Paper short abstract:

This panel uses political settlements analysis to explain why the underlying political conditions for rapid progress on the numerous current and future crises facing African cities are absent, arguing for a rethinking of ambitions and approaches.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, political settlements analysis has proved an influential approach, generating theory and evidence that helps to explain elite commitment and state capability for inclusive development, as well as providing pointers on how to achieve economic and social progress in a range of country contexts. However, with rare exceptions, it has not been applied to problems of urban development. The African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) set out to change that, deploying a political settlements framework in seven urban development ‘domains’ across a range of African cities.

Looking across our cases, ACRC did find some isolated examples of progress on a small or tentative scale in some of its cities. In general, however, the combination of strong elite commitment and state capability that would be conducive to effective and inclusive urban development, was lacking. This creates a conundrum for urban reformers, inasmuch as the scale of the challenges facing African cities is huge, yet the underlying political settlement conditions for dealing decisively with them are absent. We argue that this should prompt a re-imagining of what it is possible to achieve developmentally in most African urban contexts, as well as a rethinking of how to achieve it. Neither conventional decentralisation nor recentralisation reforms will work. Conversely, creating or expanding pockets of effectiveness by forging and nurturing multi-stakeholder alliances around specific urban development challenges, is a more likely pathway to progress.

Paper short abstract:

Compares how national and city level politics interact with the politics of informal settlements to shape development processes and outcomes in two different types of political settlement.

Paper long abstract:

Within the growing literature on the politics of Africa’s cities, there is relatively little work that tracks how political factors operate across multiple scales to shape development possibilities. Urban contexts are characterised by multiple, overlapping forms of politics and authority that operate (inter alia) at national, city and community levels. In this paper we trace how the prospects for development within informal settlements in Freetown and Kampala, the capitals of Sierra Leone and Uganda respectively, are shaped by the interaction of political factors and processes across different scales. Drawing on primary research we investigate several cases of everyday realities of survival and contestation within informal settlements – including market operations, land disputes and responses to disasters and social service deficits – to gain insights into these processes. In each case, we find that the capacity and commitment of local actors to navigate development challenges within informal settlements is profoundly influenced by national level politics and how this interacts with city-level politics and governance. From a comparative perspective, the specific configurations of power within each national settlement – dispersed amongst competing factions in Sierra Leone and more concentrated around Uganda’s populist ruler – flows directly into the local politics of development to define the processes and possibilities for transformative change in each city’s informal settlements. We explore the implications that this has for theorising the politics of development in Africa’s cities and the prospects for progressive urban reform therein.

Paper short abstract:

This Paper examines the politics behind the construction of high rise housing in informal settlements through tokenistic relationships that lead to tussling between the essentialness or the expediency of housing in informal settlements.

Paper long abstract:

Over the years, informal settlements in Nairobi have experienced serious fire outbreaks These have been caused by negligence, dangerous electrical connections, and the poor use of cooking appliances. This has led to significant loss of life, property, and livelihoods. The precarious state of housing is one of the major causes of poor living standards in informal settlements. The politics of housing in informal settlements is shaped by tokenistic relations between the locals, politicians, and government administrators. The more powerful and well-connected individuals wield immense power and have great decision-making power in informal settlements. This power has become more visible recently with the proliferation of high-rise housing in the Mukuru Kayaba informal settlement. Using the informal settlement of Mukuru Kayaba as a lens, this paper examines how city systems have shaped earlier versions of housing and how they are also affecting the newer versions. The local landlords who are well-connected get a head start and construct stone houses which could be a solution to the housing crisis in the locality. However, issues arise on the quality of the housing and the supply of amenities such as water, sanitation, and electricity This raises the question of the crisis of housing and the tensions between affordable and essential housing in informal settlements. This is that which is essential housing that dignifies people or what is considered expedient because of the prevailing circumstances in the informal settlement.

Paper short abstract:

How do city builders negotiate changes in the everyday politics of urban construction? This paper explores the question through an in-depth case study of contractors and investors in the construction sector in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, between 2018 and 2023. The paper draws on six months of fieldwork.

Paper long abstract:

How do city builders negotiate changes in the everyday politics of urban construction? This paper explores the question through an in-depth case study of contractors and investors in the construction sector in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, between 2018 and 2023.

After years of anti-government protests, Ethiopia’s ruling coalition was forced in 2018 to adopt wide-ranging political reforms. This has included major changes among political elites, as well as a renegotiation of the elite pact, de facto determining the rules of the game for politics, the economy and social interactions more broadly. While initially there existed high hopes for a transition towards more democratic rule, the ruling government in Ethiopia has struggled due to lack of cohesion among political and economic elites, erosion of central power, decentralisation of rent extraction and rent distribution and lack of clear ideological underpinnings. The exacerbation of ethnic and other forms of communal conflicts, the outbreak of a civil war between the federal government and the regional government in Tigray, decreasing state capacity to implement proposed reforms and an increase in corruption have further tempered expectations. This paper explores how the fragile and fragmented nature of the elite pact affects state – business relations, conditions the work of contractors and investors in the Ethiopian construction sector, determines access to and prices of materials and directly shapes the formal and informal rules and institutions governing the sector. The paper draws on six months of fieldwork, including formal interviews, observations and focus group discussions.

