Nairobi, 13 November 2019 – UN-Habitat signed a new cooperation agreement with Daejeon Metropolitan City of South Korea to support urban development in developing countries and create friendly ecosystem to innovative communities and agents especially led by youth.

According to this agreement, the two parties will initiate the first phase of “Youth-led Urban Innovation and Prosperity” project with Tangerang Selatan, Indonesia, a sister city of Daejeon, to conduct research and data gathering on the needs of youth to support developing youth policy and strategic approaches for innovation, prosperity and urban regeneration, and promotion of their activities.

During the signature ceremony, Ms. Maimunah Mohd Sharif, the Executive Director of UN-Habitat, emphasized the value of youth-led innovation and appreciated the contribution from Daejeon which has a lot of potential to drive growth if youth are fully supported.

Mr. Tae-Jeong Her, the Mayor of Daejeon, promised to promote its support for realizing “cities for all”, hoping that this project becoming a platform to facilitate and accelerate young innovators.

Daejeon Metropolitan City, with 1.5 million populations, is a technically advanced city; home to 21 universities and the headquarters of World Technopolis Association (WTA), a multilateral international organization which is responsible for providing mutual learning and exchanging knowledge and technologies.

UN-Habitat will support the building of local capacity and addressing critical development challenges with innovative solutions drawn from the joint research activities. Following the first phase, it is expected to further implement the project based on local demand derived from the research activities as well as exploiting experience and technologies on the ground.