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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Serie: RGS-IBG Book Series
- Sprache: Englisch
Illuminates the path to more generative urban transitions in Africa's cities and developing rural areas Africa is the world's most rapidly urbanizing region. The predominantly rural continent is currently undergoing an "urban revolution" unlike any other, generally taking place without industrialization and often characterized by polarization, poverty, and fragmentation. While many cities have experienced construction booms and real estate speculation, others are marked by expanding informal economies and imploding infrastructures. The Urban Question in Africa: Uneven Geographies of Transition examines the imbalanced and contested nature of the ongoing urban transition of Africa. Edited and authored by leading experts on the subject, this unique volume develops an original theory conceptualizing cities as sociotechnical systems constituted by production, consumption, and infrastructure regimes. Throughout the book, in-depth chapters address the impacts of current meta-trends--global geopolitical shifts, economic changes, the climate crisis, and others--on Africa's cities and the broader development of the continent. * Presents a novel framework based on extensive fieldwork in multiple countries and regions of the continent * Examines geopolitical and socioeconomic topics such as manufacturing in African cities, the green economy in Africa, and the impact of China on urban Africa * Discusses the prospects for generative urbanism to produce and sustain long-term development in Africa * Features high-quality maps, illustrations, and photographs The Urban Question in Africa: Uneven Geographies of Transition is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students in geography, urban planning, and African studies, academic researchers, geographers, urban planners, and policymakers.
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For further information about the series and a full list of published and forthcoming titles please visit www.rgsbookseries.com
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The Urban Question in Africa
Uneven Geographies of Transition
Pádraig R. Carmody
James T. Murphy
Richard Grant and Francis Y. Owusu
This edition first published 2024
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Carmody, Pádraig R., author. | Murphy, James T., author. | Grant, Richard, author. | Owusu, Francis Y., author. | John Wiley & Sons, publisher.
Title: The urban question in Africa : uneven geographies of transition / by Pádraig R. Carmody, James T. Murphy, Richard Grant, and Francis Y. Owusu.
Description: Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, 2024. | Series: RGS-IBG book series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023021898 (print) | LCCN 2023021899 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119833611 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119833628 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119833659 (epdf) | ISBN 9781119833642 (epub) | ISBN 9781119833635 (oBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Urbanization--Africa. | Urban policy--Africa. | Community development, Urban--Africa. | Africa--Economic conditions.
Classification: LCC HT384.A35 U77 2024 (print) | LCC HT384.A35 (ebook) | DDC 307.76096--dc23/eng/20230512
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023021898
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023021899
Cover image: Courtesy of James T. Murphy
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Contents
Cover
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Series Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Urban Transitions in Africa
Urban Transition Trajectories in Africa: Generative or Parasitic?
Assessing the Urbanization-Globalization-Industrialization Nexus
Structure of the Book
1. (African) Cities as Sociotechnical Systems: A Conceptual Approach
Introduction
The Urban (Question) in Africa: A Review of the Literature
Economic Geographies of Urban Development
Radical, Planetary, Comparative and Postcolonial Urbanisms
Urban Studies and Theory in/for Africa
Conceptualizing the Urban Question in Africa
(African) Cities as Sociotechnical Systems
Applying the Approach
2. Urbanization with Industrialization? Manufacturing in African Cities
Introduction
Historicizing Africa’s Manufacturing Path Dependencies
Africa’s Present-day Manufacturing Horizon
The China Factor in African Manufacturing
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)
Transforming Manufacturing? Governance Challenges and Opportunities
Rethinking the Governance of Production Regimes: National Urban Policies
Pathways for Industrialization in African Cities
Conclusion
3. The Impact of China and Other New Economic Powers on African Cities
Introduction
NEUP-African Relations Today: Key Channels of Impact
Imports
Infrastructure and Other Productive Investments
Housing and Built Environments
Migration, Travel and Knowledge Flows
Integrating the Channels and Their Impacts
Sino-African Relations in Africa Today: Specific Forms and Regime Impacts
Production Regimes
Consumption Regimes
Infrastructure Regimes
Conclusion
4. Fantasy Urbanization in Africa: The Political Economy of Heterotopias
Introduction
The Rise of Fantasy Urbanism in Africa
Neoliberal Planning and Heterotopic Urbanism in Africa
Emerging Heterotopias in Africa
Eko Atlantic (Lagos), Nigeria
Konza Technopolis (Nairobi), Kenya
HOPE City (Accra), Ghana
Africa’s Neoliberal Heterotopias: Generative or Exclusionary Enclaves?
5. A Generative Urban Informal Sector?
Introduction
The Contours of Africa’s Urban Informal Economies
Explicating the UIS Experience: Agbogbloshie Settlement, Accra
Situating Africa’s UIS in a Sociotechnical Systems Framework
Transforming the UIS? ICTs, the 4IR and Makerspaces
Realizing a More Generative UIS: Collaborative Pathways for Transition
Conclusion
6. The Rise of the “Gig Economy” and the Impacts of Virtual Capital on African Cities (with Alicia Fortuin)
Defining the Gig Economy
The Gig Economy in Africa
Ride Sharing and the Evolution of Cape Town’s Sociotechnical Regimes
Practices in Cape Town’s Ride-sharing Regime
Governing Ride-sharing: Power Asymmetries, Informal Contracts and Rating Schemes
Precarious Platforms: Safety Issues in Cape Town’s Ride-sharing Economy
Ride-sharing and the Evolution of Sociotechnical Regimes in African Cities
Conclusion
7. Making Cities Livable for All: Infrastructure and Service Provisioning Challenges
Introduction
The Scale and Scope of the Collective Goods Challenge in African Cities
Governance of Infrastructure Regimes: Speculation, Resource Constraints and Political Priorities
Splintered Urbanization and the Challenge of Service Distribution
Structural and Political Economic Drivers of Infrastructure Deficits in African Cities
SkyTrain – Accra’s Utopian Mega Infrastructure Project
The Bagamoyo Port Project, Tanzania
Kenya’s Standard-Gauge Railway (SGR)
Achieving Infrastructure Transformations: Recentering Use-Value
8. The Wrath of Capital or Nature? Threats to Cities from Climate to COVID-19
Introduction
The Geography of Risk and Riskscapes
Riskscapes, Cities and Sociotechnical Systems
Climate Change and Sociotechnical Regimes
Heat
Sea Level Rise and Coastal Erosion
Flooding
Drought
Public Health Threats: Pandemics (Ebola and COVID-19)
Ebola
COVID-19
Managing Risk and Resilience in African Cities
9. The Green Economy and African Cities
Introduction
The Green Economy and the Global South
Africa’s Green Economy Experience to Date
Green Industrialization through SEZs? South Africa’s Atlantis GreenTech Zone
Green Economy Transitions and the Urban Informal Sector (UIS)
Conclusion
10. Prospects for Generative Urbanism in Africa
Introduction
Assessing the Urban Question in Africa Today: A Multidimensional View
Realizing Generative Cities: Constraints, Capabilities, Governance and Resilience Strategies
Production Regimes
Consumption Regimes
Infrastructure Regimes
Reframing the Urban Question as a Sociotechnical, Systemic One
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
CHAPTER 02
Table 2.1 Sub-Saharan Africa’s economic...
