The Ethiopia Urban Expansion Initiative and knowledge exchange

Rapid urban expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa is a challenging policy problem with few demonstrated solutions. An approach for managing rapid urbanization resulted in considerable changes in planning strategies in cities in Ethiopia. An initiative from 2013 to 2016 created organizational capacities and capabilities. An external consultant facilitated knowledge exchange, but left the major planning activities to the public sector bodies. Local technical staff and political leaders were trained to create and implement plans for the next 30 years of urban growth in their cities. The paper describes the role of knowledge exchange in empowering local government officials to implement the approach. It outlines the approach itself and then describes the process of knowledge exchange and the challenges and successes that resulted.