Paper long abstract:

Most African economies appear to be experiencing jobless, non-inclusive growth, based on the extractive sector which provides increased revenue but only a few opportunities for decent work.. The austerity measures of structural adjustment in the 1980s and 90s brought about a general deterioration in labor relations, a drastic reduction in formal sector employment, and a trend towards greater informalization of economic activities. Almost everywhere in African cities today the informal sector constitutes a dominant part of the indigenous private sector. UN-Habitat and ILO estimate that between 50 and 70 per cent of city dwellers in Sub-Saharan Africa work in the informal sector. Although critics dismiss the sector as a temporary "chaotic jumble of unproductive activities", and an obstacle to the development of a modern economy, the fact is that the informal economy has come to stay, and has helped to promote local entrepreneurship, employment and income, and thus to alleviate poverty and provide some degree of social protection. The main policy challenge is how best to support and regulate this sector in a way that translates the enterprise, resourcefulness and innovation of its operators into higher productivity and income, while at the same time ensuring a healthy and socially acceptable environment.

The paper examines how the informal economy has developed in Nigeria and some other African countries over the last 50 years; the constraints imposed on informal economic activities by official prejudice and neglect, and the main elements of a strategy for informal sector promotion and management. It underscores the importance of appropriate macro-economic and legislative reforms to remove pointless restrictions which place people in the sector at a disadvantage. As Africa seeks to attain the Sustainable Development Goals, greater priority should be given to the vital resource in the informal sector for greater national self-reliance and more inclusive development. We need to strengthen the institutions that provide small amounts of credits and other forms of financial and business services to this sector; programmes that promote skills training for unemployed youths; and policies that foster complementary links between the formal and informal economies. Those who work in the informal sector should be encouraged and enabled to upgrade, better organize and self-regulate themselves in order to become more productive and competitive, and engage more constructively with government and other development agencies.

Paper short abstract:

Makoko is a major slum in Lagos where residents live in shanties relying on polluted water for their livelihoods. This intervention prepares the children within Makoko for mental reformation towards physical and social change through identifying methods within the conscious creative spaces.

Paper long abstract:

One of the reasons Makoko community has become popular with influx of national and international visitors is not a condition of it's state of art technology or it's tourist attractions. This area is regarded as one of the major slums in Lagos with well over 300, 000 occupants living in shanties constructed on stilts, and surviving round the year on proceeds from the polluted water upon which this community occupy. This though may be a resultant of an uncontrolled urban migration, the inhabitants of this community are bona fide citizens of the country, yet, they constantly face threats of eviction, water pollution and diseases, insecurity, and marginalization by the Lagos state government who has withdrawn all infrastructural support for this community because the area is supposedly believed to constitute a nightmare for the Lagos envisaged mega city. It is in view of this that this study observes that the Lagos state government has failed in her responsibility to the people, hence the need to employ a qualitative ethnographic research as a catalyst for social change. Studying about these people, there cultural belief, practices and identities and than creating theatrical structures with children between ages 5 and 15 to act as the mouth pieces and catalysts for change and reformation within the Makoko slum constitutes the feat of the research. The study pivoted on social activism and artivism as it's theoretical points of reference employs the performance interventional method in quarrying the socio-cultural evidential abnormalities and evaluating children's participatory activism. The study observes as findings that the Makoko children in spite of there vastness in cultural histories are beginning to divert there energies towards negativity, laziness and violence ridden culture. The study also shows that the artistic ingenuity of the children living within this region remains untapped particularly with level of artistic skills and inventiveness exhibited during rehearsal for performance. Hence, there is need to redirect there energies artistically through the employment of an art intervention towards psycho-Artistic reformation. This intervention therefore becomes expedient in preparing the children for mental reformation towards physical and social change through identifying methods and the unconscious creative spaces they negotiate daily in there bid for sustainability in the face of scarcity and deficient infrastructure

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Paper long abstract:

