East African cities face growing climate-related challenges, exacerbated by rapid urbanisation. Issues such as rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, droughts, and flooding put significant pressure on infrastructure, livelihoods, and social well-being. The Leiden-Delft-Erasmus East Africa Research Network (LEARN) convened a policy dialogue involving policymakers, academics, researchers, and community leaders from Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda and Kenya to explore strategies for addressing these challenges the dialogues focussed on climate impacts on livelihoods in East African cities. Key findings highlight physical, socio-economic and socio-cultural vulnerabilities to climate change in cities across the regions.

The dialogue proposes practical climate resilience strategies such as enhancing community-based adaptation and developing sub-national climate financing mechanisms among others. The recommendations provided offer a roadmap for policymakers, urban practitioners, and other stakeholders to foster sustainable, climate-resilient futures for East African cities. As a call to action, the dialogue emphasised the need for a paradigm shift in tackling climate challenges by breaking away from pipeline process conditioning, promoting local leadership and ownership of climate initiatives, reframing Africa’s climate narrative, and reducing dependency on donor funding.