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1. The Politics of New Cities: Diversification of Actors and Recentralization of State Power in the Case of Diamniadio

Author:
Sina Schlimmer
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI)
Abstract:
The construction of new cities on the African continent is in vogue. From multifunctional urban hubs to eco-districts, the images that accompany the announcement of these projects promote an African urban future based on modernity and technology. This trend for urban planning that claims to make a clean sweep of pre-existing approaches is not unique to African countries, whose governments are inspired in particular by North African and Asian models. However, the promotion of new cities in Africa is part of the lively debate that has been going on for several years on the rapid urbanization of the continent's countries. The creation of modern cities, organized and corresponding to the urban planning standards of international metropolises, is presented as a means of avoiding haphazard, chaotic urban development. This paper offers a critical analysis of the policy of new cities based on an empirical study of the new urban pole of Diamniadio (PUD) in Senegal. Two key arguments are put forward in this paper. First, the analysis deconstructs the ex nihilo character of these urban projects and emphasizes that they are part of public policy trajectories. Due to its geo-economic and strategic position, Diamniadio has been at the heart of the Dakar region's territorial planning policies since at least the end of the 1990s. Secondly, new towns are far from being neutral and technical urban planning instruments; rather, they are political devices that convey interests and stimulate power games. By delimiting the boundaries of the PUD, which is presented as President Macky Sall's political footprint, the central government regains certain administrative powers, particularly in terms of land planning and allocation. In addition, the PUD reflects competition from foreign actors, both public and private, and the growing importance of emerging actors such as Turkey.
Topic:
Infrastructure, Governance, State, Urban, and Cities
Political Geography:
Africa and Senegal

2. Governing Cities in Africa. A Panorama of Challenges and Perspectives

Author:
Sina Schlimmer
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI)
Abstract:
By 2050, about 60% of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa will live in urban areas. The governance of the rapid growth of capital and intermediary cities in Africa is one of the priorities of the international development agenda. Between 2020 and 2050, African cities, and especially secondary cities, have to absorb more than 700 million urban dwellers. Given these projections, urban growth in Africa has become a central concern of the international community, including experts from international organizations, researchers, aid agencies, and the private sector. While expert meetings and research initiatives on the future of cities are accumulating, this study aims to take stock of the debate. First, it provides an overview of the major issues that mostly policy-oriented research on cities in Africa has dealt with since independence. Based on this review, our paper builds on the concept of urban governance to approach the transformation and growth of African cities. Hereby we take into consideration the multiple actors (public, private, civil society, etc.), policy sectors (land, housing, infrastructure, etc.), and scales (local, national, international) that shape the political, economic, and social aspects of urban life. The paper also addresses African cities as part of a broader urban-rural continuum. Second, this study proposes concrete avenues to contribute to ongoing research and technical initiatives on urban governance in Africa. More knowledge and data are needed to inform the debate on urban infrastructure financing and the role of intermediate cities in the broader urbanization process in Sub-Saharan Africa. We argue that a more detailed comprehension of land tenure systems is fundamental to understanding the challenges of future urban development in Africa.
Topic:
Infrastructure, Governance, Urban, Rural, and Cities
Political Geography:
Kenya, Africa, Tanzania, and Sub-Saharan Africa

3. Collaborative Policing and Negotiating Urban Order in Abidjan

Author:
Maxime Ricard and Kouame Felix Grodji
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Africa Center for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Community-based security groups are emerging in African cities in response to rising crime and overstretched police forces. Experience from Abidjan shows that collaboration with the police, avoiding coercive tactics, and retaining citizen oversight councils are key to the effectiveness of these groups.
Topic:
Civil Society, Crime, Urban, Police, and Community Engagement
Political Geography:
Africa and Ivory Coast

