Summary

Slum Dwellers International (SDI) leads the Know Your City (KYC) Youth Innovation initiative, with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) as the technical partner and funding from the Mastercard Foundation. It provides young people in seven African cities (Nairobi in Kenya, Jinja in Uganda, Blantyre in Malawi, Kaffue in Zambia, Tamale in Ghana, Bo in Sierra Leone, and Ziguinchor in Senegal) the skills, tools, ethics, grants, and accreditation they need to map their informal settlements and build livelihoods in the data and knowledge economies.

Context

Across Africa, urban policies and market systems routinely fail to address the challenges of slums and informal settlements, where young residents face limited dignified employment and economic opportunities. The voices of these youth are often excluded from decision-making, while dominant narratives stigmatize their communities. A critical lack of localized data and evidence impedes the development of inclusive solutions for basic services such as water, sanitation, and housing. This disconnect perpetuates cycles of poverty and marginalization, demanding a fundamental shift towards approaches that place young slum dwellers at the heart of transforming their cities.

The KYC Youth Innovation project builds on youth-driven, decolonized knowledge to transform Africa's slums and informal settlements by reshaping urban policies, markets, and practices. Its goal is to create dignified employment and business opportunities for young residents. Through extensive consultations, youth have identified three key outcomes: establishing the KnowYourCity platform as the primary data source for inclusive urban development; empowering young leaders to reframe narratives around informal settlements; and using data to identify scalable, pro-poor market innovations in essential services like water, sanitation, and housing.

Implementation

KYC Youth Innovation brings together four partners, each with a distinct role.

• Slum Dwellers International (SDI) leads the project, working through its national affiliates. These are the slum dweller federations that mobilize communities, lead youth consultations, and own the KnowYourCity platform.
• The Mastercard Foundation funds the initiative.
• HOT is the technical partner. HOT provides open mapping tools, learning resources, technical expertise, and capacity-building support across the seven cities. Where drone mapping is part of a city's activities, HOT also provides technical guidance and supports SDI affiliates to secure the necessary local permissions.

Young residents co-lead the work. They identified the project's three outcomes through consultation, and they carried out the mapping in their neighborhoods.

The project runs in seven cities, working alongside local partners:

• Nairobi, Kenya: Muungano Wa Wanavijiji
• Jinja, Uganda: SDFU and ACTogether
• Blantyre, Malawi: CCODE and the Federation of the Rural and Urban Poor
• Kaffue, Zambia: People’s Process on Housing and Poverty in Zambia
• Tamale, Ghana: [Partner to TBC]
• Bo, Sierra Leone: Centre of Dialogue on Human Settlement and Poverty Alleviation
• Ziguinchor, Senegal: urbanSEN and the Fédération Sénégalaise des Habitants (FSH)

HOT's East and Southern Africa Hub supports Nairobi, Jinja, Blantyre, and Kaffue. The West and Northern Africa Hub supports Tamale, Bo, and Ziguinchor.

Our approach

HOT support for each city's community-identified use cases and data needs, and includes:

• Online and in-person training and accreditation
• Data ethics and protection capacity building
• Data collection and mapping support, plus data modeling, analysis, and visualization
• Technical support for relevant HOT tools
• Youth innovation grants, so participants can turn mapping skills into paid work and community ventures in water, sanitation, and housing
• Where drone mapping is part of a city's activities: technical guidance and support to SDI Affiliates in securing the necessary local permissions

What success looks like

By the end of the project:

• Young people have accredited skills in open mapping, data cleaning, and visualization to prepare them for the data economy.
• Neighborhoods have usable data on water, sanitation, and housing to fill the gaps that hold back local solutions.
• We embed data ethics by default, so communities stay in responsible control of their information.
• Youth earn dignified incomes through clear pathways in data work, analysis, and visualization for local markets.
• Decision-makers hear communities when they engage with policymakers using youth-led evidence.

Get involved

You can partner with a city team on local data use, fund the next round of youth innovation grants, or explore the data on the KnowYourCity platform. To start a conversation, email HOT at info@hotosm.org.