Paper short abstract:

Using research findings from 6 different city studies this paper analyses the politics of crisis in African cities through the lens of safety and security focusing on critical themes including police brutality, informal security provision, gendered vulnerabilities and residents' practices.

Paper long abstract:

Residents of African cities, especially those living in poorer communities, face various manifestations of insecurity, lack of safety and crisis tied to differential political, economic, social and geographic factors. Where state collapse or fragility pertains, e.g. Mogadishu, violence shapes inclusion and exclusion, alongside varying responses from residents and other actors to manage insecurity. Displacement compounds (gendered) experiences of violence alongside politico-spatial exclusion. Residents’ efforts to secure livelihoods and obtain services intersects with shifting insecurities and changing political crises of leadership (Chonka, Somali Public Agenda & TANA, 2023). Political crisis is expressed through contradictory practices of informal security providers working at times in concert with often-failing state structures in politically fragile contexts. They simultaneously foster insecurity while providing critical responses to everyday experiences of violence, such as in Maiduguri (see Adzande, 2023). The reality of exceptional police brutality, which shapes and terrorises the everyday lives of residents is a further feature of political crisis. In Nairobi for example, absent political will undergirds the collapse of police reform processes, tied explicitly to their work to protect elite interests. In such contexts, the politics of crisis can be inverted through a focus on residents’ practices to support and manage violence and insecurity through reciprocity etc (Gluck and Kimari, 2023). This paper thematically explores findings from 6 expert ACRC research teams focusing on Mogadishu, Nairobi, Freetown, Lagos, Bukavu, and Maiduguri to explore the politics of crisis at different scales and within different sectors, through the lens of safety and security.

Paper short abstract:

Although 60% of the world’s refugees and asylum seekers lives in cities, humanitarian policy often misses the potential of urban refugee enterprise. Drawing on research in urban Ethiopia and Kenya, this paper explores how understandings of ‘refugee economies’ challenge entrenched policy approaches.

Paper long abstract:

Africa is the fastest urbanising region of the world, with its urban population growing to 1.5 billion by 2050. In a context of rapid growth and widespread conflict, a hidden population of refugees and undocumented migrants is attracted to cities by anonymity and opportunity. About 60% of the world's 32.5 m refugees and asylum seekers live in cities, where they often join the ranks of the urban poor, and restrictive policy limiting rights to work, and their displacement experience, exacerbates their vulnerability. Humanitarian assistance, poorly adjusted to dealing with dispersed urban refugees, has focussed on the role of livelihoods in supporting refugee households, but often misses the collective impact of the sectors in which refuges work, and their potential contribution to local economies.

This paper examines how political regimes and lived realities differ in different refugee hosting contexts, in both large and secondary cities. Drawing on research with refugee populations in urban Ethiopia and Kenya, the paper develops the concept of ‘refugee economies’, the collective economy of refugee livelihoods and enterprise, to examine two themes. First, the extent to which political regulation depresses economic enterprise but is subverted by refugee enterprise to form new and complementary urban economic sectors. Second, is to explore the dynamic economic relations that link refugee and kinship economies across towns, camps and borders, to challenge the entrenched camp-urban divide in national refugee policy and humanitarian approaches.

Paper short abstract:

This research unpacks the state-citizen relationship in South Africa by examining how and when residents of a low-income settlement want to be involved in the development of their area. It exposes “conflicting rationalities” between the people’s perspective of participation and existing approaches.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores people’s perspectives of public participation in local infrastructure provision, combining insights from a survey and qualitative interviews with residents of Bramfischerville, a low-income residential area in Soweto, Johannesburg. It unpacks the state-citizen relationship by examining how and when people want to be involved in the development of their area.

Preliminary results indicate that people show overall strong support for (state-led) participation in local infrastructure provision. Yet, findings also show that residents of Bramfischerville largely feel disillusioned and neglected by the state, as they face many economic, social and infrastructural challenges. Rather than being involved in planning (as envisaged by the state), people express a preference for contributing to local development through physical – and paid – labour. Thereby opportunities for local employment and skills development are also portrayed as a way of feeling ‘seen’ by the state, and as a way of making an active contribution to the improvement of their areas. This exposes “conflicting rationalities” between the people’s perspective of participation and existing approaches. Unpacking the link between local (infrastructural) development, economic opportunities and the citizen-state relationship further, this research argues that in a context of high levels of unemployment and economic deprivation, opportunities for paid labour and skills development should be considered as a link between public participation and local infrastructure provision. It should furthermore be recognised as a key element that shapes people’s relationship with the state on the ground and as an approach that can contribute to more sustainable and just urban futures.

Paper short abstract:

Studying drivers of healthy diets in African cities offers a lens to explore systems that affect wellbeing. Many forms of governance are already influencing food environments. There is potential for city level governance to improve access to healthy diets and therefore wellbeing in African cities.

