Urban flooding and water scarcity are major climate change hazards affecting African cities. Dar es Salaam and Addis Ababa are growing rapidly and suffer from lack of urban water services. The project ‘Water Resilient Green Cities in Africa’ explores how to improve water resilience in Dar es Salaam and Addis Ababa by establishing a strong green infrastructure that can reduce the impact of floods and simultaneously provide day to day services to the citizens like e.g. water supply and areas for food production. Using the landscape may ‘leap-frog’ development of urban water services by means of eco-technologies which seems to be a cheaper, more flexible and adaptable option in contrast to conventional ‘grey’ technologies that developing world cities are now trying to rectify. It is hypothesized that an integrated approach to urban water management in Addis Ababa and Dar es Salaam can be achieved by: 1. facilitating a rapid mind-set change towards landscape based water management by identifying and engaging potential champions among relevant city officials and in flood prone communities in a knowledge sharing and vision building process, 2. utilizing the pace of urbanization to introduce sustainable and resilient construction practices by drafting exemplary water catchment plans in collaboration with communities and city level champions based on physical analyses, existing water coping practices and interactive design charettes, and 3. adopting ‘smart’ dissemination technologies and practices for knowledge sharing with different members of society. The paper presents the first results of challenges and main opportunities for ‘leap frogging’ towards water resilience in Dar es Salaam and Addis Ababa. Challenges are a fragmented institutional set up and lack of collective and coordinated practices to prevent floods and drought. Opportunities are identified powerful champions and awareness of the problems with floods and drought at both city and local level.