V&A Solve

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The V&A Waterfront is a mixed-use property located in Cape Town, South Africa. We are a beloved landmark, home to a colourful array of retailers, commercial properties, entrepreneurs, leisure attractions and hospitality enterprises, residential accommodation and a significant volume of ocean-related businesses. 

What makes the Waterfront unique is that we are a private space being run as a public one, and that we encounter many of the sustainability, opportunity and inclusivity challenges faced by cities globally. We are able, in effect, to be a “safe” lab for testing and refining innovations and prototypes prior to launching them into the world.

That's where
SOLVE comes in

SOLVE was launched in March 2021 as part of the Waterfront’s commitment to using the structural break provided by Covid-19 to build back better. Our aim is to provide focus for the Waterfront, to engage with the challenges around achieving ambitious goals in the realms of sustainability, opportunity and inclusivity.

Our Purpose
OUR PURPOSE IS

To amplify the shared value that flows from the Waterfront’s ecosystem strategy, providing inspirational examples and contributing to the knowledge the world needs to solve urgent, pressing urban challenges.

We adopt a systems approach to address some of the big challenges faced by cities globally. Tapping into the richly diverse community of tenants of the Waterfront and other stakeholders from the public and private sectors and civil society who share our values and commitment to making a better world, we convene, provide test bed space and facilitate clusters around specific city-making areas – such as waste management, ocean sustainability and food.

Contact us on solve@waterfront.co.za

We partner with people and organisations that:

  • Are committed to the reset: building social and environmental resilience
  • Filter innovation by sustainability, inclusivity and opportunity
  • Are personally or organisationally committed to shared value/the Creative Commons
  • Are motivated by finding ways to better manage the complex challenges faced by cities in Africa and globally

Together, we can solve towards extraordinary.