4. Questioning Participation in Ramlet Bulaq, Cairo

Author:
Omnia Khalil
Publication Date:
10-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
Since the 1990s and the onset of the liberalization of Egypt’s economy, Cairo has experienced a major process of privatization of urban spaces with State and private developers forcibly removing residents of informal neighborhoods, often referred to as `Ashwa’iyat, from central Cairo to replace them with new developments destined for the “elites”. One of the neighborhoods that illustrates these dynamics is Ramlet Bulaq, a central area located on the eastern side of the Nile. Historically the area consisted of highly industrial plots and small crafts spaces. Starting in 1996, the state and wealthy private developers began displacing local residents and new buildings, such as the Nile City Towers, emerged in their stead. Efforts to displace the local residents in Ramlet Bulaq met forms of resistance by the local community. These forms of resistance intensified after the 2011 revolution, when activists joined local residents in their efforts to oppose forced displacement and began proposing alternative development schemes. The struggle over the area magnified after 2012, when clashes occurred between the guards of the Nile City Towers and local residents. In this paper, I narrate the process of mobilizing against forced eviction in Ramlet Bulaq from 2012 to 2015. I, alongside many others, tried to follow a model of participatory community design in order to upgrade the neighborhood that was classified as informal settlement by the Informal Settlement Development Fund since 2010. Despite years of mobilization, most of the families of Ramlet Bulaq ultimately ended up selling their plots to the developers of Nile City Towers exhausted by years of struggle. They have since moved elsewhere. I reflect on some of the reasons of this failure to counter the developments taking place and reflect on some of the limitations of participatory approaches when power dynamics are stacked against local communities.
Topic:
Economics, Revolution, Urban, Participation, and Community
Political Geography:
Africa and Egypt

5. Urban Governance in Cameroon: Between Laissez-Faire And Faire-Laisser

Author:
Joseph MagloirenOlinga Olinga
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Nkafu Policy Institute
Abstract:
From a geohistorical point of view, Cameroonian cities are characterised by what B. TAMRU (2001) describes as a “process of vulnerability“. This concept is in line with the phenomenological approach, which studies the impact of human actions on risk and its aggravation, based on the study of damage (P. PIGEON, 1994). However, urban dynamics are still poorly taken into account in the diagnosis of environmental risks. In this case, the flood risk is rarely studied in all its spatio-temporal depth: “The risk of flooding is thus most often analysed at a time “t”, according to a given hazard, on channels considered as stable”. From this point of view, starting from a diachronic analysis, the geohistorical context of Cameroon cities, particularly urban centres such as Douala (economic capital) and Yaoundé (political capital), constitutes an important key to reading the current urbanistic, social, economic and environmental challenges. Based on recent news, in particular the images of the Yaoundé VII Town Hall flooded after the downpour of 8 June 2021, this paper analyses the vulnerabilities of Cameroon cities through the prism of two variables: firstly, the socio-spatial processes that produce them and, secondly, the mechanisms that determine the capacity of cities to adapt to environmental risks. It brings to the fore the thorny issue of urban governance lato sensu. The case of the Commune of Yaoundé VII is symptomatic of urban governance in Cameroon and raises the question of whether municipal executives are definitively caught in the dilemma of “laissez-faire” and “faire laisser”.
Topic:
Economics, Environment, Governance, and Urban
Political Geography:
Africa and Cameroon

6. Socio-Spatial and Ethnic-Racial Segregation in Megacities, Large Cities and Global Cities in Africa

Author:
Fabio Macedo Velame and Thiago Augusto Ferreira da Costa
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Institution:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Abstract:
The estimated world population for 2030 is 8.6 billion people, one billion more than the current 7.6 billion (UN 2017). The same study points out that nine countries will account for more than half of this population growth, with five African nations among them (Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Egypt), in addition to three Asian countries (India, Pakistan and Indonesia) and one country in the Americas (The United States). In this work, we present an overview of the megacities, large cities and global cities of seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, which, according to the UN, is the continent’s fastest growing region in population terms. These countries, with the cities that stand out on the international scene, according to the analyzed authors. Still in 2030, two thirds of the world population will live in cities, which will produce 80% of the planet’s GDP, with megacities appearing again in Asia, Latin America and Africa (UN 2017). The increase in the cost of living in these superclusters is certain, as well as in small and medium- -sized cities. However, it is in the global and millionaire cities where cutting- -edge urbanization occurs, although they are not the fastest growing cities in population terms, according to the UN (2017). Therefore, we bring here examples of these cities that become increasingly segregated.
Topic:
Demographics, Urbanization, Economy, Urban, Cities, and Segregation
Political Geography:
Brazil and Africa

