Urban Africa Research Articles

Negotiating Urban Development in Africa: Transnational Communities of Embedded Support in Dar es Salaam

ABSTRACTThis article brings together recent debates in urban and development studies to illuminate the understudied politics and compromise involved in the rollout of globally funded urban development in Africa. The argument presented builds on a detailed analysis of the World Bank's urban development portfolio in Tanzania, with a specific focus on the Dar es Salaam Metro‐politan Development Project, to draw attention to the disjuncture between rising urban investments and persistently low levels of city‐level autonomy in urban Africa. Challenging views of cities as either active agents or mere subjects of urban development, the article focuses on the negotiation strategies that have been employed by donors and recipients alike to enable the continued disbursement of urban development funding. The pragmatic and non‐confrontational nature of these negotiation strategies is illustrated by highlighting the role of a transnational community of urban development professionals who contribute to embedding local support for policy reform from within. It is argued that while this community has been key to enabling the massive growth of the World Bank's urban lending portfolio in Tanzania, it has also contributed to undermining effective local government reform, thereby reshaping conventionally assumed pathways and understandings of urban agency and development.

Investigating climate change adaptation strategies among informal residents in Kumasi, Ghana, through the lenses of the social action and control theories

The urban poor in informal settlements in Ghana remain exposed and vulnerable to climate--induced hazards. Their exclusion from official adaptation interventions, undeniably calls for social mechanisms to enable them to adapt to climate change hazards such as heatwaves and floods. Individuals may contribute to exacerbating climate-induced hazards or employ adaptation measures as a common practice or due to their connectedness to a group, as hypothesised by the social action and social control theories, respectively. There is, however, no known study on the empirical and theoretical contributions of these theories to influencing climate change adaptation efforts in urban Africa. At best, studies have looked at the importance of individual and community skills, and assets to adapting to climate change hazards. Underpinned by the social action and social control theories, 367 household interviews, four focus group discussions and seven relevant agency interviews in two of Kumasi’s largest informal settlements – Aboabo and Asawase - were conducted to explore how elements of the theories shape hazard reduction and adaptation efforts, and discuss the barriers to building adaptation to climate impacts. We found that most households employed several adaptation measures because they saw other residents do the same which was confirmed by the Chi-square test statistic (χ2=4.968, p<0.000) and as hypothesised by the social action theory. Similarly, as hypothesised by the social control theory, we also found differences in the adaptation measures employed by households belonging to identified environment-related groups (χ2=21.465, p<0.001). This was, largely, because among other activities, the education and training exercises undertaken by the groups influenced the knowledge levels of members about climate change hazards and adaptation measures. The groups offer emotional, monetary, material, and practical support to cope within the short-term; first to the members, and the general residents, who are hit by disasters. Generally, adopted measures to reduce adverse impacts and build adaptation were unsustainable. This study is among few studies that demonstrate the contribution of social action and social control theories to managing and adapting climate change and its associated impacts in African cities.

Negligible impact of supermarkets on food security (so far) in low-income neighborhoods of Accra, Ghana

In recent years, African policymakers have embraced supermarket development as a form of food system modernization, but the impacts of the proximity of supermarkets on low-income households in a developing African city are largely unexplored. Using a sample of 680 households in seven of Accra’s poorer neighborhoods, we examine the dimensions and level of food security, household-level determinants, and what impact, if any, the arrival of supermarkets has had on local food security. Using two internationally accepted food-security metrics, (Food Consumption Score and Household Food Insecurity Access Scale), two economic measures (income equivalence and asset ownership), and satellite imagery of supermarket locations, we find that physical proximity to supermarkets is not significantly associated with household food security in low-income areas of Accra. The majority of poor households in Accra are currently food secure, but asset ownership is a much stronger predictor of food security than income. The relatively high degree of food security in Accra is likely related to credit-based relationships that households have with local food vendors. Further, given that supermarkets can compete with these so-called “informal” vendors for access to public space, these credit-based relationships will suffer with new supermarket development. Our study highlights the need for nuanced understanding regarding the role of consumer-retailer and retailer-retailer relationship in ensuring food access for low-income households in urban Africa.