Table 2.2 Sub-Saharan Africa trade...
Table 2.3 Africa’s Competitive...
Table 2.4 National Urban Policy Rankings...
CHAPTER 05
Table 5.1 Percentages of informal employment...
CHAPTER 08
Table 8.1 Geophysical and epidemic-related...
CHAPTER 09
Table 9.1 The main features of...
List of Illustrations
CHAPTER intro
Figure I.1 Urbanization trends by...
Figure I.2 Size and growth...
CHAPTER 01
Figure 1.1 Cities as sociotechnical...
CHAPTER 03
Figure 3.1 Eastern Industrial Zone...
Figure 3.2 Knocked down car...
Figure 3.3 Rendering of Kilamba...
Figure 3.4 Burj al-Fatih...
Figure 3.5 African Union headquarters...
Figure 3.6 Nairobi’s...
CHAPTER 04
Figure 4.1 Eko-Atlantic Skyline...
Figure 4.2 Konza Technopolis as...
Figure 4.3 Konza Technopolis imagined...
CHAPTER 05
Figure 5.1 Informal manufacturers (wood...
Figure 5.2 Informal retailers in...
Figure 5.3 Agbogbloshie Settlement in...
Figure 5.4 Informal Cookstove Manufacturer...
Figure 5.5 Razed Agbogbloshie and...
Figure 5.6 E-waste in...
Figure 5.7 Gearbox Makerspace in...
CHAPTER 07
Figure 7.1 Nairobi’s...
Figure 7.2 Drainage conditions in...
Figure 7.3 Nairobi traffic jam...
Figure 7.4 Conceptualizing Nairobi’...
Figure 7.5 Kenya’s...
CHAPTER 08
Figure 8.1 The aftermath of...
Figure 8.2 City of Cape...
CHAPTER 09
Figure 9.1 Dzorwulu Junction Bus...
Figure 9.2 The Atlantis Green...
Guide
Cover
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Series Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Begin Reading
References
Index
End User License Agreement
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Series Editor’s Preface
The RGS-IBG Book Series only publishes work of the highest international standing. Its emphasis is on distinctive new developments in human and physical geography, although it is also open to contributions from cognate disciplines whose interests overlap with those of geographers. The series places strong emphasis on theoretically informed and empirically strong texts. Reflecting the vibrant and diverse theoretical and empirical agendas that characterize the contemporary discipline, contributions are expected to inform, challenge and stimulate the reader. Overall, the RGS-IBG Book Series seeks to promote scholarly publications that leave an intellectual mark and change the way readers think about particular issues, methods or theories.
For details on how to submit a proposal please visit:
www.rgsbookseries.com
Ruth Craggs, King’s College London, UK
Chih Yuan Woon, National University of Singapore
RGS-IBG Book Series Editors
Acknowledgements
Many people made this book possible. We thank all our interview participants for their time and insights. We are also grateful to the RGS-IBG book series editors and board for their comments; particularly Wooh Chih Yuan who shepherded this project through and for his and Ruth Craggs comments on it, which have substantially improved it. We are also grateful to the proposal and manuscript reviewers who provided very helpful comments to allow us to develop the project into a book. We thank Alex Sphar and Mwangi Chege for their assistance with some of the field research. Some of the research for this book was funded by the University of Johannesburg, the US National Science Foundation [BCS-0925151], and Regional Studies Association [MERSA 2017] for which we are grateful. Many people have commented on parts or all of the book. We thank Ayona Datta, Andrew McLaran, Julie Silva, Chris Rogerson, Julia Giddy, Kate Meagher, Laura Mann, Federico Cugurullo, Mike Morris, Martin Oteng-Ababio, Paul Stacey, Michael Osei Asibey, and Owen Crankshaw for their comments. Pádraig Carmody and Richard Grant also thank Jayne and Chris Rogerson for their advice and guidance on sources, and their hospitality. Any errors of fact or omission are of course ours.
We are also grateful to publishers for allowing us to base some chapters on previously published material.
Chapter 6 is derived, in part, from an article published in the African Geographical Review on the 24th of April 2019, available online:
Pádraig Carmody and Alicia Fortuin, “Ride sharing, Virtual Capital and Impacts on Labor in Cape Town, South Africa,”
African Geographical Review
38(3), (2019) 196–208.
Other chapters draw on parts of the following publications, which are reproduced by permission.
Pádraig Carmody and Francis Owusu “Neoliberalism, Urbanisation and Change in Africa: The Political Economy of Heterotopias,”
Journal of African Development
18(1), (2016) 61–73.
