Resilience Academy for ProWAS-SASA

About the project

About this project

Resilience Academy for ProWAS-SASA is the Tanzania Resilience Academy's contribution to "Green and Smart Cities SASA" — a Team Europe Initiative for water security and climate resilience in urban Tanzania, financed by Germany's BMZ and the European Union and implemented by GIZ. Under a grant to the University of Turku (Grant Agreement 81310675, up to €259,993.25 within the €7 million whole programme, Nov 2024 to 2026), it strengthens the capacities of Tanga and Mwanza stakeholders — including Tanga UWASA, MWAUWASA, the Lake Victoria Basin and Pangani Basin Water Boards, and the RA universities — to use open geospatial data, digital tools and community-youth-driven approaches for climate-resilient urban development and water management.

The two cities face acute water-security and flood risk: Mwanza, on the shores of Lake Victoria, floods seasonally and struggles with industrial wastewater, while Tanga, on the Indian Ocean coast, has inadequate drainage and rising flood exposure. The project curates and opens the geospatial data these cities need, trains officials, students and communities to use it, and embeds it in decision-making through the Climate Risk Database (CRD).

Delivered by the University of Turku with Ardhi University, the University of Dar es Salaam, Sokoine University of Agriculture and the State University of Zanzibar, it works through the Resilience Academy's four methods — student industrial and practical training, the Climate Risk Database data commons, open online learning resources, and research and innovation. Its three outputs improve the availability and access to open geospatial datasets; the skills of stakeholders to use open-source data and tools; and the awareness and long-term sustainability of RA's digital services.

By mid-2026 the project had grown the Climate Risk Database to 344 open datasets, 41 thematic maps and 700+ members; completed a 7,169-household flood survey across two Tanga wards (Mnyanjani and Mabawa), producing seven thematic flood maps; trained 51 government officials and water-authority staff across Mwanza and Tanga; collected 150 new geospatial datasets; and hosted the "Water Security and Climate Resilience Visualisation Challenge" — 85 student applicants narrowing to six finalist teams, won by a Sokoine University group mapping population pressure against drainage-infrastructure gaps in Mwanza.

Objectives

• Curate and open geospatial datasets for Tanga and Mwanza in the Climate Risk Database (CRD)
• Run a community-and-student flood-mapping campaign in Tanga and Mwanza
• Train government officials, water authorities, students and alumni in open-source geospatial tools
• Develop open online training materials and micro-MOOCs on the CRD
• Establish a Community of Practice and a dedicated ProWAS-SASA web presence
• Host a Data Visualisation Challenge on water security and climate resilience
• Advance gender-active participation (50% female) and youth employability

Key activities