Dis/incremental Dwelling and the Right to the Beach in Jamestown, Accra, Ghana

AbstractIn mid‐2020, the municipal authority of Accra, Ghana levelled the dwellings of approximately 450 residents remaining in an informal beach settlement in Jamestown, long the centre of an artisanal fishing economy. The destruction marked the culmination of at least four demolition cycles to clear ground for a Chinese‐financed commercial harbour. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between demolitions, we demonstrate how residents erected smaller, more precarious structures designed for ease of disassembly/reassembly using cheaper, salvaged building materials—a tactic we term dis/incremental dwelling. We interpret these practices of everyday refusal as asserting residents’ “right to the beach”—a claim to access beach and marine space, to participate in convivial associative life and the informal fishing economy, and to resist political marginalisation from infrastructure development and ocean grabbing. The right to the beach provides a conceptual and political vocabulary to centre just coastal futures in urban West Africa and beyond.

Normative influence on intention to segregate household waste: Reflections from a low-middle income city in urban Africa

ABSTRACT Household waste segregation is crucial for better domestic waste management, successful material recovery programs, environmental pollution reduction, and the promotion of circular economies. While prevalent in developed nations, global adoption of household waste segregation is lacking, particularly evident in emerging economies where city authorities grapple with mounting volumes of mixed waste. Our study, conducted in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, surveyed 1,245 households using a multi-stage sampling technique. Employing structural equation modeling, we assessed how descriptive, injunctive, and moral norms influence individuals’ intention to segregate household waste, considering sociodemographic attributes and policy effectiveness. Findings underscore the significance of descriptive and moral norms, affirming their impact on pro-environmental behaviors. The study reiterates the influential role of education, age, and neighborhood characteristics in moderating these norms and recommends the implementation of persuasive policies, like waste-for-cash incentives, backed by logistical support, infrastructure, and public education to foster household waste segregation and elevate waste management practices.

Political Repression, Refugee Crises and Labor Migration from Post-Colonial Mali

This article zooms in on the ways in which forced migration articulates with labor migration in urban West Africa. Precisely, it reflects on how the refugee crisis contributes to labor migration and, inversely, how labor migration is used as a strategy to respond to the predicament induced by the adverse and often deeply humiliating living conditions of exile. To this end, we situate the article within broader scholarly debates on migration categories. We use the notion “exile” to refer to the social conditions induced by political persecution-related relocations from Mali to Niger and Senegal. Our discussion draws on data collected from freeborn Tuareg from Mali in Niamey and former Malian students who fled the dictatorship of Moussa Traoré. The results prompt a reflection that prioritizes the empirical connections between forced and labor migrations over their differences, something that is often taken for granted in the academic literature and in political narratives.

Exploring the workload of informal caregiving in the context of HIV/NCD multimorbidity in South Africa.

The importance of informal caregiving for chronic illness has been well established in African contexts but is underexplored in the context of HIV/NCD multimorbidity, particularly in South Africa. Building on treatment burden theories that investigate workload in the context of chronic illness, this paper explores how informal caregiving networks impact the capacity of people living with multimorbidity (PLWMM) in low-income settings in urban and rural South Africa. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were carried out with thirty people living with multimorbidity and sixteen informal caregivers between February and April 2021 in two settings, Cape Town (urban) and Bulungula (rural). Interviews were transcribed and data analysed both inductively and deductively using framework analysis, hereby, building on the principles of the burden of treatment theory (BoTT) as a theoretical lens. Our findings show that informal carers provided different types of support to people living with multimorbidity, including emotional, logistical, health services and informational support to ease the patient's treatment burden. Additional support networks, access to grants or financial security, and feeling a duty to care eased the perceived carer burden while a lack of social support, financial hardship and insufficient information decreased their capacity to support others. Overall, the availability of informal caregiving increases the self-management capacity of people living with multimorbidity in low-income settings in South Africa. Informal caregiving in the context of multimorbidity is structured through social obligations, kinship connections, cultural expectations, and an individual sense of agency. Carers, even when committed to assist, also experience caregiving opportunity costs, which are rarely addressed in the literature. By proposing interventions that can actively support informal caregivers, we can begin to develop solutions that can optimize the role of informal care networks, with a view to improve health-outcomes of PLWMM in South Africa.

