Paper short abstract:

Global agendas promote "Sustainable Urbanisation" as the way forward. Research in Africa however evidences that urbanisation remains unsustainable the way it is driven by urban stakeholders. We assess here how urban actors within the local political economy use or contradict international agendas.

Paper long abstract:

African cities are expected to follow and apply global frameworks provided by the United Nations such as the '2030 Agenda' or the New Urban Agenda. Specifically the claim for "Sustainable Urbanisation" found its rather undisputed way into the development discourse. Current research in Uganda and Somaliland however evidences that urbanisation negatively impacts on urban sustainability, which cannot be attributed alone to dysfunctional governance structures. Urban governments in Africa need to act within the local political economy and do have to consent to developments that are highly unsustainable, especially in terms of territorial growth over hinterlands.

Urban expansions, both formal and informal, impact on the sustainability of urban areas in various aspects: socially, as segregation is increasing through unbalanced territorial growth, environmentally, as urban-rural ecosystems are endangered and economically, as urban fringes in rapidly growing areas are more often than not impoverished and underserved, sometimes containing "islands" of middle-class condominiums which however further contribute to imbalanced growth.

The paper will discuss how this threefold challenge is partly created by the local political economy which opposes what global agendas promote in terms of sustainability. As urbanisation is a process that - in one way or the other - is caused and simultaneously affects all urban stakeholders, the core question addressed here is "What is the relevance that is seen by local stakeholders in global agendas and how could they better contribute to its implementation?".