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.