Complex Systems and Sustainable Leadership: Enhancing Resilience and Sustainability of Community-Based Social Enterprises in Soweto, South Africa

In urban South Africa, community-based social enterprises (CBSEs) face challenges at the intersection of financial and environmental sustainability and social purpose. These enterprises address social exclusion and community development within complex institutional environments. Despite increasing governmental support, CBSEs struggle with historical inequalities, resource limitations, high poverty levels, inadequate infrastructure, and complex social dynamics. These challenges contribute to a high failure rate among SMMEs, including CBSEs, which represent approximately 71% of community-level businesses. This study examines how complex system dynamics in marginalized South African suburbs impact the sustainable leadership and resilience of CBSEs. Utilizing a qualitative approach, the study conducted 15 in-depth semi-structured interviews with CBSE leaders. The findings revealed that effective leadership in CBSEs requires extraordinary abilities to traverse complexity, adapt to changes, and engage in dynamic organizational change. The key themes identified included adaptive and flexible leadership, interdependencies and network collaboration, community engagement and co-creation, continuous learning and feedback loops, policy influence and response, and resource utilization and constraints. By applying complex systems leadership theory (CSLT) and sustainable leadership principles, the research offers insights into the mechanisms enabling CBSEs to thrive in challenging environments. These findings contribute to Social Enterprise Management and Leadership Studies, providing practical implications for policymakers and practitioners to support CBSE development and sustainability in marginalized urban communities.

Costing of nature-based vs grey solutions for water management: cases from Nairobi

Climate change adaptation in urban Africa is a critical development issue of this century. Informal and low-income neighbourhoods in African cities are particularly vulnerable as they are often located on flood pathways. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) have been put forward as an approach to enhance flood and climate resilience in urban settings. While social and environmental benefits of urban NbS are increasingly well documented, a key gap in the literature is robust data on the cost of implemented NbS, particularly from African cities. In this paper, we compare lifecycle costs of two significant implemented NbS projects against hypothetical equivalent grey solutions, in two different informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya. We apply comparative Life Cycle Costing (LCC) for both cases and a Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) for one case study where historical data is available. In one of the two cases NbS was significantly cheaper, while in the other higher costs were attributed to costs required to create understanding of the new approach. We find that the cost of any solution is highly context dependent, although the NbS approach shows competitive lifecycle costs, potential for cost-optimisation as the concept matures, and highly attractive for investment when the documented co-benefits are considered.

Cityscapes of Hunting and Fishing: Yoruba Place-Making and Cultural Heritage for a Sustainable Urban Vision

Literature on African urbanism has generally lacked insight into the significant roles of hunters and fishers as city founders. This has resulted in a knowledge gap regarding the cultural foundation of the cities that could enhance policy frameworks for sustainable urban governance. This article examines corollaries related to the complementarities of hunting and urbanism with case studies from the ethno-linguistic Yoruba region in southwestern Nigeria. Through qualitative methodologies involving ethnography and the (oral) history of landscapes of hunting from the pre-colonial and (British) colonial periods, as well as tracing the current cultural significance of hunting in selected Yoruba cities, the article reveals data that identify hunters and fishers as city founders. It shows that hunting, as a lived heritage, continues to be interlaced with cultural urban practices and Yoruba cosmology and that within this cultural imagery and belief, hunters remain key actors in nature conservation, contributing to socio-cultural capital, economic sustainability, and urban security structures. The article concludes with recommendations for strategies to reconnect with these value systems in rapidly westernizing urban Africa. These reconnections include the re-sacralization of desacralized landscapes of hunting, revival of cultural ideologies, decolonization from occidental conceptions, and re-definition of urbanism and place-making in light of African perspectives despite globalization. In doing so, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of the interconnections between the environmental and societal components of sustainability theory, agenda, and practice in urban contexts; underscores the societal value of lived heritage, cultural heritage, and cultural capital within the growing literature on urban social sustainability; and sheds more light on southern geographies within the social sustainability discourse, a field of study that still disproportionately reflects the global northwest.

