Informal settlements
In most African cities, more than half of residents live in informal settlements, with insecure tenure, a lack of basic services and infrastructure, and often unsafe housing. It is now widely recognised within policy and academic circles that such households tend to be best served by upgrading programmes that enable them to remain in situ, without disrupting their livelihoods and social networks.
Informal settlement upgrading is a significant poverty reduction mechanism, enabling low-income households to secure essential services at a lower cost, improve their social status, and overcome spatial inequality. It also helps address the needs of vulnerable groups, such as women-headed households and people with disabilities, as well as offering multiple opportunities for income generation.
City elites are increasingly recognising the potential that informal settlement upgrading has for enhancing their popularity, and the politics underpinning such interventions will be closely analysed by ACRC through our research. With multiple actors involved and a number of contentious issues shaping the challenge of upgrading, the complexities of the process and the overlaps with other urban development domains will be a key focus in our work.
LATEST NEWS from ACRC
New research: Uncovering Lilongwe’s urban development challenges
Lilongwe is the capital of Malawi and its largest city, home to about 1 million residents – three quarters of whom live in informal settlements. Newly published ACRC research throws light on the political dynamics and city systems underpinning urban development in Lilongwe.
New research: How land intersects with connectivity in urban Africa
ACRC has published new research, exploring land and connectivity in six African cities: Accra (Ghana), Bukavu (DRC), Kampala (Uganda), Harare (Zimbabwe), Maiduguri (Nigeria) and Mogadishu (Somalia).
Local impacts of global vaccine inequalities: Post-pandemic informal settlement experiences
This blog post outlines key findings from our recent Covid Collective research, which examined changing patterns and key lessons from the Covid-19 vaccine rollouts as they took place (or did not) in a selection of informal settlements across four African cities: Harare, Kampala, Lilongwe and Nairobi.