The Cape Town Assembly on Climate is the result of years of research, partnership-building, and commitment to strengthening participatory democracy in South Africa.
South Africa’s democracy is at a crossroads. Voter turnout is declining, trust in institutions is eroding, and the gap between what citizens want and what governments deliver continues to widen. At the same time, climate change is reshaping the conditions of daily life in ways that existing decision-making processes have struggled to address.
The Cape Town Assembly on Climate grows out of a research programme exploring how deliberative democratic innovations can strengthen democratic practice in African contexts. Researchers at CREDO (Stellenbosch University) and the PUG Research Group (UWC) have spent years studying citizens’ assemblies internationally and asking what this model could mean for South Africa.
This assembly is both a democratic innovation in practice and a research project. We are learning as we go, and we are committed to sharing everything we learn with practitioners, policymakers, and researchers across the continent.
The visual identity is rooted in the ecology, geography, and community of Cape Town. Three figures rendered as location pins represent the people drawn together by sortition. The palette draws on the Cape Floristic Region, the soil of the Cape Flats, the endemic Cape canary, and the rock face of Table Mountain.
The Cape Town Assembly on Climate is led by a team of researchers, process designers, facilitators, and government partners drawn from across Cape Town and Stellenbosch.
Our facilitation team was selected through a competitive open call in early 2026. Fifteen facilitators from across Cape Town were chosen for their experience in community dialogue, their knowledge of the city’s diverse communities, and their commitment to inclusive, multilingual facilitation.
The team underwent a rigorous two-day training programme at UWC in May 2026, planned and hosted by our core organising team and facilitation lead, with expert support from the NNI Dialogue Institute. Training covered deliberative facilitation technique, the citizens’ assembly process, climate and transport content, and working across languages and backgrounds.
The facilitation team are the backbone of the assembly. Their skill in creating conditions for genuine dialogue is what makes it possible for 100 Capetonians to think together carefully and well.
