WRI interview: “Not all cities have plans in place in terms of how they will address the increasing water demand”

Exclusive interview with Amanda Gcanga, Country Lead: Cities, South Africa, Senior Urban Policy Analyst, World Resources Institute. Amanda was also part of the AGES 2026 workshop on nature and biodiversity credits.

Interview Summary:

Amanda Gcanga, Country Lead: Cities, South Africa and Senior Urban Policy Analyst at the World Resources Institute, highlights the urgent need for African cities to plan for rising water demand. She explains that the WRI supports municipalities with climate resilience projects, focusing on flooding, urban heat and nature-based solutions.

Gcanga notes that many cities face high non-revenue water losses, weak revenue collection and growing inequality in access to water and sanitation. She emphasizes the role of technology, AI and better project preparation in making water initiatives bankable and attractive to private investors. While the private sector has funds available, municipalities often lack the technical skills to develop viable projects. Gcanga stresses that avoided costs from flooding and infrastructure damage can strengthen the case for investment in nature-based solutions. Her vision is for cities to balance demand management, reuse water and embrace ecological restoration.

Thank you for joining us. Please can we start with some background on you, your role at the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the organisation’s goals.

Thank you for having me and for this conversation. I’m Amanda Gcanga with the World Resources Institute and I lead our cities work here in South Africa. My background is in sustainable water management. Since joining WRI, I’ve been exposed to other areas of building climate resilience in cities. This includes water, which is my very strong background, but also energy, nature-based solutions as well as waste. My role at the WRI, as I mentioned earlier, is to lead our cities climate work.

We work with cities such as Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, City of Johannesburg, Cape Town and eThekwini in South Africa. And of course, in Africa and in other parts of the world we also work with other cities and collaborate with those cities. Our goal as WRI is to support within the city’s portfolio, support cities to build climate resilience. Beyond cities, we work in landscape setup where we support governments and stakeholders to restore vital landscape. We also look at food systems, sustainable management of our oceans, energy and climate and finance.

Tell us more about the projects you are involved in.

Currently within WRI I’m involved in water management projects in urban areas. This includes looking at flood management as cities are increasingly experiencing flooding. It’s becoming more common as a phenomenon how our cities and stakeholders and citizens are adapting and managing with the impacts of flooding.

We support cities and city governments to understand where flooding will likely happen, what the damage will look like in terms of costs, what could be done, who are the vulnerable, where are the vulnerable neighbourhoods and communities, where is the vulnerable infrastructure, and what can be done. We provide data, support as well support in terms of peer exchange. We support municipalities to develop projects and fundraise for projects that look at ways in which municipalities can strengthen their resilience when addressing flooding.

We are also supporting cities, municipalities and stakeholders with urban heat as one of the increasingly rising climate phenomena. We see more and more cities have more days annually of extreme heat. We are supporting cities to understand where our neighbourhoods that are experiencing extreme shock but also linking urban heat to vulnerabilities from age to access to green spaces to infrastructure, also looking at access to health facilities and so on. So we work with cities to also look at what are some of the strategies that they can deploy in order to manage heat stresses that are increasing. Nature-based solutions are also cross-cutting between water and heat in some of the projects that we’re working in.

What are the main challenges that the continent is facing with regards to its water resources in climate change conditions?

I mentioned earlier on that we are working in different countries, not just in South Africa and Africa, but we are also active in Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, and DRC. What we are finding particularly in cities, is the demand is increasing while not all cities have plans in place in terms of how they will address the increasing water demand. Our cities are growing. We will continue to see more migration into cities. Already in some countries we have 70% of the population in urban areas. While our demand is increasing, we are not seeing sufficient work in terms of water demand and conservation measures. There is insufficient knowledge within water using citizens on how to use water effectively.

Across our African cities, we are also seeing high levels of non-revenue water loss, which is attributed to physical water losses, but also economic or payment processes that allow or do not allow the cities or water utilities to collect or receive the financial rewards for supplying water. So this is a key challenge across most of our cities.

