be encouraged to be part and parcel of environmental protection. That solid waste management is part of environmental protection and as we're discussing matters of climate change sustainable development, this should be part and parcel of the discussion that we have with our communities. There should also be of course continuation of this cleanup campaigns. We currently have monthly cleanup campaigns. We should continue and should be part and parcel of what we do in this city so that this does not become just like project based but it's something part and parcel of a way of living in this town. And of course, like I said, whenever there is change of guard and change of leadership, there should be training sensitization so that there is continuity and there is no stoppage of activities. Then lastly is monitoring and evaluation that we put in place a structured system of monitoring and evaluating of course the solid waste management function all the way from starting from the collection transportation all the way to the disposal site and the aspect of, you know, resource issue recycling reuse of whatever resources that are available in the waste. And lastly is of course development of standard operating procedures so that the institution can have standard operating procedure of managing solid waste. It will not be dependent on people but it is institutionalized within the institution. Those would be my comments. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you so much. Several good examples of institutionalizing change in the organization. But you were speaking about topic of ensuring political support also for the project. So I would like to pass on the question to you, Samson. Have you had such discussions in your partnerships about ensuring political support and how do you how do you ensure political support possibilities to mobilize staff and resources that might be needed for the project to keep the keep the world moving forward? Samson, have you had any such discussions yet? Samson, are you with us? Yes, I'm with you. Yeah. So how can you ensure political support for staffing resources, et cetera, for your project? Have you had such discussions yet? Please go ahead. My connection is a bit bad. Can you come again? Sorry. So how can you ensure support for the project at the political level also in terms of there's funds you need to mobilize or there's staffing resources to keep the project moving forward? How do you involve organizations? Okay, thank you very much. We are some of the activities we are going to do rely on the normal activities, especially in the schools. We are not changing much in the schools, but we expect some technical input and support from our partners. We are borrowing some ideas from what they are doing well and they are also borrowing what we are doing well. So it will not be intensive financially to run the project, but still there is need for some funding here and there, like in the exchange, the PR visits and things like that. So those ones will need some funding definitely. But the activities on the ground, most of them are recurrent and there are no more things we are doing, like on a day-to-day basis and we are going to put in time as in the resource, human resource. We have the teachers, we have the champions, environmental champions and things like that. So the human resource will be available at the time. We are going to put in some more time and then the normal educational programs in the schools. Thank you, Samsung. So I'd be happy to open up the floor for any questions from the colleagues in the African. I cannot always continue. I have several more questions, but I want to give the opportunity also if there is a question from Philip or Roman or some other colleagues. Yeah, Roman, please go ahead. Thanks, Joel. I want to just also commend the team for sharing this. Maybe just two questions. One to Jimmy on the landfills because it's also expanding. I don't know what kind of projection they have for waste management in terms of what you do see as an adequate size for a landfill, which we can enable to bring in the new knowledge and capacity given through the training program. And then secondly to Samsung, my second question is to Samsung. Samsung said that and previous experience in training. So what was the experience of the farm? Because Katzkrona seems to be a new experience. What is the experience of the old one? The old training program and which city were you training and how have you benefited with the old one? Thank you. Yeah, so thanks for the question. Should I respond? Please go ahead. Yeah, so in terms of the size of the landfill, initially we had a small area, less than five acres of land that was available and quite full. So through the partnership we were able to of course project how much waste is likely to be collected in the next couple of years. But then one of the things that came out from the team initial assessment was of course whereas the existing site was full, it was full basically because the waste was being basically dumped loosely. So there was no compaction. And from the advice of the team from no shopping was if we were to get able to reduce whatever was being used from the five acres to almost a third of it and is what is now currently going on where we are compacting the waste of the existing landfill so as to get additional space. But then of course there was also need to now acquire additional space to allow for sorting and doing other activities and also for future expansion. So the land size was expanded from the then five acres to the now almost 13 acres of land that the team and everybody feels is sufficient for now. And before future there will be need to look for an alternative site once this is filled up. Yeah, over to you. May I add a few things there? Yes, yes. As Jimmy said if a landfill is properly managed, if you have a plan for where to where the garbage come in how to compact it and how to actually just manage the whole landfill like you can have a Celtic desk at your office or you can have a tidy office desk and it's the same size it's the same with the landfill it can feel over full or it can be a lot of space left. So that's why we have a lot of solutions and how you structure and plan for adding more garbage and that's why we are continuously that's what we are working with now how to plan it to last for at least 15 more years. Thank you. I don't know if you were involved in that