There is unprecedented growth in the urban population in Nigeria, leading to ecological constraints. Lagos is one of the fastest-growing states in Nigeria with young people make up to a third of people living in the slums. Interestingly, music and dance have become a tool for economic sustainability and communal cohesion within the slums have produced some of the best musicians in the country using music and dance as an effective means of economic empowerment and cultural rejuvenation. This study, therefore, interrogates the youths in selected slums and their 'well-being' in the growing community. Furthermore, it investigates the numerous music and dance groups being created and managed by young people in the area and how they have impacted greatly on the economic development of the slums. The study also examines ways in which young people are mentoring other young folks and helping them to discover and develop their innate talents in the community thereby pushing to build sustainable alternatives. The study highlights ways by which the youths in the slum are seeking to build bridges between the indigenous past, and the urban present that the youths have been used to as a result of the effect of globalization and the social media. Four communities are selected for the study. They are Bariga, Ijegun, Ajegunle, and Mushin community. The study also intends to investigate some project centers in the selected slums. It will also investigate numerous music groups, dance troupes, Music Studios, Dj spots, and art centers in the area that have been set up by young people in the areas. Through a detailed ethnographic study of the young musicians, dancers, and troupes among the group, the study reveals how the young people are appropriating the power of the arts for self-development and sustainability. Furthermore, it will show how the indigenous music and tradition in the slums are being practiced, invigorated and sustained through a continuous process of self- discovery.

Paper long abstract:

Having official land rights and secured land tenure by informal settlement dwellers in global south cities are very fundamental but are also complicated, controversial and often less understood. This paper argues the need for a retrospective approach to the analysis and understanding of the current dynamics in informal settlements using the theoretical framework of historical institutionalism especially the concepts of path dependence and critical junctures. Using Mpape (one of the biggest slums of Abuja, Nigeria) as a case, this study provides a better understanding to why land rights and tenure security in Abuja informal settlements are so controversial and yet to be resolved 42 years after the creation of Abuja as the new capital city of Nigeria. In addition to the fundamental socio-political and power dynamics in Abuja land governance, the 1978 Land use Act, resettlements based on the 1979 Abuja master plan, massive demolitions of informal settlements between 2000 to 2007, and the attempted demolition of Mpape in 2012 are considered to be critical moments that have defined the current dynamics in the governance of Mpape and the contentious politicking over land rights and tenure security.

Keywords

Informal Settlements; Land rights and Tenure Security; Governance; Historical Institutionalism- Path-Dependence and Critical Junctures.

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Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the role of what I call 'social infrastructuring' in the daily life of residents of the fringes of Namibia's capital city, Windhoek. By this, I refer to the ways in which various forms of social connectedness contribute to provision and how such forms in turn link with official material and administrative infrastructures.

Conventionally, the concept of social infrastructures has referred to the administrative and technical solutions that provide welfare and social connectedness. A contrasting and more recent conceptualization has focused on how sociality and human activity themselves serve as infrastructure, often in contexts where official infrastructure in the material and technical sense might be lacking.

Instead of treating material or technological infrastructures as 'things' that either work or don't and social ones as relationships and networks that enable lives in infrastructurally lacking urban environments, I am referring to social infrastructuring as the process where the two constantly flow into each other - the interconnectedness of particular forms of sociality and different kinds of technical infrastructures. This convergence is the focus of this paper - the ways in which existing infrastructural forms with their constraining tendencies, deficits and opportunities contribute to socialities and how the latter in turn produce ways of using, modifying and innovating material infrastructures.

The situation in Windhoek is particularly well-suited for this task, as it faces the infrastructural challenges familiar from literature on African urbanities, yet is not makeshift, unpredictable and ungovernable to the extent stressed by some of this literature. Structuration and fragmentation, construction and deterioration, order and disorder, the durable and the provisional constantly mingle in this context.