The Land and its People: The South African ‘Land Question’ and the Post-Apartheid Political Order

Why is it that South Africa’s ‘land question’ is so stubbornly resistant to resolution? This think piece re-examines 30 years of debate, concentrating on the disjuncture between the discourses of policy deliberation and those of contentious politics in debates about land in South Africa. It argues that the South African land debate as it unfolds in the public realm is best understood as a displaced discourse indirectly addressing the terms of political belonging and the nature of the post-apartheid political order. Far from being a distraction, this is a challenge that urgently needs to be confronted in its own terms. Drawing on the work of Ivor Chipkin, the paper argues that confronting the crisis of the post-apartheid political order requires a rethinking of the terms in which national identity is conceived. The paper explores the possibilities and challenges facing a politics of belonging centred on the Constitutional invocation of a political community ‘for all who live in it’ and what this might imply for a more constructive and productive engagement with land struggles in urban and rural South Africa.

‘These KMA People are also our Customers’: Coconut Sellers Making Space in Downtown Kumasi

Street vendors are some of the most put-upon actors in urban Africa and elsewhere, vulnerable to harassment by government, commercial businesses, and residents. We look at a group of vendors occupying a sidewalk next to the offices of the Kumasi Metropolitan Authority (KMA) in Ghana’s second city. We demonstrate how the sidewalk functions as a family-like space for the coconut sellers. They not only work there, but also use the sidewalk as a space to sleep and bathe. The coconut sellers are migrants from the central region of Ghana and spoke of their relationship to one another, as they lived and worked on the sidewalk, as that of a ‘family’. We build on recent scholarship that focuses on sidewalks as places where economic activities are shaped by social relationships. We also show how the location of the sidewalk – near local government offices, next to an urban park – made the coconut sellers less vulnerable to harassment and being moved along.

Tapping imaginaries: Guinness, masculinity, and the promise of Africa Rising

ABSTRACT This article interrogates masculinity and the consumer politics of late capitalism in urban Africa. Engaging scholarship on racialized masculinities, branding, and African cities with special attention to the Nigerian context, it conducts a media analysis of three Guinness Africa advertising campaigns: Made of More, Michael Power, and Greatness. Building off of its centuries-long ties between the African male consumer and European capital, in 1998 Guinness created the fictional Michael Power in a marketing coup that was to elevate the brewery to unrivaled dominance over the continent’s beer import market. Subsequent campaigns were to glorify everyday heroes: Greatness declaring a ‘drop of greatness in each man’ and Made of More extolling the sartorial elegance of Congolese dandies. This representational shift reflected the brewery’s recognition of changing models of accumulation in the African urban informal economy and the corresponding aspirations that they ignited in its men. Bypassing scripts of hegemonic masculinity, this new era of Guinness advertising showcased self-made men in a laissez-faire economy, simultaneously celebrating and depoliticizing the racialized global inequalities and gendered politics of contemporary African urbanization. Guinness’s successful appeal to twenty-first-century African male consumers provides a case study of multinational marketing in bottom billion capitalism.

Effects of urbanization and international trade on economic growth, productivity, and employment: Case of selected countries in Africa

The rapid urbanization taking place in Africa is resulting in the emergence of large urban agglomerations. Despite the potential and typical economic benefits associated with the emergence of such agglomerations elsewhere, not much can be said of Africa's urbanization. With urbanization projections pointing to a continued increase, there is a need to understand the urbanization and economic dynamics relationship in order to exploit the full potential of this wave. Using a panel data set of urbanization rate, trade, economic growth, productivity and employment in six African countries for the period 1991–2019, we explore this relationship by adopting the cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) approach using data from six African countries. The findings show that there is a significant relationship between urbanization, international trade, economic growth, productivity, and employment. they also show a causal relationship between the variables studied. In addition, the findings of this study reveal that international trade contributes, significantly, to improving the productivity in long run and the economic growth and employment increase the productivity in short run and employment in the selected African countries. This research study, therefore, contributes to the critical argument that African urbanization and international trade have significant economic potential and therefore need to be encouraged and managed effectively. This provides evidence for planners and policy-makers to back policy geared toward sustainable urbanization and diversified international trade that will contribute to the structural transformation of African countries.