Richard Grant, Pádraig Carmody and James Murphy “A Green Transition in South Africa? Sociotechnical Experimentation in the Atlantis Greentech Zone,”
Journal of Modern African Studies
, 58(2), (2020) 189–211.
James T. Murphy (2020) “Greenfield cities in Africa: A recipe for generative urbanization,”
Regions e-Zine
, on-line only. DOI:
10.1080/13673882.2020.00001059
.
Pádraig Carmody and James T. Murphy “Generative Urbanisation in Africa? A Sociotechnical View of Tanzania’s Urban Transition,”
Urban Geography
, 40(1), (2019) 128–157.
Pádraig Carmody and James T. Murphy “Chinese Neoglobalisation in East Africa: Logics, couplings, and impacts.”
Space and Polity
, 26(1), (2022) 20–43.
James T. Murphy “Urban-economic geographies beyond production: Nairobi’s sociotechnical system and the challenge of generative urbanisation,”
ZFW–Advances in Economic Geography
, 66(1), (2022) 18–35.
James T. Murphy, Pádraig Carmody, Francis Owusu and Richard Grant, “The Impact of China on Urban Africa,”
Handbook of Emerging 21st Century Cities
, Kristine Bezdecny and Kevin Archer (eds). London, Edward Elgar, (2018) 106–127.
We also thank the referees and editors for these journals and book chapter for their comments. We also thank the staff at Wiley Blackwell.
Pádraig R. Carmody, James T. Murphy, Richard Grant and Francis Y. Owusu Dublin, Ireland, Worcester, MA, Miami, FL, and Ames, IA, USA.
List of Abbreviations
3D printing
three-dimensional printing
4IR
Fourth Industrial Revolution
AfCTA
African Continental Free Trade Area
AfDB
African Development Bank
AGOA
African Growth and Opportunity Act
AgTech
Agricultural Technology Companies
App
mobile phone application
AG
Atlantis Greentech (special economic zone)
AI
Artificial Intelligence
ANC
African National Congress
AU
African Union
AUC
African Union Commission
ASEZ
Atlantis Special Economic Zone
AUC
African Union Commission
BAIC
Beijing Automobile Industrial Corporation
BBC
British Broadcasting Corporation
BPO
Business Process Outsourcing
BRI
Belt and Road Initiative (of China)
BRT
bus rapid transit
CBD
Central Business District
CBO
Community-Based Organizations
CCT
City of Cape Town
CIP
Competitiveness International Performance
COP
Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change
CO
2
Carbon dioxide
COSATU
Congress of South African Trade Unions
DA
Democratic Alliance
DRC
Democratic Republic of Congo
DTI
Department of Trade and Industry (of South Africa)
EBA
Everything But Arms
EPZ
Export Processing Zone
ETCZ
Economic Trade and Cooperation Zone
EU
European Union
EVD
Ebola Virus Disease
EXIM
Bank Export-Import Bank (of China)
FDI
Foreign Direct Investment
FinTechs
financial technology companies
GDP
Gross Domestic Product
GE
Green Economy
GEP
Green Economy Progress
GIIF
Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund
GIN
Global Innovation Network
GIZ
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit
GPN
Global Production Networks
GPTs
general purpose technologies
GR
Gestamp Renewables
GRA
Ghana Revenue Authority
GVC
Global Value Chains
HBEs
home-based enterprises
ICT
Information and Communication Technologies
IDC
Industrial Development Corporation (of South Africa)
ILO
International Labour Organization
IMF
International Monetary Fund
IPPs
independent power producers
IS
Informal sector
ISI
Import Substitution Industrialisation
IT
Information Technology
ITS
intelligent transport system
j-vs
joint ventures
KTDA
Konza Technopolis Development Authority
LPG
Liquid Petroleum Gas
MLP
multi-level perspective
mt
metric tons
MTechs
medical technology companies
MVA
manufacturing value added
NDC
Nationally Determined Contribution
NEUPs
New Economic and Urban Powers
NGOs
Non-Governmental Organizations
NUMSA
National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa
NUPs
National Urban Policies
OECD
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
OPEC
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
PAGE
Partnership on Action for Green Economy
PPP
public-private partnership
PV
photo-voltaic
R&D
research and development
R&R
refurbishing and recycling
REDD+
Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (plus community benefit)
REIPP
Renewable Energy Independent Producers Programme (South Africa)
RETs
Renewable Energy Technologies
RVCs
Regional Value Chains
SACCO
Savings and Credit Cooperative Organization
SADC
Southern African Development Community
SAP
Structural Adjustment Programme
SAREBI
South African Renewable Energy Incubator
SARTEC
South African Renewable Energy Technology Centre
SCP
Sustainable Consumption and Production
SDGs
Sustainable Development Goals
SDI
Slum Dwellers International
SEZ
Special Economic Zone
SIM
subscriber identity module
SGR
Standard Gauge Railway
SME
small and medium enterprise
SNM
strategic niche management
SOE
State-Owned Enterprise
SSA
Sub-Saharan Africa
SSC
South-South Cooperation
STI
Science, Technology and Innovation
STS
Science, Technology and Society
TIS
technological innovation systems
TM
transition management
UAE
United Arab Emirates
UIS
urban informal sector
UK
United Kingdom
UN
United Nations
UNCTAD
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNDRR
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction
UNECA
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
UNEP
United Nations Environment Programme
UNESCO
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UN HABITAT
United Nations Human Settlement Programme
UNICEF
United Nations Children’s Fund
UNIDO
United Nations Industrial Development Organization
USA
United States of America
WASH
water, sanitation and hygiene
WCG
Western Cape Government
WCISP
Western Cape Industrial Symbiosis Programme
WCP
Western Cape Province
WHO
World Health Organization
WIEGO
Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing
ZAR
Zuid-Afrikaanse Rand
(South African rand)
Introduction: Urban Transitions in Africa
Since 2007, most of the world’s population has lived in urban settings for the first time in human history. Africa is the last (inhabited) predominantly rural continent, but it’s most rapidly urbanizing one. It is undergoing an “urban revolution” (Parnell and Pieterse 2014) unlike that seen anywhere else in the world for reasons that will be elaborated later. What this means for development outcomes and pathways is one of the most pressing questions facing the region.
