Isandla Institute prepared ‘social appraisals’ of Johannesburg and Cape Town metropolitan areas to inform DFID’s support to the two municipalities. The appraisals were meant to ensure that explicit poverty reduction frameworks are adopted by these councils, 1999.

An in-depth report on KPIs was prepared for the Organisational Transformation branch of the City of Cape Town, 1999.

CODESRIA, in partnership with UNDP commissioned a series of country studies in Africa on the ‘dimensions and dynamics of poverty’. Isandla Institute carried out the South African study, 1999.

Isandla Institute undertook four studies on behalf of the City of Cape Town into the intervention of the municipality in a highly impoverished and fragmented community, 2000.

: Isandla Institute coordinated a report for the Unicity Commission on a 15-year development framework for the Cape Town Metropolitan Area, 2000.

Isandla Institute engaged with a national evaluation report of South Africa’s urban development strategy and settlement policies prepared for Habitat+5 and facilitated a civil society review of the SA government’s draft report for Habitat II, 2000.

Isandla Institute was contracted to provide a critical support role to an internal research team conducting a three country study on ‘developing poverty reduction guidelines for City Development Strategies’, 2001.

Study on the rate and dynamics of poverty in the nine largest cities of South Africa, carried out in partnership with PDG on behalf of the SACN, which included the development of a poverty index and recommendations for South African cities to reduce poverty, 2002.

Through a close partnership with the Geography Department at Open University (UK), Isandla Institute co-initiated an innovative research programme on Postcolonial Urbanism and Enculturing Urban Development Policy in 2003. In February 2006, the papers arising out of this process have been published in a special issue of the prestigious journal Urban Studies on Urban culture and development: Starting with South Africa (Vol 43, No 2, 2003-2005).

Isandla Institute contributed to the ‘State of South African Cities Report’ launched by the South African Cities Network, 2004.

View the report here: State of Cities Report 2004