Deputy Mayor Dr. Ursula Sautter, accompanied by a staff member from the Department of Urban Planning, Environment and Mobility and a staff member from the Department of International Affairs and Global Sustainability, will speak at a city conference organized by ICLEI Africa, among other events. The aim of the event is to present innovative solutions for the conservation of natural resources in urban areas.
Conference at the Biodiversity Center
The three-day conference will be held in part at the so-called Biodiversity Center. This environmental education center was built in 2016 as part of the first joint cooperation project between the two cities for the renaturation of the Fosu Lagoon and has a similar orientation to Bonn's House of Nature on the Waldau.
On October 20, 2023, ICLEI Africa will open a new exhibition there featuring photos of natural spaces in the City of Cape Coast taken during various on-site workshops. The City of Cape Coast was selected as a model city to participate in the fourth phase of ICLEI Africa's Urban Natural Assets Programme project, through facilitation by the City of Bonn.
In addition, talks with Mayor Ernest Arthur, the Minister of the Central Region, Justina Assan, and municipal representatives of the City of Cape Coast are on the agenda. The partners will discuss current developments in Cape Coast.
It is also planned to visit projects of organizations based in Bonn, such as the children's clinic of the Bonn-based initiative ANDO-Modular-Aid in Cape Coast https://andomodularaid.org/whatwedo (opens in a new tab) as well as a training center for solar technicians of Don Bosco Mondo https://www.donboscosolar.org/ (opens in a new tab)
State partnership Ghana-NRW
In the course of the trip, Deputy Mayor Dr. Ursula Sautter will also take part in a network meeting of cities from NRW and Ghana in Accra. The conference is part of the Ghana-North Rhine-Westphalia municipal exchange program. The program is in the context of the long-standing state partnership between North Rhine-Westphalia and Ghana and strengthens cooperation at the level of cities, municipalities and districts. For a long time, Bonn was the only city in North Rhine-Westphalia to maintain an official partnership with Ghana. There are now a total of five Ghanaian-North Rhine-Westphalian partner cities. The exchange is supported by the Service Agency Communities in One World (SKEW), which also bears the costs of the trip.
Project partner city Cape Coast
The project partnership with Cape Coast is the only partnership of the City of Bonn with a municipality in Africa. It is based on a resolution passed by the City Council in 2008. An official partnership agreement was signed in 2012. The last official Bonn visit to Cape Coast took place in 2016.