And some of the work that we’re doing is we’re looking at how can municipalities use the opportunity of AI for early detection, but also some of the technology and tools that is now available for putting in place modern processes for revenue collection, which remains a key challenge across our cities in Africa.

We also have increasing informality, and with increasing informality is an increasing number of citizens that do not have access to a standard reticulation system as well as a sanitation system. So issues of inequality in terms of access to water, but also access to sanitation continues to be a challenge. How future African cities will look like and will accommodate this inequality is an ongoing challenge.

PPAs in the African water sector have seen mixed success. What are your views on what the private sector can contribute to this field?

We are always engaging with private sector in the work that we do with cities and private sector’s feedback is always that there are sufficient funds available. However, they are not receiving enough well-built projects from cities that they can consider. And when we go back

to cities, particularly our government stakeholders, there is a significant gap in terms of technical skills for project scoping, project development, and having the expertise to align projects and pitch projects in a way that different funders would find suitable for their portfolios.

And so one of the roles that WRI plays is supporting particularly municipalities with project development, particularly in the water space but also energy, nature-based solutions and heat in a way that would make the projects attractive for the private sector. We also create opportunities for our government partners to engage directly with private sector to understand what their requirements are as well as what opportunities exist for them to engage the private sector and to take forward some of the projects.

One of the key challenges that most cities or municipalities face is proving bankability in the projects that they come up with. And not all projects within the municipality have the ability to generate revenue.

Projects such as heat management and nature-based solutions, particularly the restoration of the environment, tend to not have very clear or direct revenue generation opportunities. However, when we start to look at avoided costs that are linked to some of the shocks that we’re seeing, particularly around flooding, where if we do not take care of the river and corridors we’re seeing more damage to infrastructure and in neighbourhoods. So we’re trying to build a case towards avoided cost and highlighting the role that these natural infrastructures play in protecting citizens as well as the infrastructure.

What is your vision for the water sector?

I think a more balanced view in terms of managing the water demand and putting in place conservation measures. I don’t think cities should be necessarily only focusing on getting more water into cities while we are seeing that the resource that’s already allocated is not effectively managed. As the WRI, we are also trying to think differently around how can municipalities and cities reuse some of the water that is already circulating within the urban water system. We are big consumers, we generate significant amounts of waste. Therefore, how do we better manage and better reuse what is already provided to cities?

Lastly, when there are opportunities for getting new water into the system, particularly through restoration of ecological systems, how do cities make a financial case to allow firstly from their own internal funds to allow ecological restoration, which is often outside the city’s boundary or municipal boundary? And secondly, how can cities think differently around digitalising their water systems in order to create efficiency as well as a better relationship with the users within the city?

At AGES earlier this year, you were part of a workshop on nature and biodiversity credits. What were the takeaways from a water resilience and governance point of view?

Yes, I was part of this session, but mostly contributed on green bonds. And here again, it was a conversation between the private sector, NGOs as well as public sector. The key thing that came out was while the public sector has a lot to gain, they’re still very limited understanding, for example, of what green bonds are, how they can engage in what processes are available for them to engage in, what types of projects could benefit from grant bonds.

We all gathered that there’s a need for more spaces like this to engage, but also there is a capacity gap within our municipalities and cities in terms of understanding how the layer of

funding is constantly changing and how they need to adapt their programmes and projects, not just to fit our local municipal and national processes, but also how can their programmes be better shaped and designed in order to meet the needs of the private sector.

So that was a very strong conversation around knowledge exchange as well as cities getting to a point where they are confident to respond to some of the funding mechanisms, whether it’s biodiversity credits, green bonds or carbon credits. These are still very mystified funding concepts when it comes to local municipalities. So how do we demystify them and how do we make the language more accessible to them in a way that they can be enabled to respond and package their way in a way that aligns with the need of these funding instruments?

Thank you again for joining us. Any final thoughts from your side?

I really enjoyed AGES this year, the 2026 edition. I enjoyed the networking and the conversations. I’m looking forward to the next one and well done to the organising team and everyone that has been behind this gathering. Thank you.