Age-Friendly Public Spaces in African Cities: ISUH Africa Community of Practice Webinar Report

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The Africa Community of Practice of the International Society for Urban Health hosted another webinar, on “Age-friendly Public Spaces in African Cities: Opportunities and Challenges. This is part of the Urban Health in Africa Networking and Webinar Series held on 22nd June 2023.

The speakers, Thiago Hérick de Sá and Ayanda Roji, shared their experiences with age-friendly cities, by describing what ‘age-friendly’ can mean in different contexts, and who the actors involved in this field are. The presentations showcased a number of existing and upcoming initiatives around navigating healthy public spaces sensitive to age-friendly concerns.

The webinar commenced with Thiago Hérick de Sá outlining the challenges and benefits of creating age-friendly environments across large cities and small communities. He shared details of ongoing activities of members of the WHO’s WHO’s Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities and resources and toolkit on building age-friendly cities and invited others to join the age-friendly cities network.

Ayanda Roji followed by introducing the work of the Centre for African Public Space, describing how they are tackling the issues of urban health being faced in Africa and how the centre plans to embrace the age-friendly cities frame. She highlighted the populations that face inequities and how creating public spaces and age-friendly environments can serve them.

Following both informative presentations, all webinar attendees participated in fruitful discussions about this topic and how to progress this agenda in Africa. They spoke on how solutions and strategies to combating challenges in age-friendly cities will need to be tailored to different contexts to create equitable public spaces.

You can find the recording of the webinar on the ISUH Youtube channel

Speaker slides are available below:  

Other resources shared during the webinar:

Find out more about the ISUH Africa Community of Practice. 

Join the Community of Practice.

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