The Miji Bora project aims to facilitate learning, co-generation and co-creation of knowledge among policy makers, urban researchers and other stakeholders. The project will provide up-to-date information on the status of city systems and chart pathways to a smart and sustainable coastal city of Mombasa. As part of its situational assessment and stakeholder engagement component, the project is now focusing on stakeholders engagement across various sectors as their participation is integral to the success of the project. Stakeholder values and knowledge are important in shaping a smart and sustainable Mombasa city. An initial set of questions was used in stakeholder identification as summed up below;
1. Who are responsible for the focus issue?
2. Who are the intended users/beneficiaries?
3. Who run (or belong to) organisations with relevant interests on the issue?
4. Who have unique knowledge related to the issue of focus?
5. Who have historical or cultural links to the area or issues?
6. Who depend on the resources (natural or other) which may be affected by the issue?
The key issues or drivers of urban form discussed and deliberated are depicted in the figure below.
Aim of the workshop
Within the Miji Bora project, stakeholders are addressed both as interested parties and as sources of expert knowledge. When applying a transdisciplinary research mode, as in Miji Bora, involvement of stakeholders is not only helpful to create an atmosphere where everybody feels included and valued, but also mandatory with respect to achieving a smart and sustainable city status. Such an atmosphere is also important to reduce existing power disparities and the avoidance of the under- representation of individual positions and views.
Thus, the stakeholder workshop aimed to;
- Identify the role, challenges and relationships of key stakeholders in addressing the main drivers of the urban form in Mombasa.
- Elaborate on and establish an appropriate and inclusive framework for stakeholders to guide future engagement in a smart and sustainable setting.
The workshop sought to assemble knowledge and experiences on the part of the different stakeholders to identify the most pressing issues with regard to key urban forms. Furthermore, the identified key urban drivers would then be the basis for assessing the key drivers of a smart and sustainable city. The latter are important for the formulation of future scenarios.
Finally, the workshop aimed to create the basis for developing a stakeholder en- gagement strategy that addresses all the different stakeholder perspectives. Generally, not all stakeholders share the same interest, capabilities, or influence on all issues of concern to support the project’s goal, or they may have differing knowledge and/or opinions.
In order to integrate this diversity, we followed a two step-approach to achieve the first objective: stakeholder identification and analysis. The stakeholder identification was conducted ahead of the workshop. In an iterative process, a list of relevant stakeholders was created via literature search and expert consultation. In addition, we used the knowledge and experience of the workshop participants to supplement and confirm the stakeholder list. Consequently, the workshop particularly focused on the analysis of stakeholders according to their interests and influence.
Visioning and roadmap for Mombasa
The visioning and roadmap for Mombasa used the STAR approach (Situation-Task-Action-Result) to develop the vision and roadmap towards attaining a smart city status for Mombasa. Visions were done through a graphic harvesting exercise where participants sketched ideas on a vision board starting with issues and finalizing with the interventions.
The Illustrations of issues outlined the 6 thematic areas of Transport, Population and settlements, Urban flooding, Rising sea level, Sewerage management and Solid waste management. The final visioning process is captured in the following graphic
