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.