Policy papers
Equal Partnerships policy paper. Creating sustainable multi-stakeholder partnerships for urban migration governance in African intermediary cities
Janina Stürner-Siovitz and Lasse Juhl Morthorst
2024
African local governments are increasingly experiencing core issues of migration and displacement and their cities are directly impacted by (inter)national policies and (the absence of) funding flows. Nevertheless, national policymakers, international organizations and donors rarely consider local governments as relevant partners to address mixed migration. These cooperation gaps are problematic since human mobility plays an important role for African intermediary cities’ physical, social, and economic urban planning. Networked approaches could help bridging such cooperation gaps and breaking up policy silos. To explore opportunities and challenges of multi-stakeholder partnerships for urban migration governance the Equal Partnerships project organized participatory research, workshops, and networking formats with six cities in East, West and North Africa. This policy paper presents central recommendations for collaborative urban migration governance addressed to local and national governments, civil society, migrant and refugee associations, international organizations, private sector actors, and donors.
The Project is Dead – Long Live the Project
Janina Stürner-Siovitz and Achilles Kallergis
2024
Based on a cooperation between the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility and the Equal Partnerships Project, this paper discusses recent partnerships between African intermediary cities and civil society actors, national governments, research institutions, and international organizations. All of these partnerships aim to address the challenges and harness the opportunities associated with human mobility. It investigates the role of partnerships that bring together different skills, resources, networks, and funding in developing urban migration governance processes that reflect the needs of intermediary cities. However, cooperation remains mostly ad-hoc and project-based. Drawing on research conducted by the Equal Partnerships project, the paper explores ways through which African intermediary cities can move from ad-hoc cooperation toward sustainable multi-stakeholder partnerships for urban migration governance. The authors zoom in on three areas where local, national, and international actors should focus partnership actions: (1) improving local data on migration and displacement, (2) expanding local access to international funding, and (3) including city perspectives in intergovernmental policy dialogues.