African Cities Use Nature to Fight Floods and Climate Change

When torrential rains hit Kinshasa in April 2025, the city of 20 million came to a standstill. Floodwaters submerged more than half the city as the Ndjili River and smaller streams overflowed, quickly overwhelming the city’s drainage capacity. Lives were lost and thousands displaced, with more than 1,000 homes destroyed.

Those living in shanties at the city’s periphery were particularly hard hit. Kinshasa is Africa’s third-largest city and one of its fastest-growing. Urban planners simply can’t keep up as the city’s borders push farther and farther into the hinterlands.

As African cities expand into surrounding land, fewer natural buffers remain to absorb extreme weather. Photo by Guylain Kipoke/Pexels

It’s a common situation. Across many African cities, urban expansion — and the roads, buildings and concrete that come with it — is paving over natural spaces and leaving people more vulnerable to the consequences of extreme weather. Less green space means trapped heat, increased storm runoff and dirtier air. Climate change is worsening these challenges. Research shows that by 2100, up to 950 million urban Africans could be exposed to extreme heat waves intensified by the urban heat island effect. Floods and heavy rainfall are increasingly destroying homes and disrupting transport and other essential services.

Built infrastructure like seawalls, dams and reservoirs is both expensive and insufficient to keep pace with ever-more-extreme weather. That’s why cities are rethinking what counts as infrastructure.

Many are expanding their definition to include wetland parks, rain gardens, urban forests and other “nature-based solutions.” From 2012 to 2022, the number of nature-based infrastructure projects in Africa grew about 15% every year.

From green corridors and urban parks to restored wetlands and watersheds, four African cities show how integrating nature can be one of communities’ strongest defenses against climate change.