7. Urban Drivers of Political Violence

Author:
Antonio Sampaio
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The demographic trend of urbanisation, while not a cause of conflict, exacerbates local tensions and weak governance. It also creates an urgent need to understand the policy challenges that exist in cities such as Mogadishu, Nairobi, Kabul and Karachi. The rate of growth of the urban population in the four countries covered by this study was above the global average for the 2015–20 period – and more than double the average in the cases of Kenya and Somalia. With the exception of Pakistan, these countries also registered higher urban population growth in 2018 than the average for fragile and conflict-affected countries, which was 3.2%. Typically built without formal land rights, lacking basic public services, and featuring low-quality housing in overcrowded conditions, slums are perhaps the most visible characteristic of cities undergoing rapid and unmanaged urbanisation. But they are not the only one. Cities located in or near areas where armed conflict is taking place also tend to be split by several dividing lines – between slums and the rest of the city, between ethnic groups, between licit and illicit (often criminal) economies, and between violent and safe areas. Whereas many of these divisions may be part of broader national problems, their geographical concentration in the limited confines of a city creates distinctly urban drivers of violence, and therefore requires tailored policies in response. These divisions, exacerbated by the rapid urbanisation process, have contributed to a decline in state authority – governmental capacity to enforce rules, monopoly over the use of force, taxation and other state prerogatives – at the municipal level. In cities, therefore, security and governance go hand in hand. The existence of organised armed groups able to replace key state functions makes the challenges in cities affected by armed conflict particularly urgent. This report sheds light on the ways in which cities contribute to the weakening of state authority, and aims to provide a basis for the formulation of better, more tailored policies.
Topic:
Political Violence, Demographics, Urban, Housing, and Public Service
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Africa, Middle East, Somalia, Nairobi, Karachi, Kabul, and Mogadishu

