Launch Event: Roots of African Resilience (RoAR): A Transformative Approach

The growing awareness of the changing nature of risks facing Africa requires continued and increasing commitment to resilience-building and a participatory, development-oriented approach to resilience to protect developmental gains, curb the development-related drivers of risk, and support the achievement of Agenda 2063 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. A comprehensive multirisk, multisectoral integrated approach to resilience is needed at different scales to tackle the root causes of vulnerability and account for complex system dynamics and interactions. In response, the Roots of African Resilience (RoAR)-a Transformative Approach is based on a conceptual understanding of resilience that is conducive and flexible to the on-the-ground realities of Africa and was co-constructed in a consultative process to assist African stakeholders in unpacking and enhancing resilience. 

The RoAR presents a tree of resilience surrounded by a variety of risks and risk drivers, some of which are intertwined with it whereas others are coming from outside of our system of interest and include climate change, terrorism, economic downturn etc. The Roots of the Tree are the starting point of the framework and reflect an inclusive vision of desirable resilience and a prosperous Africa in line with the aspirations of Agenda 2063. The trunk of the tree comprises resilience enablers and capacities, which are core characteristics that contribute to a system's resilience regardless of the specific risk context. Crown and Branches represent system dimensions that represent policy entry points and indicators. Policy entry points comprise five overlapping system dimensions for resilience-building efforts: Environmental, Economic, Social, Governance, and Infrastructural. The indicators are a set of fixed general resilience indicators combined with a list of context-specific, customisable indicators to gauge the level of general resilience.