Mid-term assessment and joint CoP workshop

January 2020 almost marked the mid-point of the UrbanHIT project. Time for us to look back at the past activities, milestones and outcomes. What did we achieve? What are the learning effects for the next two years to come? These and other questions were addressed together with the whole consortium as well as our practitioner partners at a common meeting for self-assessment in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

A reciprocal, multi-stage process

During a whole week of reflective work, the project consortium first met internally, before a joint CoP meeting was held.

This CoP meeting was a special one, as it brought the Communities of both cities together upon their initiative. Practitioners used the opportunity to discuss and question differences of both cities in relation to research results presented by our team and during a visit to the utility company TANESCO. The opportunity to have all project stakeholders in one room simultaneously was used to also discuss the impact vision of UrbanHIT and prepare the path for policy briefs and other knowledge dissemination activities.

We finally took the manifold inputs back to internal considerations among the consortium, deciding on work strings and packages, adapting timelines and initiating strategies to cope with foreseeable challenges. The outcomes of this intensive week will help to  steer our future research and the communication with the NWO-WOTRO programme Science for Global Development.

The workshop report can be found in our Resources section.

Reflections on the research project together with practitioners from Mozambique and Tanzania.

Explanations by a TANESCO official during a visit to their Dar es Salaam distribution control center.

CoPs from both cities with the research team after the meeting.