but do you know one of the lessons learned from the previous partnership? Yes, thank you very much. Our previous partnership was with the city called Kalma it's in the south as well on the southeast of Sweden and then our flagship project was on waste management. I think this was one of our best projects we've had ever since and we revolutionized the way we handle waste in our town because one thing we learned is that you cannot go waste alone because in Kalma there are seven cities handled in waste together so that's one thing we've also learned that you cannot go waste alone so what they do they share the responsibilities one city handles plastics, one city handles wood and that city handles metal so they divided the waste responsibility among themselves and we're also trying to do that in our region here in Uganda so far we have four cities we are trying to come together to handle our waste and we may be funded by the Ripper Union but our application is still being had so we think also we can do waste with our neighbors with our four neighbors somebody handles plastics, somebody handles organic somebody handles something wood or something so we think we can also do that and we've borrowed that from the city and they have also told us about what we've learned from the cooperation was waste you must handle waste every day if you have markets and shops and schools open every day then you also have to handle waste every day as a city managers so provided the markets are open and the shops will always be waste in London, in Russia in Nairobi in Dar es Salaam everywhere provided the markets are open and the shops there's going to be waste everywhere and if you don't handle it one day London will look like in Tibet in Tibet will look like Kisum so the waste is a common is a common issue so we were also taught about the we learnt about the equipment which is very efficient so we've done away with the skip loaders and things like that we are now using compactors which are more efficient and I think our city is a bit cleaner these days because of that cooperation and we appreciate that cooperation quite a lot Excellent, thank you so we are soon running out of time but let's pick up the final two questions one out of time now by Nelson and then Philip, so Nelson please Thanks, Joel I think it's a very interesting discussions here and very inspiring actually echoes a lot of the things that I heard that in Tanzania last week where we joined its WASH thematic working group meeting then this aspect of stakeholder engagement is of particular interest here and it's part of the thing that we at SCI actually are emphasizing now and part of the project that I have with the expert group for aid studies it will be interesting to get your reflection on how this actually happens at different levels in both Kenya and Uganda both the expert level with the line ministries as well as at the lower level between the implementers and the households because then this pertains to aspects of sustainability, dignity and of course capacity because sorting is not only going to happen at the landfill sorting can happen at the household level that is something that Sweden actually does quite well then another issue there would be like Jimmy mentioned you know or it was in Samsung that mentioned copied I think context matters a lot you know learning so we can just copy so there are specificities in the African cities or African settings that fine so it will be sharing so I think are there any things that you have been able to share successfully with municipalities in Sweden that they have learned from you and you've learned from them so I think in that sense any reflections on what you've been able to share thank you Nelson I'll leave that to because that's a question both to Samsung and Jimmy maybe and also to Tura so I'll leave it to any of you to pick up the question maybe I can go in terms of the stakeholder engagement I wish to say that it's a very sensitive point that if not done well it can easily kill the entire project but how it worked for us is it started from the top where there was engagement at the top the then governor and the ambassador and a number of senior people there was engagement at that level and once they were buying from that level of the governor then he took it down to the politicians who in our case were the members of the county assembly who also saw the need and the challenge that was there at that point in time once that set of team was now convinced the second level was now the staff who are in charge of this function and there was sensitization and training on that area and once all these groups were now on board there was now the last level where everybody went to the community all the leadership, political leadership and staff, all of them together we all went down to the community and now we had constructive engagement and so using that stakeholder engagement there was buying at different levels but by the time we went to the community then there was no resistance if I would call it and therefore there was support across board so something that needs to be managed because the most difficult group I would say would be the politicians in our case because they are the ones who can easily if they are against an idea they can easily incite against and once that is done we need to bring on board of course the community so it's something that I would say it's been a good lesson for us that buying from the top is always quite important and on the second question of what would be some of the important lessons from off course not shopping and what are some of course that may not have worked for us some that we've seen that really would work and that have worked on the first one that is of essence the transfer of solid waste management function from the government itself to the company so as to commercialize that function because at the moment whereas youth groups and individuals are being allowed to do solid waste collection I mean picking and transportation you find that it's not being done in a structured manner that not everybody is having their waste collected some are willing to pay others are not willing to pay so it's like but then if that function was being transferred to the company so that the bill of solid waste is put with the bill of water and sewer then people will not have the option of to pay or not to pay because it will be one bill coming at the end of the month and it's