The panel seeks to map the state and role of Africa’s towns and cities in current events and processes in their respective countries. The panel will be organised around focal areas dealing with socio-political, economic, cultural and demographic issues, among others. Each session, comprising a set of papers and discussants, will examine empirical as well as theoretical aspects relating to urban centres in their national contexts.
This panel is motivated by the fact that African cities have “a big say” in their respective countries. Economically, it is urban areas that are the axes of production, distribution and consumption. Politically, urban centres are loci of power, national governance and government; they are also the turf and backyard of the elite who are key players in determining the prospects of their respective countries. Socially, urban settlements represent concentrations of diverse communities and populations in limited spaces. Thus, cities are more likely to be volatile and exciting than their rural hinterland.
It is not surprising, therefore, that it is in the urban areas that Africa’s tensions and fault lines of all kinds manifest themselves. It is here also that the struggles are planned, largely fought and resolved. It is hardly an exaggeration to claim that issues relating to Africa’s economy, society, conflicts, democracy and state building have had — and will invariably continue to have — a dominant urban expression.
The panel is largely inspired by the fact that the key to understanding contemporary Africa is intricately linked to the unravelling of the happenings and goings-on in the cities. This is where Africa’s present is played out and her future decided upon. The panel will comprehensively examine and explain how urban centres are doing. It will bring together experiences and ideas from and on different parts of the continent.
The small high-income group in Bamako, Mali, has profited from economic liberalisation and created a room of manoeuvre for itself. The lower income groups however have to survive under deteriorating conditions. The economic survival of these groups depends on proper management of the public urban space.
This paper examines questions of control over the city by focusing on Médina Gounass on the outskirts of Dakar. Since the beginning of the 1980s, the unwritten contract between the local elders and the former government party has been challenged by various groups, thus requiring a reconsideration of the urban control landscape.
Nigeria’s cities have followed ethnic and geographical divides. The urban areas have been highly contested terrains. Cities have had profound impacts in shaping local and national politics. This paper discusses the impact of these ethnic tendencies in the cities on Nigerian politics.
The paper explores how southern African cities are constructed in recent fiction as spaces in which national boundaries are affirmed and undermined. It considers how cities are produced as ‘shared’ between their inhabitants and across national boundaries. It examines articulations and contestations of xenophobia, representations of women and of cities as nodal points in the transnational networks across southern Africa.
The emergence of a variety of non-state actors involved in urban development is resulting in complex patterns of urban governance and a new urban politics. The paper argues that multiple sites of urban governance are at work and interact with each other. It explores the variety of relations, contradictions and alliances involved, including the role of an internationalizing civil society for urban governance, as African cities are increasingly translocal. This framework is illustrated with an empirical study of vendors’ associations in Maputo.
The paper analyses the occupation of contested urban spaces by Harare's youth and the ensuing engagements with elements of local and national government. It argues that the marginalised youth’s continued occupation of these spaces is a result of abandoning full-scale confrontation in favour of marginal resistance.