Climate advocates, entrepreneurs, economists, civil society, academia, digital innovators and environmental experts will convene from June 29th to June 30th at BongoHive in Lusaka to create innovative and sustainable solutions to climate-change impacted development challenges affecting communities and cities globally and Africa and Zambia in particular.

The first Climate Hackathon, aka #Climathon, in this format was organized in October 2016 by Impact Hub Kigali in collaboration with the World Wide Fund (WWF) and ICLEI (local government sustainability initiative) in the City of Kigali, Rwanda. His worship the Mayor of the City of Lusaka Mr. Wilson Kalumba graced this event as Guest of Honor and as part of his visit to the City of Kigali to learn about urban sustainability. The Climathon anchored on creativity, teamwork and cross-sector collaboration to come up with tangible projects and business ideas that can tackle climate-based development challenges. His worship, the Mayor of Lusaka, attended the ceremony and presented awards to selected winning teams.

Bwendo Kabanda from WWF Zambia, one of the initiators is looking forward to bringing the event format to Zambia “Kigali is a pioneer in Africa when it comes to sustainable city planning, so we asked Impact Hub Kigali to create this event with us so we can have a chance to learn from people and institutions in Kigali, brainstorm new ideas and come up with projects and practical solutions to climate-driven challenges that can be implemented in Kigali, Lusaka and all over Africa. It’s been a fantastic day and we are excited to continue the work”

The event will now come to Lusaka to bring on board stakeholders from diverse backgrounds to engage in a creative process to discuss and come up with solutions for sustainability development challenges related to Food, Water, Energy and Mobility/ Transportation for the City of Lusaka. Starting with a field trip to critical sites in the city, the groups will work together for two days coming up with concrete business models and intervention packages. Winning innovative business/ project ideas will be selected and announced on the evening of Friday, 30th of June. The winning teams will be awarded in various forms including support towards incubation of these business ideas and projects into tangible business startups to make Lusaka an even greener city.