Many cities around the world are exploring green infrastructures with landscape-based systems as solutions to complement the limited capacity or extend the conventional water systems. In addition to improving flood protection, these landscape-based systems can support water supply, groundwater recharge and provide additional ecosystem services to the benefit of the citizens’ everyday life. Cities in Africa, like Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Dar es Salam, Tanzania, do not have adequate city-wide conventional urban water systems like centralized, pipe-based water supply, drainage and sanitation systems. Therefore, an option to explore if these cities can leapfrog to landscape-based stormwater management and simultaneously provide selected additional benefits is wanting. Three pathways are identified for this leapfrogging, and are under testing in the WGA-project