The Social Impact of COVID-19 on Migrants in Urban Africa

This paper explores the social impacts of COVID-19 on migrants living in three major African cities: Accra, Johannesburg, and Nairobi. Given the importance of social support networks to mobile populations, particularly in areas with limited access to essential services, understanding how the pandemic disrupted social relations underscores the broader health and economic impacts of COVID-19 on migrant communities. Using a large scale 2021 survey of nine migrant neighborhoods located across three African mega-cities, we comparatively analyze migrant social interactions during the first year of the pandemic. We find that while migrant social interactions decreased in Accra and Nairobi, living in Johannesburg was significantly associated with unchanged or increased social interactions in the first year of the pandemic. We situate these findings with municipal and country-level variation of COVID-19 policy responses within each city. In particular, we illuminate how the severity of the pandemic and response in South Africa may have catalyzed opportunities for migrants to increase social engagements within their everyday lives. By understanding how compound challenges impacted migrant life, this paper contributes to the emerging area of comparative studies on the effects of COVID-19 on migrant populations, and urban populations within the Global South more broadly.

Different shades of green: how transnational actors frame nature as a solution to sustainability challenges in African cities

ABSTRACT Nature – based solutions (NBS) are increasingly being positioned within global discourses concerning how urban sustainability challenges can be addressed. To better understand to what extent, how, by whom and with what potential implications NBS are promoted in urban Africa, this paper focuses on transnational actors and presents a dataset covering 40 NBS initiatives in 57 cities across 19 African countries. A framing analysis is undertaken to understand to what degree NBS are mobilised in accordance with global discourses. To that end, the paper builds on existing work by Tozer et al. (2022, “Transnational Governance and the Urban Politics of Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Change.” Global Environmental Politics, 1–23) on globally circulating frames of urban nature. In further contributing to their framework, we delve into the underlying values or shades of green that are being signified through the frames by applying the IPBES Nature Futures Framework. Results indicate that urban nature comes to be seen as a solution within a climate resilience – integrated benefits nexus through which various types of transnational actors are bringing nature into the city. Two important findings can be highlighted: First, the deployed frames offer opportunities to address major African urban sustainability challenges, but initiatives may not yet be configured to adequately address their scope and magnitude. Second, the configurations of frames are predominantly informed by instrumental values that put "Nature for Society” perspectives in focus, missing opportunities for NBS to build on relational values, or “Nature as Culture” perspectives and for accommodating a plurality of worldviews on desirable futures for urban nature.

Cost-effectiveness of a complex continuum of care intervention targeting women and children: protocol for an economic evaluation of the Bukhali trial in South Africa

IntroductionAs nearly two-thirds of women presenting at their first antenatal visit are either overweight or obese in urban South Africa, the preconception period is an opportunity to optimise health and...

African Urban Studies: Contributions and Challenges

Scholarship on African cities represents a growing yet still scarce subfield in urban studies, especially considering the scale and variety of African urbanisation patterns. The purpose of this Virtual Special Issue is to review the scholarship published on urban Africa in Urban Studies over the past five decades. In this Editorial, we reflect on the contributions of African urban scholarship and present a selection of articles to highlight the ways in which it has shaped key fields of urban studies. We also note the challenges that underpin ongoing lacunae in urban knowledge production and suggest directions for future work. This discussion provides a lens on our understandings of the urban condition in Africa and the general trajectory of urban scholarship.

Sanitation politics, legacies, and change in urban South Africa

Sanitation politics, legacies, and change in urban South Africa

Government transfers, municipal financial performance, and access to improved sanitation in urban South Africa

ABSTRACT This study examines the impact of national government transfers and municipal financial performance on access to sanitation in South Africa. The study uses fixed and random effects models to analyse annual panel data for 35 urban municipalities during the period 2005–20. Results show that municipalities require between R12 200 and R14 300 (about US$714 and US$836) from the national government to provide each household unit with access to a flush toilet. This figure is lower in smaller urban municipalities, which require between R8 404 and R10 205 (about US$492 and US$597). Equally, smaller urban municipalities require fewer surpluses to provide households with flush toilets compared to metropolitan municipalities. These results have implications for the level of national government spending and municipal financial performance needed to address sanitation backlogs. Thus, the study contributes to the ongoing discussion on the feasibility of developing countries attaining SDG 6 targets by 2030.