Trees, women and data: Early lessons from Freetown’s Heat Action Plan
In developing and beginning to put into place its pioneering extreme heat plan, Freetown - the capital of Sierra Leone - drew heavily on a too-often underutilised resource: its own residents.
Volunteers on motorbikes gathered mobile heat data across the city. Residents of informal settlements - where a third of Freetown’s people live - offered their perceptions of heat stress, and women traders helped design shade covers for their markets. Young people in need of work got jobs planting cooling trees in and around the hilly tropical city in West Africa.
“We understand that the success of this plan hinges up on the active participation of all Freetown residents,” Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr said as she released an early draft of the city’s heat action agenda, noting that “our commitment to community engagement remains unwavering.”
Freetown’s heat plan - the first in Africa - was formally launched in early February 2025 at the inaugural Africa Urban Heat Summit. The event, co-hosted by Climate Resilience for All (CRA) and the Freetown City Council, gathered African mayors, council leaders and other experts and officials increasingly worried about the risks of rising heat extremes and looking to take action to reduce them.
How fast are heat risks growing? Eugenia Kargbo, Freetown’s chief heat officer, and CRA’s senior heat strategist for Africa said her city alone has tracked about a 4-degree Celsius rise in peak summer temperatures since 2021, something she called “really, really surprising - rapid and unprecedented.”
When she was first appointed heat officer in 2021, “so many people asked, ‘What is your role? What are you even doing?’” she said. “Now everyone is talking about the heat."
Freetown’s early efforts to raise awareness about heat risks and take action on the ground to address them have produced a stream of initial lessons about how to tackle heat risk in Africa and more broadly, Karbo said.
Here are a few:
—First, figure out where heat risks are highest and focus efforts there.
With little data available about heat levels in Freetown - the city has only recently received funding from the World Bank to install its first two city weather stations, Kargbo said - city officials worked with partners to try to map urban “heat islands”.
Using mobile heat sensors and working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), they discovered the city’s densely -populated informal settlements, which have few trees or other cooling spaces and plenty of heat-absorbing corrugated zinc roofs,, were seeing some of the highest summer temperatures. They have become a key focus of the city’s heat protection plans.
—Give the most vulnerable a strong voice in creating the plan.
As part of its plan, Freetown will carry out a heat perception survey - including in some of the city’s 82 informal settlements - to get a sense of how extreme heat is increasingly affecting the most vulnerable, how they are already trying to adapt, what cooling resources they have access to and what they think would most help them cope.
Involving women is particularly crucial in surveys and planning, officials say, as they are often disproportionately affected by heat due to their domestic responsibilities, which may keep them indoors more, as well as physical differences including higher heat vulnerability during pregnancy.
Many women work in outdoor informal jobs - such as farming or selling in markets - that offer high heat exposure and few labour protections. Around the world, their earnings and savings are often lower, reducing their ability to adapt to extreme heat.
Before installing shade covers in three urban markets in Freetown, city officials consulted market women on the design - and let them supervise installation, Kargbo said.
—Raise public awareness of extreme heat risks.
Many people are accustomed to living through hot summers and feel they know how to manage. But increasingly heat extremes means their coping mechanisms aren’t working as well as before - one reason illnesses and deaths from heat are rising.
Freetown has carried out public education heat awareness campaigns for the last two years, starting in January as the November to April heat season is set to peak. The campaigns have emphasised the growing threats and changes that could help lower them.
To spread the news, the city has engaged universities, youth volunteers, community leaders and the media to share everything from printed fliers to television, radio and social media posts.
Last year, the city also began working with the Sierra Leone Meteorological Agency to each Monday push out heat messages when forecasts for the week show very high temperatures are expected.
Still, “we need to do much more,” Kargbo said. The city hopes to reach 1.2 million residents with heat messages by 2030, up from the tens of thousands it estimates it is now reaching.
—Create a diverse extreme heat task force.
Managing more extreme heat often requires coordinated efforts by a range of government departments - from transport to health to environment - as well as partnerships with key community leaders, funders and other experts who can help create and implement a workable plan. Bringing them in from the start saves time and ensures planning is more coordinated and has a greater chance of success.
—Get students involved.
Freetown’s Climate Heat Education Program (CHEP) aims to educate and offer leadership training and networking to university students on climate change and heat adaptation so they can become mentors, coaches and champions for climate action in their communities.
The city is looking to university, secondary and primary school students to spread heat messages, with plans to establish nature clubs, organise school cooling challenges and find innovative ways to reduce heat risk, as well as prepare youth for jobs tackling heat climate change and heat risks.
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—Make lowering heat risks fun and aspirational.
As part of efforts to reduce extreme heat risks, Freetown plans to host an annual “heat hackathon” to come up with innovative ideas to cut heat risk and promote cooling in heat islands and vulnerable communities, with top ideas presented to a judging panel.
Freetown officials are also planning annual award ceremonies, to recognise outstanding creativity and delivery efforts by individuals, agencies and others to cut the city’s heat risks.
—Boost green space.
Freetown has since 2019 led a tree-planting push in the hills around the city, aiming to cut disaster risk from landslides. But since 2023 the city has also focused on urban planting in backyards and open spaces to try to bring down urban heat and create cooler spaces for residents.
The city estimates that finding about 50 hectares of space across the city - and planting 58,000 trees on it - could reduce the city’s urban heat island effect by about 20 percent, Kargbo said. With Freetown’s strong history of tree planting - and of providing work for young people doing it - “this will be the main focus of our action on the ground” with the new heat plan, she said.
—Aim for automated early warning systems.
Freetown is already issuing warnings ahead of expected extreme heat but “what we are using now to disseminate messages is really manual and low-tech,” Kargbo said.
What is needed, she said, is an automated system that could deliver warnings - such as through mobile phones - automatically and quickly based on real-time forecasts, reducing the potential for gaps or delays in the delivery of messages.
—Data is often lacking.
A lack of data complicates many efforts to reduce heat risk.
For instance, to develop its automated warnings, Freetown needs a more detailed understanding of heat vulnerabilities and to set thresholds for when heat passes what is seen as dangerous levels. For that “there’s a lot of data and research we need” that the city so far doesn’t have, Kargbo said.
The World Bank’s recent commitment to fund the first two weather stations in the city will be a step in that direction, she said, as is funding from the bank to carry out a comprehensive heat vulnerability assessment.
—Funding is rarely sufficient - and partnerships are key.
Kargbo said that after several years working toward a new heat plan, the city has a much better understanding than before of threats, and is building a database that many other countries and cities don’t have.
But putting the plan fully into action requires funding - and that is always one of the biggest struggles, she said.
“I’m happy with the (heat plan) roadmap but not the state of the work. Definitely the problem is funding. That’s one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced through this whole work. We need the funding to scale and funding is really hard to get,” she said.
Having city leadership committed to building a heat plan is crucial, she said - but so is finding partners who can help with financial, technical or other assistance.
In Freetown’s case, “Climate Resilience for All is providing the real-time support to the people who are leading the fight on the ground, providing the resources, technical support, guidance and hand-holding to get through all the challenges we’re facing.”
“It’s not easy - and having a good partner helps,” she said.