What we do

Our primary function is to build international and local intergovernmental and stakeholder relationships, partnerships and agreements to attract investors and skills into the local economy. Investment creates much needed jobs and skills bolster development. In this way, we support the City’s constitutional mandate to secure a better quality of life for Cape Town’s citizens.

Our international and local alliances also enable us to empower Cape Town’s communities via joint projects. We are able to bring the best resources to situations/areas and people that need it most.

Along with 189 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organisations, we also strive to fulfil the millennium development goals within our area of jurisdiction. These aim at aggressively reducing poverty and child mortality rates, fighting disease epidemics and developing global partnerships to encourage development in developing countries.

In all our external relations, we endeavour to promote Cape Town as a world class city that is competent, safe, caring, prosperous and well governed. We are proud of our city, our culture and our artefacts.

To maximise our efficiency, we have divided our work into two streams: 

1. Intergovernmental relations

As determined by the Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act of 2005, we establish and maintain cooperative relations with both national and provincial spheres of government, providing corporate strategic support where-ever necessary. We therefore receive and process all intergovernmental requests for support, consultation, cooperation and information sharing.

In addition to the current networks with national and provincial government that we have established, we have also initiated relations with the Department of Local Government (DPLG), the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) and the Institute for Local Government Management of South Africa (ILBM).


2. International relations

Since our establishment in 2005, we have set out to promote the City of Cape Town to local and international stakeholders and partners. A key outcome of this is the strategic partnerships that we have established with municipalities not only on the African continent, but throughout the world. Experience has taught that much can be gained from the innovations of other municipalities and cities, especially those that have overcome similar challenges as ours, while at the same time we too have pioneered best practices that our international counterparts find useful. We also coordinate and facilitate all of the City’s international interactions to maintain a uniform and focused international relations interaction.