Cultural identity in the peri-urban African landscape: a case study from Pikine, Senegal

Abstract

As African populations continue to urbanize at the highest rates worldwide, informal peri-urban landscapes have emerged in recent decades, becoming a norm throughout Africa’s cities. They continue to grow spatially and in population, outpacing municipal infrastructure. These peri-urban zones have predominantly informal social, political, and economic structures. Unique cultural identities continue to evolve in these emergent landscapes. This project gained key insights into lesser visited spaces during a field study to Pikine. Pikine’s dense urban area exhibits socioeconomic marginalization, lack of public services, environmental degradation, health hazards, and high crime rate. The qualitative research herein, illuminates gaps in the understanding of cultural identity and transformations taking place within the peri-urban environment – a human landscape that remains mostly unfamiliar and largely inaccessible to the greater population writ large. The study finds that insurmountable environmental and socioeconomic challenges have helped garner Pikine’s reputation within the greater Dakar urban agglomeration as a dysfunctional and criminal urban backwater. Yet, in the face of its social alienation coupled with infrastructural isolation and enduring shared struggle against chronic flooding, the city developed its own distinguishable culture and particularly kindred spirit embodying the Wolof solidarity known in the region as teranga.