Africa’s urbanization rate is rising steadily, and this will continue in coming decades (see Figure I.1). The geographical distribution of urban agglomerations is widespread, and some estimates suggest more than 50 cities on the continent have populations greater than one million people (see Figure I.2). Lagos and Kinshasa alone are thought to hold approximately 14 million people each (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2018), although some estimates put the formers’ population at over 20 million. Many cities in the region have populations which have grown rapidly in recent decades. For example, Kinshasa added 8.2 million people between 2000 and 2020; Lagos added 354,000 per annum, and a few even tripled their population numbers since 2000 (e.g., Luanda and Dar es Salaam). However, some of the fastest growth rates of all (7.3% per year 2015–2020) are registered for smaller urban settlements such as Gwagwalda (Nigeria), Kabinda (Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC]), and Mbouda (Cameroon) (Satterthwaite 2021). Some observers posit that thirteen of the world’s twenty largest cities will be in Africa by the end of this century, with Lagos potentially being the first city with more than 100 million people (Hoornweg and Pope 2017).1 As Figure I.2 demonstrates, urban growth will behighly significant throughout the region and not only in mega, primate, or large cities but in secondary agglomerations as well. By 2050 it is estimated that 70% of all Africans will be urbanites (Paller 2019).
Figure I.1 Urbanization trends by region 1950-2050.Source: UNDESA, 2019 / United Nations / Licensed under CC BY 3.0.
Figure I.2 Size and growth of Africa’s urban agglomerations 1990-2030. Data source: World Population Prospect-UNDESA GISS/ACS/ECA 2016; Original figure modified from United Nations Economic Commission for Africa [UNECA], 2017.
While official statistics on urban growth rates remain somewhat specious – based on inconsistent vital registration systems and irregular censuses, United Nations [UN] projections, and sample surveys – it is clear that municipal leaders and policymakers in most African cities face very significant challenges with respect to delivering vital collective goods and services (e.g., water, housing, energy). Common to almost all cities is the reality that municipal governments’ budgetary, bureaucratic, and technical capacities are insufficient to effectively manage the “urban revolution.” For example, only 5% of Kinshasa’s huge population has sewer connections and Lagos’ municipal leaders grappled with an estimated 1,353 (new) in-migrants per day in 2020–2021; giving a growth rate of approximately 3.5% per year (Macrotrends 2021a). In Nairobi, nearly 60% of the city’s population lives in informal settlements that occupy only 6% of the land area (Bird et al. 2017; Talukdar 2018). Providing housing, sanitation, education, and job opportunities for burgeoning populations is incredibly challenging, even if, as the case of Lagos, some cities have relatively/more effective urban governance systems (Cheeseman and de Gramont 2017).2
Historically, urbanization is most often a process associated with structural economic transformation, whereby countries shift from reliance on primary sectors, such as agriculture, to manufacturing and other secondary industries (e.g., construction) that benefit from the scale and scope economies that cities can provide. Such transitions can generate formal employment, create new trading opportunities, and base industries, and facilitate social upgrading in terms of improved incomes and access to services. In Africa today, however, generative pathways such as these remain generally elusive as the region has not experienced sufficient growth in manufacturing sectors and other value-adding industries capable of providing employment for rising urban populations; the discourse of “Africa Rising” notwithstanding (Carmody et al. 2020). Instead, urbanization without industrialization has become the norm in most of the region’s countries; marked, in particular, by an expanding informal economy where approximately 85% of Africans currently work (Choi et al. 2020). Furthermore, many African cities are “imploding” due to infrastructure overload, marked by a general lack, and highly uneven distribution of, basic services and collective goods (e.g., water, sanitation, housing).
Such conditions coexist with the increasing integration of Africa’s cities and economies into the world economy through trade, financial flows, information-communication technologies (ICTs), and migration. Economic growth has accompanied this process in most countries, but wealth and welfare distributions have been highly uneven. As Abdul Malik Simone (2001: p. 17) explains:
as the “insides” of African cities are more differentially linked to proliferating networks of accumulation and circulation operating at also increasingly differentiated scales, this uncertainty [for most of the population] is “materalized.”
In response to this precarity, networks of social support play a vital role, making people a type of “infrastructure” (Simone 2004). As one respondent for another study noted “we don’t have insurance here, you see, we make connections and friendships, it’s our insurance” (quoted in Joelsson 2021: p. 144). Social capital, relationships, and networks thus serve as vital means for the urban poor to manage material deprivations associated with uneven development, creating “a moral economy in the sense that the maintenance of social relationships often outweigh[s] the importance of profits” (Newell 2012: p. 3). Africa’s urban poor deliberately create their own social capital in work realms, where jobs must be “invented,” and reside in the region’s burgeoning informal economies (Grant 2010).
Simone (2022, p. 4) has more recently developed a more encompassing theory of the “surrounds” to better explain the urban milieu. This he says can be thought of as urbanization from the bottom up, most visible in urban peripheries undergoing (re)development. “These are spaces of intensive contiguity of the disparate – disparate forms, functions and ways of doing things.” They are a “mode of accompaniment” to more formal urbanism.
Paradoxically, however, African cities are also sites for hyperdifferentiation (Grant and Nijman 2004) and hyperaccumulation and wealth generation for elites and growing middle classes. As a result, many cities have experienced construction booms and real estate speculation in middle and high-income markets, physically manifest in the development of shopping malls, gated communities, and luxury housing projects that do little to ameliorate, or may even exacerbate, the material challenges facing the poor (Murphy and Carmody 2019; Murphy 2022), generally marked by extreme social and spatial polarization (Grant and Nijman 2004). For example, the redevelopment of Lagos’ urban waterfront was enabled in part by the partial destruction of Makoko, a floating slum built on stilts on an area partly reclaimed from the water by compacting sand, wood shavings, and rubbish. The results were devastating to some of the long-time residents of the settlement and fisherfolk such as Elebiomayo Folashade, who had been a relatively well-off woman living there:
They destroyed my boats and my husband’s boats and now I cannot pay the school fees, so the children have been withdrawn from school,” she says. “I am old – what am I going to do now?(Leithead 2017: p. 7).
