Across Sub-Saharan Africa, cities are beginning to reimagine their relationship with water. While China’s state-led Sponge City Program and the Netherlands’ Room for the River (RfR) offer instructive precedents, African pathways are unfolding differently, defined by community initiative, urban informality, modest scale, and adaptive innovation.This paper focuses on implemented and well-advanced projects that demonstrate how Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and Sponge City approaches are already being applied in practice across the continent. In Africa, water-responsive urbanism is emerging that integrates flood resilience with informal settlement upgrading and local livelihoods. From Mozambique’s Chiveve River Rehabilitation and Cape Town’s Liveable Urban Waterways, to Kenya’s Sponge Towns and Ghana’s Greater Accra Climate Resilient and Integrated Development, these projects demonstrate how Sponge City approaches and NbS can work within Africa’s socio-economic and ecological realities.