Paper long abstract:

There is increased focus on the importance of food system governance for shaping health, wellbeing and nutrition in urban Africa. Healthy diets are known to be closely connected to wellbeing, and dependent on and influenced by a number of urban systems and structural drivers. However, there remain gaps in understanding effective food system governance at the city level. This presentation argues that focusing on the drivers of healthy diets can provide a lens through which to explore the governance systems, and their complex intersections, that affect healthy diets at a city level. We review the ways that different urban systems influence access to, and affordability of, healthy food. We identify many forms of governance in African cities that are already acting to influence and improve food environments, especially for children and low income groups, including education, food retail and infrastructure, even when healthy diets are not explicitly part of these systems’ mandates. Therefore, while local governments may consider themselves under-capacitated to deal with the structural issues affecting access to healthy diets, there are many ways in which they are already doing so. This highlights the scope and potential role for city level governance to act to improve access to healthy diets and therefore wellbeing in African cities, through locating responsibilities in existing spaces of urban governance. These processes should be recognised and further leveraged for their ongoing contribution to health, wellbeing and nutrition in African urban contexts. Healthy diets may, therefore, offer an organising concept for urban reform.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will present cross-cutting findings from the ‘Land and Connectivity’ domain of the African Cities Research Consortium. This work focuses on the intersection of connective infrastructure and urban land value creation and capture, land conflict, and challenges of land governance.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will present cross-cutting findings from the ‘Land and Connectivity’ domain of the African Cities Research Consortium. This work focuses on the intersection of connective infrastructure and urban land value creation and capture, land conflict, and challenges of land governance. Access to urban and peri-urban land plays a central role for many households in the mitigation of crisis, yet at the same time urban land markets can contribute to crisis when rapidly escalating prices and development-driven displacement lead to deepening tenure insecurity. The absence of widespread structural economic transformation in many African cities fuels speculation on land, and urban land access and exchange are often central to the functioning of the city-level (and sometimes national) ‘political settlement’. However, as land values are unstable in many fast-growing African cities, given the extent of infrastructural transformations and changing urban morphology, urban land also remains the object of ongoing struggle and political contention. New forms of digital connectivity are changing the ways in which people access and use urban land, though the value creation and volatility that increasingly characterises urban land markets often unfolds without state authorities having the agency and capacity to capture land values and redirect them into broad-based urban development. Drawing on findings from a range of African cities studied within the consortium, this paper will showcase comparative insights on the challenges associated with governing the land-connectivity nexus in the interests of a more inclusive distribution of benefits.

Paper short abstract:

This research presents findings on housing access in eight African cities within a political settlements frame. It explores similarities and regional differences in rental housing ecosystems, and fluid relationship between formality and informality, offering insights for urban reform.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents emerging components of low-cost rental housing in six African cities, arguing that rental markets do not simply represent the failure of the state to supply affordable home-ownership units, but they currently exist as valid sub-components of the African urban housing market.

Rental housing ecosystems across African cities are however mostly unregulated, with housing developers, ranging from individual households offering ‘backyard’ rooms for rent to middle-and-large scale developers offering hundreds of rooms in multi-storey tenements. Applying a value-chain perspective enables a deeper understanding of the fluid relationship between formality and informality as investors access land, connect to urban services, construct rental housing, and manage this stock over time. The paper also highlights existing gaps in governance, urban management, and service delivery, which result in the production of rental houses without accompanying services and infrastructure.

The unregulated nature of low-cost rental housing however also creates uneven power dynamics and spaces for tenant exploitation. In many instances, landlord-tenant relations are often exploitative, with tenants frequently subjected to poor living conditions, with little recourse for housing justice. The paper therefore proposes for a pursuit of urban reform pathways that secure tenant rights and access to housing, while supporting landlords and developers with technical and financial resources to produce improved affordable housing.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the patterns as well as the drivers of, and constraints to, structural transformation in Accra city region, Ghana. The findings contribute to our understanding on how to position cities as centers of economic transformation.

Paper long abstract:

The recent spate of urbanization in most African countries has ignited interest in understanding whether such episodes of urbanization coincides with city-level structural transformation. In this paper, we focus on Accra city region to contribute to our understanding on positioning cities as hubs for inclusive growth and economic transformation. This paper draws on quantitative and qualitative analysis to examine the spatial distribution of economic activity and the patterns of structural of transformation in the Accra city region, as well as the drivers of, and constraints to city-level labour productivity. We further look at how the configuration of power within the city and its interaction with national and city political settlements and institutions shape the possibilities of enhancing structural transformation. The findings show the presence of important spatial variation in economic activity in Accra and that the services sector is the most dominant economic activity in the city, regardless of district. Additionally, we observe that structural transformation has not really taken place in Accra as movements from agriculture are into lower and moderate productive activities in the services and manufacturing sectors. Where businesses are located matters for their productivity with only a few districts acting as effective agents of transformation for businesses. District’s institutional performance and the extent of political competitiveness of the district also explain labour productivity. The main constraints of structural transformation in the Accra include worker fidelity, difficulty in acquiring space for business operations, high cost of doing business, weak public infrastructure, and saturation of business lines.