One important implication of this is the centrality of coproduced infrastructures where official and unofficial efforts meet in numerous ways, for example in relation to water, electricity, access to land, construction or security. Another is that the connections between technical, administrative and social infrastructures have political and governmental implications. Social infrastructuring concerns not just the conditions of meeting daily needs but also the construction of society and the political community. It concerns what could be called the morality of infrastructure, or infrastructure as an arena of claims, negotiations and struggles over decency, citizenship, and authority.

The paper is based on fieldwork conducted in 2016 and 2019.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses everyday practices in dealing with Covid-19 through a conceptual perspective of dealing with uncertainty and aspiring futures. With this Kenyan-German research we want to contribute to African knowledge production on navigating uncertainty and innovating amidst crises.

Paper long abstract:

Together with the Covid-19 pandemic, the containment measures installed in Kenya starting in March 2020, have produced severe challenges to economic and social life within Kenyan society. As dealing with "Corona" has strongly impacted the informal economy, lives in the poorer estates of urban centres are immediately affected. Whereas much attention is given to slums in African capitals like Accra, Cape Town or Nairobi, this research looks into the everyday lives of slum dwellers in Nakuru, an uprising city in Kenya's Rift Valley.

Everyday life in Nakuru has been transforming following the COVID-19 containment measures enforced by the national government and city councils in March 2020. These measures set in motion transformations that span across various networks and scales of the urban and include household, family, and other intimate relationships. We want to explore urban uncertainties and innovations in COVID-19 Kenya by engaging with perspectives on the post-colonial city and postcolonial feminist citizenship that allow to "disarticulate the city as the site of masculinist and colonial publics" (Varma 2012: 2).

Weaving together threads of empirical work and conceptual ideas allows us to analyse current practices of navigating uncertainty, of aspiring and innovating amidst crises in Nakuru.

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Paper long abstract:

Cape Town located in the south-west of South Africa, is the capital city of the Western Cape region. Cape Town includes many neighbourhoods, which are spreading across the Cape Flats plain from the Central Business District. The identity and organization of these neighbourhoods - including the City Bowl and its suburbs - is linked to land planning policies that were implemented during the Apartheid regime (1948-1991). At that time, many forced expropriations led to the emergence of informal settlements. Established following the creation of townships during the Apartheid, informal settlements are the place of long-standing marginalization in terms of access to infrastructure (water and electricity, waste management), transportation (metro, buses, taxis), health services and education. These residential areas are distinct from squats by definition temporary. In fact, some people have lived in informal settlements for generations, including people waiting for houses promised by the African National Congress (ANC) through the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP, 1994).

Following this planning policies, socio-economic opportunities are concentrated in key urban centres around which informal communities have emerged. But while some informal settlements are located near wealthy areas, others are embedded in areas of poverty. Near the most distant neighbourhoods from the city (City Bowl), inhabitants of informal settlements still maintain a sense of social community despite poverty and inter-ethnic conflicts. Indeed, populations of these areas live in deplorable sanitary and hygienic conditions, while being part of the urban and economic dynamics of the region. Furthermore, despite many public and private programs to reduce inequalities, the affordable private and public housing sector are experiencing a shortage that continues to grow. Informal entrepreneurs and inhabitants themselves find short and long term solutions in order to live in a place they can call home. NGOs and the government support informal settlements' residents, in order to alleviate their experience of marginalization. Among actors involved in this field, IKHAYALAMI provides long-term and emergency solutions for the housing of the poor and marginalized people of Cape Town's informal settlements. This proposal explores the various outcomes of such activities, it is the result of a 4 months' research-action work in the townships for the needs of my final year of studies internship.

