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.