The Lagos state government has had a “war” and “kick against indiscipline” policies directed against informal residents, such as the mass displacement at Oshodi market in 2009 (Omoegun 2015). Violent displacements of urban residents are often undertaken by the military or police, but also in some cases by armed private companies such as the infamous “Red Ants” in South Africa, allowing for “accumulation by repossession” (Cooper and Paton 2021). Such uneven developments are widening inequalities and further complicating attempts to improve the distribution of vital collective goods and services. Thus urban “renewal” and “urbicide” (Coward 2009) are often two sides of the same coin, despite the plaudits the urban management of Lagos has received (see Cheeseman and de Gramont 2017). However, displaced urban residents may also “take back” spaces from which they have been displaced through informal street trading, for example (Gillespie 2017). Residents in informal settlements may also appropriate or repurpose infrastructure to their own ends as well, so are far from completely powerless as is often depicted in the literature.
The circumstances facing Africa’s cities today can be understood in part as a symptom of what Fox and Goodfellow (2022) term “late urbanisation.” Countries and regions, especially in the Global South, that are urbanizing later than the core economies face particular challenges that were not the case for early urbanizers. Improved life expectancies and mobilities have greatly increased the pace and depth of population growth in cities, creating levels of congestion that make planning extremely difficult. Southern/African cities are also subject to the forces of hyperglobalization (especially financialization, informationalization, inward foreign direct investment [FDI], and the rise of platform economies) which play key, yet often volatile, roles in shaping urban development trajectories and possibilities.3 At the same time, new environmental and public-health threats – namely climate change, COVID-19, and other disease outbreaks – are adding additional, global, and existential challenges which will need to be managed/addressed in the coming years.
In the face of this complex array of issues and multiscalar drivers of urban change, many “late” African/Southern cities face governance challenges stemming from what Fox and Goodfellow (2022) term “centripetal state politics” that has situated control over urban development in the hands of national agencies, rather than municipal governments and the realities of entangled governance combining, market, formal, and informal logics (Stacey et al. 2021). The result of this is that municipal governments often lack the authority, political power, finance, and technical capabilities to plan and manage cities in ways that improve their internal workings to the benefit of all residents; forced instead to cede control to domestic and transnational actors that prioritize the growth and exchange value production potential of cities (i.e., what they can do to spur national development first and foremost). However, urbanization is also highly variegated across the continent, including within the same cities. For example, suburbs are complex places with their “economic multi-nodality, multi-directional movement of patterns and multiple governance arrangements, which complicate concepts of peripherality” (Meth et al. 2021: p. 34) and confound generalizations about urban Africa. The growth of Africa’s towns and smaller cities is also transforming the region. For example, as Kisumu, Kenya has grown, Nyamasaria has become part of the city. Mr. Aloo, an urban landowner, is building two houses on his land [in Nyamasaria]. He will rent them out, “hopefully to God-fearing people,” for US $62 each per month, “‘more than twice the going rate five years ago. Now it is urban,’ he says, ‘this is a prime area’” (The Economist 2023: p. 1).
All told, Africa’s urban transition is complicated and co-constituted by its entanglements with global geopolitical, geoeconomic, and “natural” forces that are combining to shape potential urbanization pathways and the prospects for sustainable development. As Horner and Hulme (2019) and Horner (2020) argue, the prospects for development are no longer simply a matter of international relations between countries (esp. North-South), but are instead determined in large part by diverse, global factors. Such meta-trends – including financialization, digitalization, climate change, China’s rise, migration, and South-South trade – have intensified the interconnectedness of places and created multipolar forms of globalization that transcend the North-South divides of old. In this context, the development prospects for cities are shaped by forces and contingencies well beyond their immediate control or the ambit of municipal planning strategies.
The rise of China and other new centers of global production, for example, has put competitive pressure on urban-based manufacturers at the same time as it has opened new sources of investment flows into African cities. Importantly, globalized production is implicated in the climate emergency the continent, and its cities, face. Globally uneven geographies of vaccination also contribute to the development of a COVID-19 “pandemic structure” (Carmody and McCann 2022), which allows for new variants to emerge, recursively shaping urbanization pathways. In terms of urban planning, traveling technocrats and consultants, mobile policies, and transnational relations play an increasingly important role in shaping urban governance. As Robinsion (2022: p. 90) notes:
In many poorer and middle-income cities, powerful external agents, such as the World Bank, international NGOs and visiting consultants are an important part of any “urban regime.”
In this context, established (western based) teleologies and stage models (e.g., Walt Rostow’s Non-Communist Manifesto) for translating urbanization into widespread, distributive, and sustainable forms of development will not offer magic bullets for late urbanizers in the region. Needed instead are novel, experimental, and/or creative approaches to urban planning and management that balance the desire for economic growth with the need to manage/reduce congestion, inequality, and poverty levels to the benefit of all residents. The development of such strategies demands multidimensional perspectives on African cities and their functions internally and externally, and comparative insights from across the continent in order to determine the drivers, geographies, and contingent features that can enable (or prevent) more sustainable and just urban transitions.
This book seeks to contribute to this agenda through a focus on two of the most significant urban questions facing Africa today. First, what do current meta-trends (e.g., global geopolitical and economic changes, the climate crisis, COVID-19) mean for African cities and the continent’s development more broadly? Second, can African cities help generate widespread developmental transformations or will their growth simply reinforce “parasitic,” unequal, and/or extractive relations with and from rural areas and to the global economy?
