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2025

Three women in a plenary session—laughing, attentive, not talking to each other.

Empowering women in German-African municipal partnerships

Bonn, 17 December 2025. Gender equality remains a key factor for global development. Empowering girls and women is also a cross-cutting theme or explicit goal in many German-African municipal partnerships. Several examples of projects were presented at the Partnership Conference between municipalities from Germany and Sub-Saharan Africa held in Giessen last September. Read more about the approaches and discussion points.

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Settling tank at a sewage treatment plant. Palm trees in the background.

Water management – a topic for German-African municipal partnerships

Bonn/Giessen, 22 September 2025. Drinking water – wastewater – flooding. Water is a much-discussed topic in partnerships. The workshops and discussions during this year's Sub-Saharan Africa Conference in Giessen have recently shone a light on how broad this topic is and on diverse forms of engagement in this area. In our article, we provide an insight into the working of the partnerships and share some of the findings from the conference.

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Group photo taken from a bird's eye view in the auditorium of the University of Giessen

Highlights of the Sub-Saharan Africa partnership conference

Bonn/Giessen, 12. September 2025. Three days of concentrated partnership. The sixth partnership conference between German and African municipalities ended yesterday to loud applause. The atmosphere was positive and the message clear: German and African local authorities are closely linked and are countering the global trend towards isolationism and division. In addition, a great deal of work was done on a wide range of local authority issues. Here is our review.

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Rebecca Bligh, FCM President, Cynthia Termorshuizen, Associate Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Personal Representative of the Prime Minister of Canada for the G7 Summit, Berry Vrbanovic, Mayor of Kitchener (CA).

U7 group demands for greater involvement in addressing global challenges

Bonn, 5 June 2025. Ahead of the G7 Summit in Kananaskis in mid-June 2025, the Urban7 submitted a declaration to the Canadian G7 Presidency. The mayors of the G7 countries call for a stronger role for cities in international politics – with clear recommendations on climate action, artificial intelligence, and democracy, as well as a strong commitment to international cooperation and multilateral partnerships.

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Six people in rubber boots and thick jackets stand in a semicircle on a field. A spade lies on the ground in front of them. In the far background, there are the beginnings of settlements.

Working together for ecological agriculture – Pfaffenhofen and Turrialba

Bonn, 11 February 2025. The city of Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm and its partner municipality of Turrialba in Costa Rica have joined forces to promote ecological agriculture. Even though this would not ordinarily fall within the remit of a municipality, it is an example of why municipalities should still engage with this topic and illustrates its links to flood protection, climate action and species protection.

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