8. Urban Rights and Local Politics in Egypt: The Case of the Maspero Triangle

Author:
Dina Wahba
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
In my visit to Egypt in late March 2018, two things were happening simultaneously: the demolition of Maspero Triangle, the neighbourhood I have been working on for my case study, and the re-election of President Abdel Fattah El Sisi for his second term. There was a big campaign banner, one of many engulfing Cairo, with El Sisi’s face and the slogan “You are the hope”. This banner on 6th of October bridge was overlooking the neighbourhood as the bulldozers were hard at work demolishing what was for years the homes of over 4000 families spanning generations. I was in a taxi trying inconspicuously to take pictures of the banner and wondering what my interlocutors would say when I ask them about how they view this promise of hope overlooking the destruction of their homes. I was also marvelling at the almost nonsensical sequence of events. In 2011 Maspero was one of the most militant neighbourhoods, among many in downtown and old Cairo (Ismail 2013), that defended the occupation of Tahrir Square. As it was adjacent to Tahrir, it played a crucial role in sustaining the square during the first 18 days of the uprising. Seven years after the revolution, the neighbourhood was faced with complete erasure. How did we get here? I argue for the productivity of looking at Egyptian politics through the lens of affect as a possible way to answer this question. As Laszczkowski and Reeves argue in their edited book Affective States (2017) “Affect is at the heart of those moments when the political catches us off guard or when it leaves us feeling catatonically suspended, wondering where we are, how we even go there, and when this became so ordinary”. In this paper, I examine one such moment: the demolition of Maspero neighbourhood that coincided with the re-election of Abd El Fattah El Sisi in early 2018. I investigate state-society relations and the shifts throughout those moments by looking at how one neighbourhood negotiated their survival that culminated in their removal. Much like the wider socio-political context in Egypt and the story of the Egyptian revolution itself, Maspero is a story of a negotiated failure. A youth-led movement that demanded basic rights, exhausted various political tactics to lobby the government and failed the bigger fight, but scored some victories, such as the ability of some 900 families to come back to Maspero after the development project is over. I argue that Maspero can uncover much about the wider political tribulations since 2011. The case offers a lens through which we can see political openings and opportunities, clampdowns and closures as well as the current regime’s agenda for ensuring that what happened on 25 January 2011 does not happen again. I claim that one of the tactics of the regime is to systematically deconstruct the politics of the urban subaltern that played a major role in the revolution (Ismail 2013) through urban reconfiguration as well as new and old methods of affective co-optation and coercion. In her analysis of state-society relations, Cilja Harders argues that “political science tends to privilege macro-level perspectives” rendering the urban subaltern as only passive subjects of political transformations (Harders 2003). I argue that this has not changed in analysing the aftermath of the revolution. Few studies discussed the role of the urban poor in the revolution; however, many scholars neglected the politicisation of the urban subaltern when analysing transformation (or lack thereof) in Egyptian politics in the last few years. After eight years, the situation seems bleak and the task futile. To argue for any kind of change, let alone transformation, one must be blind to the strong backlash against any attempt to capitalise on the temporary gains of the revolution. The only story left to be told seems to be one of failure. The utter failure of a reformist movement to impose even partially its agenda for change (Bayat 2017). However, the case of Maspero neighbourhood and its youth alliance allow me to trace the revolution back into the everyday politics of citizens in a crushing struggle with the regime to examine whether the revolution disrupted informal traditional ways of doing politics. Rather than examine radical or even reformist regime or legal changes in national politics, I am interested in informal politics and its disruption. “It is in the local scale that power relations become tangible and abstract concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘politics’ observable” (Hoffmann, Bouziane & Harders 2013, 3). Building on the work of scholars of everyday politics, street politics and politics from below, I focus, therefore, on the street and, more specifically, Maspero, a neighbourhood adjacent to Tahrir Square that lived the revolution with all its tribulations, a neighbourhood that affected and was affected by the revolution. I find Salwa Ismail’s work on the role of the urban subaltern in the revolution productive in unpacking and tracing the “everyday” in the Egyptian revolution. “The infrastructures of mobilisation and protest lay in the microprocesses of everyday life at the quarter level, in their forms of governance and in the structure of feelings that developed in relation to state government” (Ismail 2012, 450). Ismail’s argument highlights the quarters or neighbourhoods as spatial political laboratories where the urban subaltern, through rigorous negotiations and “every day” encounters with the different arms of the state, accumulates knowledge about modes of governance and how to resist them. This was obvious in the role that the urban subaltern played in the revolution and was reflected in the narratives of my interlocutors and highlighted in some of the scholar’s accounts of the revolution. In Ismail’s (2012) account of the “backstreets of Tahrir”, she narrates several important “battles” in informal neighbourhoods that she believes were vital to the success of the revolution. These “battles” manifest the moment of convergence between locally grounded grievances and national revolutionary politics. “The account of the battles serves to draw attention to the place of popular quarters in the geography of resistance, and to the spatial inscription of popular modes of activism”. (Ismail 2012, 446) The importance of Ismail’s account is in linking popular resistance to the spatial characteristics of the quarter, which brings up the question of what will happen to popular resistance when the neighbourhood is gone. I argue that the removal of entire neighbourhoods has a political purpose, that of dismantling the political laboratories and crushing street politics. In discussing the battles in Tahrir, Bulaq Abu Al-Ila features prominently in sheltering activists, defending the occupation of the square and engaging in prolonged street fights that exhausted the police and kept it from reclaiming the square. Ismail (2012, 448) links the neighbourhood’s repertoire of contention to a history of patriotism that goes back to the resistance of the French colonial conquest, again highlighting a spatially bounded accumulation of generational knowledge and affective register of popular resistance. The aim of my endeavour is not just to highlight the role of the urban subaltern in the revolution and the subsequent politicisation and depoliticization and what one may learn from it. It is also to link this to what the state has been learning about countering any possible future mobilisation in order to foresee state strategies of radically altering the “every day” modes of governance and with it modes of resistance and to connect this to the urgency of urban restructuring processes happening in Cairo on an unprecedented scale since the 1990s. Asef Bayat (2012) explores the politics of the urban subaltern in “neoliberal cities” in an authoritarian regime. Bayat offers the concept of “social non-movements” to analyse street politics (2012, 119). According to him, the streets are vital to the urban subaltern: he writes that “[t]he centrality of streets goes beyond merely the expression of contention. Rather, streets may actually serve as an indispensable asset/capital for them to subsist and reproduce economic as well as cultural life” (2012, 119). Bayat describes the ongoing conflict over the public space between the state and the urban subaltern as “street politics” (Bayat 2009). These ongoing processes consequently create the “political street”, hence, politicising ordinary citizens through their struggles over urban space. Some of the questions that arise here and reflect the limitations of Bayat’s arguments in this point of history relate to what happens to “street politics” when the urban subaltern loses the “political street”. Reflecting on the case of Maspero neighbourhood, what happens to the politicisation and cultural and economic appropriation when they are relocated to Asmarat, a far-off gated community out of central Cairo? What happens to the politics of the urban poor when they lose their “capital”? And, what kind of political and spatial affects are tied to this dispossession? One of the challenges of studying Maspero was to understand the affective attachments that people had to the neighbourhood. Drawing from the literature on street politics and Asef Bayat’s notion of encroachment (2009), I could understand materially the reasons why forcefully displacing people from their homes could be traumatic. However, as I witnessed them mourn the neighbourhood it became clear to me that there are reasons beyond what this literature can offer. Here, affect theories can be helpful. Yael Navaro Yashin calls for “a reconceptualization of the relation between human beings and space” (2012, 16). Yashin critiques what she calls “the social-constructionist imagination” in its focus on conceptualising space only through what humans project on it. Building on Teresa Brennan’s work on the transmission of affect, Yashin argues for affective relationality between humans and their environment. However, she does not take an object-centred approach but combines the human subjective approach with one that explores that “excess” in the environment that she studies through the lens of affect. Yashin’s work on the collision of the phantasmatic and the material is essential in understanding the “affect” of the neighbourhood. According to Yashin, “the make-believe is real” (2012, 10). Reflecting on the case of Maspero, the affective attachments that the inhabitants of the neighbourhood developed was built around the material, the encroachment, and the social networks but moved beyond this. To them, Maspero is their country and their home. Below one of my research interlocutors, a male resident of Maspero in his 30s explains to me the attachment of the people to Maspero Triangle. “We belong to this place; it is part of us, and we are a part of it. This place holds our memories and childhood. This is something that officials never understood. But we felt it. In this place I used to play, when I am upset, I like to sit in this place and talk to my friends. We are attached to this place not just because it is close to our work. We are linked spiritually to this place; our hearts are attached to this place. I do not want to go out. I do not want to live even in Zamalek, which is very close to us. I do not want to live there. We are attached to this place.” Nigel Thrift (2007) argues that for the political importance of studying affect in cities and affective cities to trace how affect and cities interact to produce politics. The interactions between space, bodies and affect are linked to political consequences. Thrift goes further to point to the political engineering of affect in urban everyday life and what might seem to us as aesthetic is politically instrumentalised. This engineering of affect can have various political aims. To erase emotional histories, create new affective registers or mobilise old ones in urban settings through urban restructuring (Thrift 2007, 172). Thus, it is not farfetched to argue that the urban restructuring of cities is linked to eliciting or inhibiting political responses. The massive plan of the Egyptian government to drastically change downtown Cairo, a space that witnessed a revolution has interlinked political and affective goals. It aims at erasing the affective register of the 2011 Egyptian revolution and inhibits the politics of the urban poor.
Topic:
Human Rights, United Nations, Revolution, Urban, and Youth Movement
Political Geography:
Africa, North Africa, Egypt, and Maspero