To answer these questions, we theorize and empirically assess the tendencies, nature, diversity, and complexity of urbanization on the continent. Our approach centers on a novel conceptualization of cities that views them as sociotechnical systems constituted through three overlapping sociotechnical regimes: those of production, consumption, and infrastructure. Scholarship on sociotechnical systems encompasses a diverse field of scholars and practitioners and we add to this body of knowledge with urban African insights from a spatial perspective; contributing significantly to urban-economic geography and the emergent subfield on the geography of sustainability transitions (see Sengers and Raven 2015; Truffer et al. 2015). Our analytical framework integrates concepts and concerns from economic geography (e.g., transnational couplings, agglomeration, exchange value), urban geography (e.g., regime theory, governance, use value of cities), sociotechnical transitions scholarship (e.g., sociotechnical regimes), and practice-based epistemologies (see Jones and Murphy 2011) in order to examine and compare African cities in relation to different functional realms (e.g., consumer markets, manufacturing facilities), and with regard to the role that (geo)economic/political relations and multiscalar forces are playing in shaping their evolution. In doing so, we seek to provide a more holistic perspective on African cities today, one that shifts debates/dialogues on the urban question beyond one-dimensional perspectives (e.g., the need to develop agglomeration economies) by capturing the links between production, consumption, and infrastructure-related activities and their governance: the central question being what Africa’s ongoing urban transition means for development across the continent, and within its countries and cities.
Urban Transition Trajectories in Africa: Generative or Parasitic?
Urban areas are also highly monetized, and the lives especially of the poorest residents are determined almost entirely by market forces. Money thus becomes the focus of the city dweller’s attention: the means by which relationships are negotiated, the measure of success, and a necessary condition for well-being(Stark and Teppo 2022: p. 1).
Africa’s ongoing urban transition is a key driver of development trends in the region, manifest in rapid demographic shifts and associated major socioeconomic changes (AfDB et al., 2016). As cities grow, rents increase, reducing returns to labor and (non-rentier) capital and compromising more distributed consumption and productive investment (Obeng-Odoom 2016). Nonetheless, urbanization itself accounted for roughly a third of economic growth on the continent over the past two decades (OECD, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, & African Development Bank 2022). Thus, critical questions arise as to whether or not generative urbanization is occurring in Africa.
As urbanization accelerates, many cities have become more deeply enmeshed in global networks of finance, trade, information, and geopolitics that significantly shape the nature and implications of globalization for national development – indeed some argue that this is a form of distantiated, planetary urbanization (Brenner 2015), although others argue that African urbanites still view them as bounded places (Schindler 2017). Cities that are able to more successfully integrate themselves into these networks do so through a “multidimensional infrastructure of connectivity” (Castells 2010: p. 2741) that facilitates the attraction of investment and industrial upgrading, and enhances produced exchange values of the city, while retaining value locally in the form of improved collective goods (e.g., schools, infrastructure) and widespread welfare distribution. Successful integration is largely dependent on particular forms of “spatial performativity” (Aberg and Becker 2021), social connections, and forward-thinking policy choices rather than a more passive dynamic of “natural outgrowth” through factor endowments. Generative dynamics such as these are a critical means through which the growth of cities can translate into widespread/distributive development within them and nationally.
Despite the arguments of urbanization advocates or boosters (World Bank 2009), high rates of chronic poverty and rising inequality levels have accompanied the growth and spread of cities in Africa (Beegle et al. 2016). As such, significant questions remain as to whether and how a generalized generative urbanization dynamic can emerge so that the region’s cities serve as central drivers of progressive socioeconomic transformations. At present, urban transitions appear to be more “parasitic” in nature as cities serve as key nodes or hubs for processes of extraversion – the extraction of wealth and “surplus value” from rural areas or offshore through unequal exchange or exploitative trade relations (e.g., see Hoselitz 1955; Lipton 1977; Smith 1987; Bayart and Ellis 2000; Wuyts 2001; Murphy and Carmody 2019).4 Such parasitism, sometimes associated with the “plunder economy” (Cramer 2006), has been a feature of African underdevelopment for centuries. For example, the Royal African Company, which was founded by the future British king, James II, paid 300% dividends on the 70,000 slaves it shipped between 1680 and 1688, even though only two-thirds of them made it alive (Bassey 2012), contributing to urban development and industrialization in Britain (Williams 1994).
Surplus value is being further extracted offshore through intraversion (Murphy and Carmody 2015): a process through which cities serve as gateways for the flow or dumping of imported goods into domestic markets, to the detriment of endogenous industrial development. Intraversion may be further facilitated by infrastructure development such as when foreign aid or loans (e.g., through China’s Belt and Road Initiative [BRI]) are used principally for logistics hubs (e.g., ports) and transportation projects (e.g., railways, motorways) that expand, and speed-up import flows. Parasitism is also associated with the “splintering” of urban infrastructures, labor markets, and services such that there are high levels of inequality with respect to employment, essential utilities, and social services (Graham and Marvin 2001; Jaglin 2008; Swilling 2014). Splintering occurs when there is insufficient redistribution or investment in infrastructure and social services such that the poorest urbanites and recent migrants are forced to rely on informal, ad hoc, inefficient, and low-quality alternatives to meet their basic needs. In Africa today, parasitic urbanization appears to be the norm, marked by a threefold dynamic of extraversion, intraversion, and splintering such that urban population and economic growth occur at the expense or neglect of endogenous industrial development, widespread formal employment opportunities, and a more even, just, and adequate distribution of collective goods and basic services.
