Structural transformation
Structural transformation involves the movement of workers from low-productivity sectors (such as agriculture), to high-productivity (industrial, urban-based) sectors, leading to job creation, improved labour productivity and poverty reduction.
In much of Africa, urbanisation has taken place without structural transformation, leaving high numbers of city dwellers trapped in low-productivity informal employment. To create growth and reduce poverty, it is therefore essential to disentangle the connections between cities and structural change.
ACRC will look at how key city systems – including urban planning, infrastructural service provision (such as transport, energy, water and waste management), productivity-enhancing policies and regulatory frameworks, and educational and technology accumulation strategies – need to be pulled together to facilitate structural transformation. Our approach considers how the political economy of cities affects the potential for structural transformation. Success requires ruling elites to commit to investing in the public infrastructure necessary for firms to operate productively, and to building productive state–business relations. This can stand in tension with the incentives to extract rents from firms and household enterprises and to enter into collusive relationships, such as offering subsidies and contracts in return for political and personal financing.
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African cities in the wake of Covid-19: Impacts and grassroots responses in Harare, Kampala, Lilongwe and Nairobi
From 2021 to 2023, our action research in Harare, Kampala, Lilongwe and Nairobi analysed the pandemic’s impacts and bottom-up responses by affiliates of Slum Dwellers International (SDI). Across the four cities, SDI affiliates led our data collection and policy uptake activities as part of the FCDO-funded Covid Collective programme.
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Five African cities selected for ACRC’s implementation phase
The African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) is commencing pilot action research projects in four African cities: Nairobi, Kenya; Harare, Zimbabwe; Maiduguri, Nigeria and Mogadishu, Somalia.