“As African cities increasingly embrace electric mobility, I’m interested in looking beyond the technologies themselves to understand what these transitions mean for the people who work within, depend on and sustain existing urban systems. I’m particularly excited about the opportunity to centre everyday actors, often overlooked in conversations about technological innovation and sustainable transitions.”
These are the words of Alicia Fortuin-Brown, a researcher at the African Centre for Cities, who has been awarded the 2026 Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship for Sustainable Transport and Energy Efficiency.
Supported by VREF and the Kuehne Climate Center, this year’s funded projects tackle critical global challenges—from decarbonizing ports and electrifying last-mile logistics to heat-responsive mobility and informal supply chain efficiency.
“I’m incredibly excited and grateful to have been awarded the Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship. What makes this opportunity particularly meaningful is the chance to pursue a research project that brings together so many of the questions I care deeply about: inequality, labour, infrastructure, technology and the possibilities for more just urban futures,” Alicia says.
Fortuin-Brown’s project research project, Electrifying Cape Town’s Last-Mile Logistics: Risk, Labour and Just Transitions, examines the emerging transition to electric mobility in Cape Town’s urban delivery sector, with a particular focus on electric bicycles and motorcycles used for last-mile logistics.
As businesses and delivery platforms increasingly explore electric mobility solutions, the research asks how these technologies are being introduced into existing urban logistics systems, and what this means for the people, livelihoods and infrastructures that sustain them. Rather than approaching electrification primarily as a technological or environmental intervention, the project examines how the transition may (re)configure working conditions, redistribute risks and responsibilities, and create new opportunities or inequalities for different actors. Fortuin-Brown’s research seeks to understand how these transitions are unfolding in practice and what might be required to ensure that the shift towards cleaner urban mobility is also socially just and inclusive.
The scholarship comes at an especially meaningful moment in her academic journey, following the successful examination of her PhD thesis.
“It is incredibly rewarding to see research interests and projects that I have been developing alongside my doctoral work begin to come to fruition,” she says. “To have this work recognised and supported on an international scale is deeply affirming, particularly at this stage of my academic career. I’m especially looking forward to the mentorship, opportunities for collaboration and support that come with the scholarship, and the chance to learn from researchers and practitioners working on sustainable mobility across different contexts. Beyond the research itself, I’m excited about the opportunity to continue developing my own research agenda, building meaningful intellectual relationships and contributing perspectives grounded in Cape Town to wider conversations about just and sustainable urban transitions.”
Explore Alicia’s work on platformisation here: