This short chapter presents an African perspective on the learning city initiative in Bahir Dar, the capital of the Amhara National Regional State (ANRS), Ethiopia. What is unusual about this initiative is that it is spearheaded by a university, not by a city administration or a mayor’s office. Different perspectives or counter narratives on literacy, lifelong learning and the learning city than the master narratives held by UNESCO, include a lack of policy initiatives on both lifelong learning and learning city; multiple but discrete governance of initiatives; lack of adequate financing for implementing different learning city initiatives and the resultant low quality of education and services. The existence of diverse and rich informal learning, though least studied and neglected, is embedded in the culture of the city community, with issues of inclusiveness and inequitable participation, and the existence of diverse socio-cultural, structural and natural challenges characterise the implementation of the learning city initiative in Bahir Dar. Based on the lived experiences of the writers, some suggestions are forwarded to deal with the issues and enhance the implementation of the learning city initiative in Bahir Dar, one of the first 12 cities globally, and the first in Africa, to receive the learning city designation in 2015 from UNESCO.