something that we are very sure it will work the other thing that we saw and it's now working here is the issue of sorting of the waste and recovery of materials at the moment we saw quite a number of people at the dam side doing sorting and recovering material and it's being sold plastic waste being sold to the plastic manufacturers metal, wood all valuable materials that are being recovered and something that we saw it's quite effective actually also in Europe that they are almost reaching a point where they are almost zero waste at the end of the day that's being disposed so it's something that you've seen that it's of much value that we can also learn from thank you, I don't know you want to add something thank you so much Jimmy no no I think I think we'll add some from the Ugandan perspective unfortunately we are a little over time so if there's any further questions I'd be happy to pick those up on the panel by email so I would like just to thank the panel for being here I think this painted a colorful picture of how the exchange worked within the municipal partnership program concretely what kind of experiences you can exchange in methods in order to improve a project and to get a richer outcome at the end of the project I'm good and over for final remarks but I just want to say thank you on my side for everyone for attending for the panel and I leave final remarks first to Mr Johan Bidja and finally to Mr Peter Pussman thank you Joel and thank you for all panelists that contributed so well and I think I myself learnt new things from the different projects that I thought I knew everything about but that was really really great thank you so much for the contribution and once again thank you Philip for giving us this opportunity to share and to perhaps come a bit closer again the initial phase was that we actually also had an employee in Mr Carson who was part of the team of ICLD but then later on I met Nelson so also thank you Nelson for arranging in the first stage that we actually met also with Philip Osano and the team and also thank you for giving us the opportunity to be part of this collaboration I just wanted to say in my final remarks is that this is the this is not the end and not even the beginning of the end it's maybe the end of the beginning so I would say like Winston Churchill there is a future for us and I think this is also a golden opportunity to explore further and I have reached out also to UNCDF when it comes to all the things I've heard that the good collaboration needs also some type of investment and to find the funds and the investments to do the thing when you have done your whole product of capacity building it's also important and we need to join forces to make sure that the different municipalities also get the resources to do the last part in the project meaning that you have so to say strengthened you have been part of the project to actually have good ideas and know how to do things but you need also the final part also to get some investments to make it done and my final word I'm always quoting Nelson Mandela I will do that today also it always seems impossible until it's done with those words I hand over to Philip you have a good collaboration in the future thank you thank you so much Johan this has been can you hear me we hear you well continue yes Philip we do that's good I was worried because I saw my internet is fluctuating but I just wanted to thank you Johan I think this is a start of a great collaboration particularly also I want to appreciate the work that was done by Johan and Roman over the last two three weeks to just put this thing together I would not add much except to say that one of the things that we not just from listening of course to the experiences of colleagues is just the richness of lessons that we are now being exposed to and I think this has been very great I think one key area that I think could be an opportunity for us to strengthen collaboration would be around documentation kind of capturing some of these lessons and making them a little more wide available for colleagues and I would like actually also to just explain my appreciation also to Jimmy and to Samson and Tara for sharing with us what has been a very rich experience we've learned a lot personally really learned a lot and I'm hoping of course that now if I have the opportunity to visit to different cities I would actually reach out and be able to meet you and see in person some of the wonderful work that's going on I also wanted to highlight one particular point that I think has struck me and the work that's going on around focus on schools and children and education for young people because for us also this is very critical many people might not appreciate Africa is not just the youngest continent across the globe but also quite a large population of people in Africa are young people I think about 42% are there about the 1.2 plus the billion population Africa is actually below the age of 15 and so I think capacity and engaging this kind of young people is very important and I think it relates to the all topic that we're talking about inclusive government do we consult enough to make sure that we provide enough voices to reach out to the different critical groups particularly groups that might not actually have space in the policy discussion young people mostly do not have that space you know there's a specific focus on schools and young people and I think that's an area that we probably need to do a lot more on other than that I think as Johanna said there's quite a number of things that we need to look into in terms of the next steps of course obviously from this discussion west management and dealing with west seems to be a very critical issue that we need to continue focusing on of course I would still emphasize how to look at the issues of climate action that's very important and we can of course we will continue this dialogue but in conclusion I just want to thank everyone that's been able to take time to attend this conversation and this dialogue and I hope it has really been enriching other than that I just want to say that I wish you all a good week ahead thank you so much and back to you Joel I wish Philip and Johanna thanks everyone for joining I just want to wish you all a wonderful week and see you either at this office or at the office in the B-Sphere Stockholm thank you thank you bye bye take care thank you bye everyone thank you bye