9. Local Activism in post-2011 Egypt

Author:
Nadine Abdalla
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
Various forms of local activism in Egypt are challenging the shortcomings in local governance and the lack of any developmental urban vision. This paper examines three examples from different neighbourhoods in Giza and Cairo. All three share the goal of resisting exclusionary policies while trying to overcome the absence of political means to register their frustrations given the absence of local councils since 2011.
Topic:
Social Movement, Arab Spring, Urban, and Local
Political Geography:
Africa, North Africa, Egypt, Cairo, and Giza

10. Addressing the Challenges of Urbanization in Africa

Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa (CSEA)
Abstract:
Africa is the world’s least urbanized continent, and yet the rate at which its cities are expanding is growing faster than no other worldwide – at an average of 3.5 percent per year. This growth of urbanization does, however, vary across the continent, ranging from the already heavily urbanized North Africa (47.8 percent) to the least urbanized Sub-Saharan Africa (32.8 percent).The aggregate rate of urbanization on the continent is projected to grow from 40 percent in 2015 to 56 percent in 2050. The enormous speed at which Africa’s cities are growing is linked to other key development trends, most prominently accelerating economic and population growth, increasing migration from rural to urban areas, and the youth bulge. It is strongly driven by Africans’ perceptions that cities – in contrast to the continent’s rural areas – offer an abundance of livelihood opportunities, including employment and income-generating opportunities, food security, and access to finance, education and social capital as well as social protection.
Topic:
Urbanization, Economic Growth, Urban, Population Growth, and Cities
Political Geography:
Africa, North Africa, and Sahara