By: Aminata Sesay
In a major step toward shaping the cities of the future through real-world research, a team of postgraduate students and professors from the Norman Foster Institute (NFI) on Sustainable Cities, based in Madrid, Spain, has arrived in Freetown, Sierra Leone, to conduct an in-depth study on urban sustainability and inclusive development.
Freetown is one of only three cities worldwide alongside Cape Town and Melilla selected for NFI’s prestigious 2025 pilot programme, a pioneering initiative that connects academic research with the urban realities of rapidly growing cities in the Global South.
The NFI delegation, consisting of seven postgraduate researchers and two faculty members, was warmly received on Monday, May 26, 2025, by Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr OBE and senior officials of the Freetown City Council (FCC). This visit deepens a partnership that began with Mayor Aki-Sawyerr’s lectures at NFI in Madrid in 2024 and 2025.
Her presentation, City Management Without City Management Tools, catalyzed the collaboration by highlighting Freetown’s urban management challenges most notably, the lack of formal land use planning and building permit systems. Her people-centred strategy, framed under the #TransformFreetown Transforming Lives initiative, has since become a case study within NFI’s Master’s Programme on Sustainable Cities.
“This visit is not just about observing it’s about co-creating,” said Dr. Gareth Simons, Head of City Science at NFI. “We are working with Freetown’s leaders and communities to understand their urban challenges and contribute practical, grounded solutions that can inform both policy and pedagogy.”
Over the past four months, NFI researchers have been collecting and analysing data on Freetown’s urban planning environment. Their findings spanning land governance issues, infrastructure limitations, and informal systems are being shared directly with the FCC to ensure that recommendations are context-specific and community-driven.
Sophie Njei Njogu, one of the student researchers, highlighted the uniqueness of the experience.
“We’re not just studying Freetown as an academic case we are witnessing a living, evolving city. It’s an incredible opportunity to see how informal systems, community resilience, and institutional innovation intersect in ways that textbooks rarely capture,” she said.
During their stay, the NFI team visited Limkokwing University of Creative Technology for idea exchanges with local students and toured major urban initiatives, including the Freetown Cable Car System and the Central Business District (CBD) Regeneration Project. Their on-the-ground engagement also extended to key community sites such as Coconut Farm, Attouga Stadium, and the historic Fourah Bay College building in Cline Town areas rich in both challenges and transformative potential.
For Freetown, this collaboration offers more than academic visibility. It opens the door to long-term knowledge exchange, cross-continental design thinking, and the co-development of urban planning models that can be adapted to other rapidly urbanising cities.
Mayor Aki-Sawyerr described the initiative as a “bridge between vision and implementation,” stating:
“Our partnership with the Norman Foster Institute reflects our belief that global insight must be grounded in local realities. Together, we can design a city that truly works for all its people.”
The visit by the Norman Foster Institute represents a significant step in embedding academic expertise into Freetown’s urban development agenda a step that could well shape the city’s sustainable future and offer a global model for city planning in resource-constrained environments.