Through our sociotechnical systems approach we assess the generative or parasitic tendencies of African cities today as being determined by the development trajectories of their production, consumption, and infrastructure regimes. These regimes are constituted by/through forms of governance, embedded practices, inter-regime interdependencies, and multiscalar relations that shape the pace and direction of urban development through the creation of exchange value in global, regional, and national markets, and use value locally through the provisioning of collective goods, services, amenities, and the consumption of nonbasic goods. Generative urbanization becomes possible when regimes are practiced, governed, networked, and interrelated in ways that progressively transform the immanent (structural, relational) conditions that produce negative development outcomes (e.g., neocolonialism, extraversion, unequal exchange, and/or parasitic accumulation via kleptocracy and a process of “looting” that links African’s political elites to financial and technocratic expertise abroad that sustains financial outflows from the region, and in the worst cases, drains economies (Bond 2006).
Beyond the question of whether cities are driving progressive or regressive forms of development, this book is timely given the ongoing evolution of the global economy, the rise of new geopolitical powers (e.g., China, India), and other global drivers of socioeconomic restructuring (e.g., climate change, COVID-19, the fourth industrial revolution [4IR]). These meta-trends are profoundly changing the nature, meaning, and developmental significance of cities globally; highlighting the importance of urban processes for “globalized” socioeconomic transformations, for better or worse. For example, we are seeing the emergence of new urban forms such as open, local distributed manufacturing (i.e., local manufacturing) as a form of decentralized production practiced by enterprises using a network of geographically dispersed facilities coordinated using ICT (Wells et al. 2020; Corsni and Moultrie 2021). Transformations such as these offer the potential for African cities and economies to forge new developmental pathways if the forces driving them (e.g., geopolitical, technological, financial) can be managed in ways that can create transnational couplings that capture and distribute value in the continent.
In short, the question of how to make cities work better as drivers of socioeconomic and spatial wealth distribution is an existential one for the hundreds of millions of Africans who have yet to reap the material rewards meant to accompany economic globalization. This, in essence, is one of the pressing urban questions that binds the chapters of this book together, one that demands multiple focal areas, perspectives, and comparisons in order to begin to understand the challenges to, opportunities for, and effective policies to guide development trajectories.
Assessing the Urbanization-Globalization-Industrialization Nexus
There has been substantial debate in the literature in recent years as to what constitutes “the urban.” Some argue that what happens in, and decisions taken in, cities largely determine what occurs in rural areas globally (for example, whether or not to establish a new mine or plantation) and that consequently we live in an era of “planetary urbanisation” (Brenner 2015). Thus, there is no neat division between the urban and the rural, as has been posited in much of the earlier literature, and in many cases urban and proximate rural hinterlands morph into peri-urban environments, where it is unclear whether urbanization is extending into rural spaces or urban areas are being ruralized or processes are being recombined? The urban is instead what we view as a context constituted not only by actors, institutions, and processes in city sites and locations, but also by multiscalar forces and translocal relations that shape urban development pathways in significant ways.
As noted above, urbanization has been historically intertwined with economic development as the productive sectors in cities “pull” rural people in for employment opportunities. More recently, however, urban population growth has been driven principally by a demographic boom in cities (i.e., natural increase) and in-migration of rural people in response to crises and livelihood struggles across much of the continent (Moyo 2019); not formal employment opportunities. The net result is that growing numbers of urban residents live in poverty, with more than half forced to dwell in slums or informal settlements (Tusting et al. 2019), even as housing conditions by and large improved on foot of generally revived economic growth associated with the recent (2003–2014) commodity boom or super-cycle.5 In short, urban production realms (e.g., manufacturing industries and urban real estate) are out-of-sync with the demographic changes at work across the region.
At the same time, Africa’s consumers have become increasingly powerful and attractive to foreign investors, especially in retail sectors. Such improvements, however, have been highly uneven in their realization. Most African cities have experienced the growth of middle classes, building booms, and foreign direct investment (FDI) into speculative real estate markets; forces that have improved housing conditions for the wealthy and many middle-class residents while doing little to address informality and poverty for the majority of people (Grant 2009). Such trends have thus exacerbated inequality and fragmented many cities into enclaves of wealth and accumulation, and areas of poverty and immiseration, sometimes expressed in extreme social and spatial polarization (Unequal Scenes 2021). Gillespie and Schindler (2022) relate Africa’s infrastructure-led urbanization (in Ghana and Kenya) to the emergence of vast extended urban landscapes characterized by the outward expansion of major cities along transport corridors, the integration of national urban systems into transnational urban regions, and the rapid urbanization of peri-urban and rural areas. They highlight the case of the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor, an extended urban axis straddling five West African states along a coastal highway, as well as a different spatial formation in East Africa - the Lamu Port, South Sudan, Ethiopia Transport Corridor – with a north–south axis connecting Nairobi and Ethiopia and an east–west axis linking Lamu on the coast with South Sudan.
Demographic change in African cities has also been driven by the “pull” factor of better infrastructure. On the continent 40% of city dwellers have access to improved sanitation and 87% to improved water sources as compared to 23 and 56% respectively in rural areas (Cartwright et al. 2018). Yet, infrastructure provisioning remains woeful inadequate in most cities where poor housing conditions (esp. in slums), traffic congestion, inadequate basic services (e.g., water, sanitation, energy), and polluted environments ensnare the majority of residents. Beyond continued, rapid population growth, these challenges have been and are being magnified by the ongoing global climate and public health/COVID-19 crises which are making living conditions even more difficult for the poor (Moore 2015; Wilkinson 2020).
How can we make sense of these developments? Urbanization is a continuing, and in Africa, accelerating meta-trend, but what does it mean for the future of the continent? Should we expect that development pathways will advance in lock-step with growing cities and the scope and scale economies that accompany them? The mutually reinforcing westernized teleology of the urbanization-industrialization-development nexus is deeply embedded in the ideations, assumptions, and policy frameworks of mainstream development institutions (e.g., World Bank 2009) even though such frameworks often fail to account for the situatedness of Southern cities in the current era of (de)globalization and late urbanization. As noted above, Africa’s cities and urban transitions are being heavily influenced by other meta-trends that are transforming the international system and challenging developmentalist models that privilege the role that internal/national factors and forces (e.g., fiscal and monetary policy, institutions, markets) play in creating the necessary conditions for growth and distribution. These trends include deindustrialization, informalization, financialization, 4IR, the continuing rise of China, and global environmental change; topics that will be dealt with in this book.
In relation to these meta-trends paradoxes abound. For example, because of new technology, the growth in demand for fin-tech (financial technology, such as mobile payments systems) has sky-rocketed. Sub-Saharan Africa now boasts four fin-tech “unicorns” – companies valued at over a billion US dollars each – with Flutterwave from Nigeria being the latest of these (Collins 2021; Lewis 2021a).6 African cities such as Lagos and Nairobi are significant sites of tech-driven innovation (Oranye 2016), which has imbricated them as nodes in global innovation networks (GINs) (Cooke 2017), but without making a significant difference to local urban social challenges (namely employment generation) as these cities or their firms are not articulated with GINs in straightforward or unproblematic ways. For example, Africa’s most iconic “unicorn” – Jumia, the Lagos-based online marketing company – has struggled in recent years as its losses rose 34% (to $246m) in 2019, the eighth straight year without profits (BBC 2020). Its stock price on the New York Stock Exchange subsequently collapsed and it was forced to close operations in three African countries. As is also the case with Flutterwave, whose headquarters are in San Francisco, critics have questioned how African Jumia is. As noted in a recent BBC article:
Jumia’s public claim to African-ness is tenuous because its headquarters are in Berlin, Germany, its Technology and Product Team in Porto, Portugal, and its senior leadership in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Critics see it as an exploitative Western company that conveniently co-opted an African identity to extract as much value as possible and profit off the continent(BBC 2020).
While there are other widely noted tech start-ups out of Nigeria, such as Andela (an accelerator for software developers) (Anwar and Graham 2022), an additional concern that relates to urbanization is the fact that only about 10% of African gross domestic product (GDP) is produced by the manufacturing sector. Some (e.g., Choi et al. 2020) view this as an advantage given the rising competitive displacement of labor by robotics and other technologies of the 4IR; circumstances that will thus be less pronounced in Africa than in other world regions. However, existing economic and industrial marginalization (deindustrialization in some cases) may simply be compounded, resulting in further urban involution (Armstrong and McGee 1968) as rates of investment remain low and labor continues to be absorbed in burgeoning informal economies marked by low levels of productivity (Myabe 2019).7 However, informal enterprises in some instances operate with “unfair” advantages (avoiding regulations, lack of obligations to pay taxes, and regulated wages) over small formal firms that produce for domestic markets, thus further inhibiting the latter’s development (Mbaye et al. 2020).
In South Africa, generally taken to be the most industrially advanced country on the continent, investment as a proportion of GDP fell from over 34% in 1981 to less than 19% in 2017 (World Bank 2021a), despite the purported “Africa Rising” phenomenon which was meant to be transforming the continent economically (Taylor 2016). This decline in the relative level of investment is reflective of the largely autonomous development of the trade and financial sectors or circuits of capital on the continent. This development is centered on cities as centers of trade and finance, and associated capital leakages through imports and financial flows (Carmody 1998), now increasingly facilitated through ICTs. Nairobi, for example, is taking inspiration from Dubai by focusing on financial services, real estate, and consumption as the desired engines for growth (Upadhyaya 2020). Such strategies can enable short-run, often speculation-driven accumulation by elites and foreign investors, but they do not provide the foundations for long-term industrial transformation. In fact, gross capital formation for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) was 22% in 2019, compared to 44% in 1981 – a halving (World Bank 2021b).8 Moreover, such strategies will not enable the sub-continent to move from factor- to investment- and innovation-driven growth, claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Consequently, while Africa is increasingly an information society, it is not a knowledge economy (Carmody 2013), with profound implications for its cities.
Ultimately, productive economic transformation of Africa’s cities is unlikely absent significant gains in quality jobs in the formal sector, and/or targeted policy supports to enhance the skills, capabilities, and technologies of groups of workers and managers in the informal economy. Such policies would also need to tackle the structural drivers of informality (e.g., welfare systems, labor regulations) and create more inclusive/productive economies through digital, political, and grassroots innovations (esp. in basic services such as water, sanitation, energy, and transport) that can help to pull urban residents out of survival-driven, precarious, and informal livelihood strategies. The combined emphasis would thus need to address issues of the exchange value of the goods and services that cities produce/provide, and the use value of the city for all residents – manifest in the amenities and basic services available to them. As we elaborate below, our view is that it is vital to examine cities in a manner that integrates these concerns through a three-dimensional perspective focused on the operation, governance, and interrelationships of/between what we describe as production, consumption, and infrastructure regimes in African cities.
Structure of the Book
The remainder of the book is structured into ten chapters that offer an in-depth analysis of urban transitions in Africa today. Chapter 1 explores different conceptions of the urban and their development in, and applicability to, African experiences to argue the case for a new theoretical approach to urban development. After laying out the dimensions, nature and scale of urbanization on the continent, it then develops the theoretical framework for analysis which threads through the book: that cities are sociotechnical systems constituted through three overlapping regimes related to production, infrastructure, and consumption. These regimes are institutionalized, materialized, embedded, and practiced in ways that shape development outcomes and the prospects for progressive urban transitions. In African cities, regimes are often fragmented, heterogeneous, and subject to informalization; characteristics that challenge their developmental potential in highly significant ways. We elaborate this theoretical framing in this chapter and the remainder of book analyzes diverse thematic areas through the lens of this framework.
Chapter 2 explores the nature of urban-industrial development in Africa today, focusing particularly on production regimes. Manufacturing is historically the key sector in the transformation of (urban) economies onto higher productivity/value-added paths that are generative of distributed welfare gains. However, the nature of African cities and their production regimes has been heavily shaped by their colonial and postcolonial history. Under colonialism cities served primarily administrative functions, as centers of political control, and as trans-shipment points for exports of raw materials and imports of manufactured goods.9
