Our Approach

Overviews

CDEA’s unique approach is expand the civic and entrepreneurial knowledge and skills base of youth and young women in both rural and urban spaces, to broaden their imagination and enable them access creative, green and blue jobs.

This is made possible through CDEA’s six focus areas—(a) skills and education (b) decent work & market access (c) the environment (d) sustainable tourism (e) rural development and (f) cities. This approach guides initiatives that tackle a wide range of issues linked to the sustainability around the East Africa.

CDEA is intervening at the rare nexus of two pathways toward achieving sustainability.

  1. Market-driven creative economy
  2. Social justice creative economy

The aim of connecting these two diverse worlds is to introduce sustainability standards within the creative economy linked to promoting artists and cultural rights, gender equality as well as climate action through sustainable production and consumption practices.

The challenges facing youth, especially young women in East Africa are become increasingly complex and cannot be tackled by CDEA alone. CDEA therefore works partners from across the six focus areas in order to jointly diagnosis societal issues and co-create innovative interventions. An example is the EU-funded project – Creative youth for social Cohesion in Tanzania was co-created by the Goethe-Institute and CDEA.

Other partnerships around the climate debates have been through a series of Webinars organized by Kuonyesha Fund, UNESCO, Climate Heritage Network and UN November Dialogues on topics such as: Artists on Cities, Climate and Culture; Culture Heritage and Climate Change; Culture Governance and Climate Change.

CDEA believes that policy and legislative reforms has an important role to play in spurring progress on tough challenges — particularly issues that government has been unwilling or unable to address, but that cannot be ignored e.g. public grants for the creative sector.

Through research, policy dialogues and round tables, CDEA, with support from development partners is able to bring policy recommendations before policy makers.

CDEA will in near future have dialogues on arts education, labour conditions and social needs. However, further research, policy dialogues and roundtables will be around the nexus around the creative economy and climate action.

In addition, CDEA aims to convene the Mashariki Culture and Development Conference that will bring East African policy makers, civil society and artists for sharing knowledge around the creative economy, social justice and climate action.

Furthermore, CDEA will host a biannual the Mashariki Creative Economy Expo to enable market access for sustainable creative products and services.

CDEA has consolidated its knowledge around its twelve-year creative economy programing, with focus on use of sustainable materials to create a intervention, creative and hotel that will offers creative, green and blue jobs to youth and young women in Tanzania.

While the creative hub will be based in Dar es Salaam, it will work with satellite creative communities in rural areas with emphasis on the use of natural materials that are biodegradable. In the Dar es Salaam, women in fisheries around the intervention will be trained to create jewelry and art pieces from coastline waste.

This intervention will be implemented as a joint venture with Kigamboni Municipal Council, through CDEA’s business arm, Sanaabiz Investments Limited.