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Paper long abstract:

The rise of neoliberal globalization in Africa over the past few decades has created such profound social inequality for the urban poor in metropolitan centers such as Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos, and Abuja. The neoliberal state, deficient in its ability to provide social amenities for the urban poor, has lost credibility in the eyes of its residents who are forced to invent creative ways of transforming inequality. As class inequality between rich and poor widens within the urban space, it sharpens the political consciousness of the urban poor, which in turn leads to concerns about economic participation. The consciousness of social vulnerability inspires the urban poor to invent alternative models of social transformation. Drawing on the backdrop of decolonization thinking, this paper examines how slum communities innovate and invent creative processes to overcome the inequalities that urbanization generates in Africa. The first objective of this paper is to critically examine how class, privileges and cultural positions determine how we know Africa and the dominant narratives we construct about inequality in Africa's urban spaces. The second objective is to decolonize the dominant narratives constructed about violence in Africa's urban spaces, by seeking to know Africa from the inventive potential of urban slums. In seeking to know Africa from a perspective that mirrors the continent's potential rather than miseries, I synthesize insights from constructivism and decolonization theory to understand slums as centers of innovation and slum dwellers as significant agents in the creative processes of urban transformation. I theorize these social processes of transformation against the argument that slums are not just a representation of poverty and violence but ecologies of creativity, innovation and ingenuity that mirror the inventive potential of Africa's urban spaces. Much attention is devoted to understanding the extent to which these inventions are recognized and incorporated into mainstream policy.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the contribution of slums to the development of the South African jurisprudence on the right to housing and beyond with the birth of the notion of "meaningful engagement". The end of the apartheid regime in South Africa was characterised by the adoption of a constitution hailed as transformative because of its objectives seeking to turn the society into an equalitarian. Yet although the constitution provides for human rights including the right to housing, many south African still do not have a roof over their heads. As a result, they erect informal settlements when possible or occupy abandoned buildings to survive. This led to the proliferation of slums in the country. In the process, slum dwellers often erect their shacks illegally on private properties. Illegal occupiers of these spaces often face eviction or threat of eviction by the property owners of the states. It is on this backdrop that in the course of an eviction process in 2007, the Constitutional Court issued an interim order that directed the parties "to engage with each other meaningfully" and to report back to the Court on the results of the engagement between them. This was the birth of the concept of "meaningful engagement" which does not allow the eviction of slum dwellers without engaging with them or providing alternative accommodations. This concept grew beyond the right to housing to become an essential part of the South African jurisprudence.

The aim of this paper is to unveil the role of slums in developing the South African jurisprudence with the notion of meaningful engagement. To this, it will examine the seminal case known as Occupiers of 51 Olivia Road, Berea Township and 197 Main Street Johannesburg v City of Johannesburg (2008 3 SA 208 (CC). It will use a qualitative research method to make it case and demonstrate that slums dwellers were instrumental in development of the concept of "meaningful engagement" which has now cascaded down to various parts of the south African jurisprudence. Ultimately, the paper argues that slum dwellers are well part and parcel of the society and have a contribution to make as they help transform South African law of eviction and beyond.

Paper long abstract:

Economic opportunities during colonization led to an increased migration from villages to cities. In the last century, this move from rural areas to cities has been accompanied with a fast growing population within slums, leading to youth becoming the dominant group in African societies. In such overpopulated cities, youth are unable to find work and remain stuck in a situation of scarcity, called waithood.

As their desperation for escaping the waithood grows, opposition parties utilize the very frustration of these groups to pressure the government. Instead of working on solutions, governing powers often respond by using force to silence those opposition movements. With no options left, frustration has transformed into sudden violent uprisings and political instability, sometimes lingering for many years. Since colonial times, fast urbanization is perceived as a threat to peace in Africa, leading to a negative cycle of violence.

However, there might be an alternative. A Boserupian approach proposes that scarcity as a result of population growth forces people to innovate. Through innovation, youth may be able to escape their waithood. This decolonizing approach could lead to asking different questions about population growth.

Such moments of either violent instability or peaceful innovation lead to breaking points in history. What often follows is a set of institutions or repeating patterns of behaviour. These patterns determine historical trajectories to either more instability, or progress. In order to predict what political impact urbanization has on people who live in suburbs, one needs an inside-out perspective from these youth in waithood.

This paper is about peaceful political innovations of Ugandan youth in waithood in the slums of Kampala.

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