The African continent is acknowledged as one of the fastest
urbanising regions of the world today. This process is occurring within an
overall framework in which, at an average of about 3 per cent
annually, Africa maintains its lead as the region of the world with the
fastest rate of population growth. All major projections for the future suggest
not only that this rapid rate of population growth
will continue but also that it will be accompanied by an equally rapid rate of
urbanisation that will centre around a number of
mega-cities, mostly urban areas that are already centres of high
population density. Side by side with the accelerating pace of
urbanisation, the continent has also experienced
processes of socio-economic, cultural and political change which bear directly
as factor, arena and context on the challenges of
governing the urban space and the urban experience.
Among the most significant socio-economic, cultural and
political processes that both shape and define the
context for urbanisation and urban governance include the quest for
broad-ranging political reform across Africa which
began in the late 1980s and around which struggles continue to
crystallise; various experiments in decentralisation, devolution and
local-level administration that impinge directly on
the content, structure and quality of city governance irrespective of the
reasons for which they were undertaken; issues of
taxation and representation in city administration and in
the urban space; experiments in the creation of autonomous agencies of
government as part of new public sector management
approaches; the emergence of non-governmental organisations,
community-based organisations, and neighbourhood associations that have
become an active part of city life and which play a
role, either formally or informally, in the overall governance of the urban
space; serious problems of economic accumulation that carry
consequences for urban livelihood, including issues
of employment, income distribution and equitable access to resources;
intensifying demographic shifts that make the urban
centre the site for the reproduction of Africa’s youthful
population; growing problems of environmental sustainability which also
bear on the quality of livelihood; and the
challenges of balancing urban policing and citizen security with respect for
civil liberties and human rights.
Rapidly growing urban centres imply an increased, though
not necessarily unidirectional rural urban
population flow which deserves to be studied in terms of its recent
contours. But a process of migration from small
towns and peri-urban centres into big cities is also taking place. The
challenges of planning the use of urban spaces in the face of massive
population pressure has produced, across the
continent, new poles of marginality and exclusion in leading urban centres
side by side with new market niches and a sprawling informal sector.
The crises of agricultural production arising partly
from the flow of population from the rural to the peri-urban and urban
areas has also produced new problems of food security which the
emergence of peri-urban and city farming by
individuals and households has not always been sufficient to overcome. New
populations settling in expanding urban settings are confronted with
claims of indigenity by earlier settlers which carry
implications for all aspects of their rights and often result in violent
communal conflicts. With existing infrastructure
either in a state of generalised decay or not expanding quickly
enough to accommodate growing urban populations, the pace and quality
of urban life in most African countries is called
constantly into question. The weakened capacity and reach of the state
means that whole swathes of the urban space are not covered
(adequately) by the apparatuses and agencies of
government at all levels, leaving such spaces to self-constituted local
militias and informal administrative brigades that
arrogate to themselves powers of taxation and policing.
Through the 2004 Governance Institute, the Council proposes
to extend the work which it has supported in recent
years on urban processes and change by focusing attention on the range and
variety of issues arising from and posed by shifts in the context,
process and structures of urban governance in
Africa. Prospective participants will be encouraged to map the different
contours ofchange that are occurring, produce fresh empirical and analytic
insights, engage in a comparative analysis of their
findings and reflect on the challenges posed by their own work to
inherited/dominant conceptual frames.
