The Humanitarian Leadership Academy with Save the Children International Uganda convened a collaborative space for knowledge-sharing, peer learning, and cross-sectoral dialogue among humanitarian practitioners, local responders, funding partners, academicians and researchers across East Africa with a focus on Sudan on 27 June 2025.
Two days in Munyonyo Kampala were an energising eye-opener for some, ground shifting for many, a space to connect for others and not just another humanitarian conference for all. The conference held on June 26th and June 27th and was themed Locally Led Response in East Africa – Adaptation and Resilience.
Pawel Mania, Deputy Director Impact and Influence – Humanitarian Leadership Academy shared in his opening remarks that the focus of HX Kampala would be to “spotlight the Sudan response, and region-wide efforts on localisation, climate adaptation, innovation, and the leadership needed to navigate today’s crises.”
In recognition that local responders and mutual aid groups were carrying the weight of the response, HX Kampala prioritised conversations on Sudan to enable more space, more visibility, and more practical collaboration.
Going above and beyond this mandate, conversations arising in Kampala covered the breadth of sharing powerful stories of resilience, adaptation, innovation, and leadership. Best practice, knowledge shared to unlearn and relearn left a strong clear case for why more of such spaces are needed.
These stories heavily reflected the Ubuntu (Swahili word for togetherness) spirit.
A participant inspired by the stories from Emergency Response Rooms in Sudan shared that she learned that “we can come together and organise ourselves even when there is no access. These communities already had traditional self-help mechanisms to support each other in times of crisis. When we are talking about locally led can we go back to our communities to reignite this self-help groups in times of need not only looking outside.”
Samantha
, a participant attending HX Kampala from an INGO reflected on her take-aways and shared:
“We need to be a lot more intentional as INGOs. It’s very easy to think that localisation is just about capacity building or capacity strengthening but today I learned that it’s a lot bigger than that… we need to be having more conversations about the different principles [of localisation] and if we’re going to say as INGOs that we need to localise, we need to understand what does that look like exactly and what are the different ways to do so.”
Two days in Munyonyo Kampala were an energising eye-opener for some, ground shifting for many, a space to connect for others and not just another humanitarian conference for all. The conference held on June 26th and June 27th and was themed Locally Led Response in East Africa – Adaptation and Resilience.
Pawel Mania, Deputy Director Impact and Influence – Humanitarian Leadership Academy shared in his opening remarks that the focus of HX Kampala would be to “spotlight the Sudan response, and region-wide efforts on localisation, climate adaptation, innovation, and the leadership needed to navigate today’s crises.”
In recognition that local responders and mutual aid groups were carrying the weight of the response, HX Kampala prioritised conversations on Sudan to enable more space, more visibility, and more practical collaboration.
Going above and beyond this mandate, conversations arising in Kampala covered the breadth of sharing powerful stories of resilience, adaptation, innovation, and leadership. Best practice, knowledge shared to unlearn and relearn left a strong clear case for why more of such spaces are needed.
These stories heavily reflected the Ubuntu (Swahili word for togetherness) spirit.
A participant inspired by the stories from Emergency Response Rooms in Sudan shared that she learned that “we can come together and organise ourselves even when there is no access. These communities already had traditional self-help mechanisms to support each other in times of crisis. When we are talking about locally led can we go back to our communities to reignite this self-help groups in times of need not only looking outside.”
Samantha
, a participant attending HX Kampala from an INGO reflected on her take-aways and shared:
“We need to be a lot more intentional as INGOs. It’s very easy to think that localisation is just about capacity building or capacity strengthening but today I learned that it’s a lot bigger than that… we need to be having more conversations about the different principles [of localisation] and if we’re going to say as INGOs that we need to localise, we need to understand what does that look like exactly and what are the different ways to do so.”
Gallery
A great moment shared at the HX event in Kampala
ED of Hamiza Development foundation Catherine Naisu at the HX event in Kampala
