The IHS Alumni Impact Award aims to showcase and support worldwide initiatives and projects of IHS alumni which make an impact on the local community. It is a celebration of city changers and inspiring urban initiatives. The last edition of the competition saw 20 inspiring submissions from 13 countries, reflecting the diverse expertise of IHS graduates.
IHS proudly presents the finalists of the 2024 edition, selected following a rigorous evaluation by an expert jury, with additional input from the public voting process. The finalists presented their projects at the World Urban Forum in Cairo, Egypt, in November 2024. The winner, announced at WUF12, was Zamikaya Mgwatyu, from South Africa, with the initiative Contractor & Developer Academy.
Meet the Finalists
Richard Bahumwire, Mozambique
Affordable and Climate-Resilient Housing
The project aims to increase access to affordable and climate-resilient homes for low-income people in Mozambique. The activities include the construction of resilient houses with water and sanitation, infrastructure development like access roads, drainages for managing floods, and end-user finance management (Introduction of "Rent-to-Buy" and Empowa Pay technology).
Meron Girma Woldeyohannise, Ethiopia
Urban youth livelihood technology initiative
The project is a COVID-19 emergency response initiative that started in 2021 and was jointly implemented with the Ethiopian Ministry of Peace and different civil society organizations. The project's overall goal is to build the capacity of marginalized youth, particularly women, disabled, and returning refugees, to generate their own income through vegetable and fruit production. To do this, the initiative promoted the adoption of affordable and sustainable shade houses to produce horticultural products using marginal or non-productive lands. The main activities of the projects concern designing and installing simple shade houses at selected pilot sites by participating in the youth, offering agro-vocational skills training such as vertical farming, shade house irrigation systems and marketing strategies, installing irrigation systems, purchasing the needed materials and establishing a cooperative union.
Zamikaya Mgwatyu, South Africa
Contractor & Developer Academy
The Contractor & Developer Academy (CDA) is an enterprise development programme that seeks to improve and enhance the capability of emerging contractors and developers. Incubated within the Development Action Group, CDA works with key sector stakeholders within the built environment- construction, development industry, academia, professionals, etc.- to co-create and test new innovative forms of affordable housing delivery. Its objectives are improving and enhancing emerging contractors' and developers' capacity to deliver affordable housing developments.
- More information
More about the IHS Alumni Impact Award
See this year's submissions here.
For more information, contact the IHS Alumni Relations Officer, Stefana Cozan, at alumni@ihs.nl
