Reversing Uncontrolled and Unprofitable Urban Expansion in Africa through Special Economic Zones: An Evaluation of Ethiopian and Zambian Cases

Jiabo Xu,Xingping Wang

doi:10.3390/su12219246

Abstract

Despite the growing attention on uncontrolled and unprofitable urban sprawling in many African countries, few pragmatic solutions have been raised or effectively implemented. While uncontrolled and unprofitable urban expansions happened primarily due to poor land use management and dysfunctional land market, the cost of land management enforcement and reform is high. This paper suggests that the recently re-emerging special economic zones (SEZs) in Africa could be a practical way of using government intervention to reduce uncontrolled urban expansion and optimize urban land use. By evaluating the spatial impacts of two SEZs on their host cities in Ethiopia and Zambia, this paper demonstrates that SEZs could notably change urban expansion in terms of its speed, direction, and spatial structure. By using SEZs as an experimental area for land policy reform, the government can also effectively unlock a profitable urban development model with the functional primary and secondary land market. However, the diverging results in Ethiopia and Zambia also show that the optimizing effect can be significant only when the government is participatory and can fulfil its public function, including delivering proper planning in advance, lunching land policy reform, and even executing compulsory land acquisition for public interests.

Highlights

By the end of 2018, there were over 400 million urban residents in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), which have been growing fast during the last three decades Accompanying the rapid population growth is a sharp increase in demand for urban land and construction
All indicators reflected the fact that EIZ and the Chambishi MFEZ have both remarkably changed the original spatial expansion of the cities where the zones are located, in terms of speed, direction, function, structure, and concentration (Figure 4)
As far as the indicators used in this study have shown, the ‘positive’ effects of EIZ are more significant than those of the Chambishi MFEZ

Summary

Introduction

By the end of 2018, there were over 400 million urban residents in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), which have been growing fast during the last three decades (the annual growth has been over 4 per cent, Appendix A) Accompanying the rapid population growth is a sharp increase in demand for urban land and construction. Most African cities today are still suffering from ‘uncontrolled’ urban expansion, with spreading slums that lack any necessary facilities such as water or electricity (Appendix A). A large amount of population growth will occur in uncontrolled urban slums [1]. A report by the UN-Habitat shows that most newly expanded residential areas during 1990–2014 in less developed countries (including most African countries) are ‘unplanned and disorderly’ [2]. Newly developed areas in most African cities had produced few profits because there was no well-managed land market or fully-established regulation system that can reflect and protect the added value of the land during the urbanization process. Expanding African cities, with the governments possessing insufficient funding for infrastructure and urban renewal, are stuck in unplanned and unprofitable circumstances

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion