Building adaptive capacity at various levels is essential for ensuring future climate resilience in urban areas. Despite the fact that understanding risk and associated vulnerability has progressively been incorporated as a central element in urbanization activities, there is a noticeable lack of contextually adapted urban risk reduction and resilience initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, existing approaches tend not to target cities with low planning and administrative capacity. This project will, therefore, target four countries where people’s vulnerabilities are progressively increasing and which have requested assistance from UN-Habitat. These countries have significantly high annual urban growth rates that surpass their overall population growth, which is an indication of the increasing importance of the urban dimension. At the same time, local administrations face a capacity gap and increasing challenges from risks associated with climate change. The four countries are located in the south-eastern part of the African continent, which is a region that is very vulnerable to trans-boundary extreme climate-related events.