Reconsidering the entrepreneurial city in an African context: Accra’s shopping malls’ development and the new private sector actors in a neoliberal Ghana

Abstract

Entrepreneurial and competitive city theorists have argued that in economically-challenged cities, local state and non-state actors ‘develop a commitment to realizing a broadly consensual vision of urban development, devise appropriate structures for implementing this vision and mobilize both local and nonlocal resources’ to turn around the local economy. This orthodoxy is framed within the context of a strong autonomous local state versus a pro-active private and voluntary sector actors with clearly espoused vision. In other words the existence of a private-public sector common vision.I demonstrate in this paper that there is a need to reconsider this general conception, especially as pertains in the context of a neoliberal African city. Relying on two case studies on the development of shopping malls in Accra, Ghana, I argue that significant urban development results may still be achieved within the context of a non-autonomous local state which may not necessarily subscribe to an entrepreneurial (city) vision. In such a milieu, enterprising citizens, with or without entrepreneurship track record but possessing cosmopolitan dispositions, can act in a way that by-passes the established channels of the entrepreneurial city to shape urban development. I argue that such citizens need to show their connectedness with the larger global network of flows within the current neoliberal order. Thus, local (private actor)-global connection becomes the new link that leads to the achievement of the said urban outcomes.