Header photo credit: Action pour la Paix et la Concorde (APC).

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Header photo credit: Action pour la Paix et la Concorde (APC). View of Bukavu over Lake Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Note: This article presents the views of the authors featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

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Our collective work in the land and connectivity domain report highlighted some of the actual drivers of land value change in the cities we examined: Accra, Bukavu, Harare, Kampala, Maiduguri and Mogadishu. Here, I build on this to consider how these findings challenge some of the dominant notions on which ideas of value capture are based.

“Paradigmatic ideas” about land value change

Answers to the question of what shapes land values might seem obvious, and there are plenty of proposed mechanisms posited in the disciplines of economics and planning, based largely on the experiences of advanced industrial economies. In the language of ACRC’s conceptual framework, a set of “paradigmatic ideas” dominates assumptions about land value change and feeds into policy discourses, both internationally and at more local levels.

These paradigmatic ideas depend heavily on a distinction between private property as the main site of value, and public infrastructure and public regulation as primary drivers of that value.

The received wisdom is that (private) land value increases are largely driven by three factors:

1. Increased economic activity or prosperity in an area, which inflates demand for the land

2. Public infrastructure investments that make the land more desirable

3. Changes to planning permission/regulations that again increase its desirability and therefore value

The logic, then, is that for factors 2 and 3, the uplift in value is caused by the state – by public infrastructure and regulation – and therefore it can legitimately be recaptured by the state for redistribution.

Unsettling the received wisdom

But what if much of the infrastructure provided to service urban land in an urban area is not public, but rather provided by private (and often informal) providers? What if regulations about what can and can’t be built in an area are determined less by the state than by other kinds of authority? And, moreover, what if the land in question is not straightforwardly “private”, such that any official owner being taxed also has to contend with paying a range of other levies related to more collective territorial claims on the land?

Our research revealed such dynamics in a number of cities. It suggests that the paradigmatic ideas do not represent the whole story about drivers of value change, and that context-specific institutions and practices are central. Attention to contextual “price signals” has often been present in land rent theory and the “hedonic modelling” used by real estate researchers and analysts – yet this often gets lost in contemporary value capture discourses, and such models also miss some of the most important factors in the cities we studied.

The real drivers of land value change: Findings from the land and connectivity domain

Our studies unsettle this assumption that urban property is primarily private and infrastructure is primarily public. This is particularly true if we consider property development in peripheral or suburban areas, which is taking place across many African cities.

Let’s first consider the idea of private property. In a city such as Accra or Lagos, individual property rights and heightened land commodification are very real, but co-exist and overlap with “customary” forms of tenure. Thus, while sales to individuals are common, various other actors continue to make claims to benefit from the land’s use, often based on longstanding collective ancestral rights. A share of any increase in the value of this land is therefore seen as rightfully belonging not just to the official owner but also a range of (often quite diffuse) actors. In Accra, for example, various categories of “land guards”, with varying degrees of popular and historical legitimacy, claim fees and levies for different stages in the development of property on land.

When land retains these social and collective attributes, focusing just on the property relation – for example, through taxing the owner – without attention to these other dynamics, it can result in feelings of “over taxation” and illegitimacy.

When it comes to the question of infrastructure provision and regulation, the picture from our cities also diverges substantially from the paradigmatic ideas. While major public infrastructure such as roads does often substantially bolster land value, in other cases the opposite occurs. In examples from Maiduguri and Kampala, certain road investments appeared to dampen or even reverse local rises in land value, due to having adverse impacts on personal security (such as if the road becomes associated with a rise in violent criminal activity, for instance), local population mobility, or the functioning of other infrastructure.

Moreover, the kinds of infrastructure that did significantly increase land values was often privately rather than publicly provided. In Mogadishu, for example, certain new suburbs were served with privately provided roads as well as private services such as schools, hospitals and green areas, all of which boosted land values. In peripheral areas of other cities, including Harare and Accra, the role of private actors in providing infrastructure – and sometimes also planning and regulatory services of various kinds – tells a broadly similar story.

Implications for urban reform

These findings must give us pause when thinking about appropriate routes for capturing land values. The idea of public interventions to boost (and recoup) privately held value makes less sense when, in practice, private interventions have been generating much of the value. Meanwhile, taxing land value is not straightforward in cases where it has not simply accrued to an identifiable private actor.

This is not to say that efforts towards property taxation and other forms of value capture should not be pursued. Indeed, they remain urgent. But as well as building government capacity to register values and collect taxes, there need to be ongoing efforts to build understanding on the moral and political principles underpinning property taxation, and public dialogue acknowledging the challenges people face paying tax alongside levies to non-state actors. These efforts need to be accompanied by incremental improvements to public infrastructure provision.

As so much of ACRC’s work had demonstrated, successful urban reform is rooted in trust, collective mobilisation and the building of reform coalitions. This is as true of property taxation as any other urban domain, and the better we understand the nature and drivers of the value to be taxed, the more likely that a collective agenda to redistribute this wealth will materialise.

Explore further:

• The land and connectivity domain report
• Podcast: why do land brokers matter in African cities?
• Webinar recording: Urban land in Africa

Header photo credit: Barnabas Lartey-Odoi Tetteh / Unsplash. Accra cityscape.

Note: This article presents the views of the authors featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.

Header photo credit: marquino rocha / Pexels (via Canva Pro). Woman peeling a cassava root.

Note: This article presents the views of the authors featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.

ACRC has published a new report on factors impacting the uptake of healthy diets in five African cities: Bukavu, DRC; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Kampala, Uganda; Lilongwe, Malawi; and Nairobi, Kenya. The research explores how policymakers, consumers and key actors in urban food and health systems engage with the concept of healthy diets.

Global food insecurity has increased in the face of a series of crises and related price hikes. Undernutrition, being overweight and obesity are emerging forms of malnutrition with long-term implications for individuals and society. Although access to healthy diets is essential to health and wellbeing, policy debates and initiatives tend to focus on quantity rather than quality.

The food distribution system and increasingly privatised health system are highly profitable and controlled by powerful elites, leading to a profit-driven vicious cycle. Unhealthy diets – based on ultra-processed, nutrient-poor foodstuffs – are a major driver of ill-health, which in turn requires medical treatment. Meanwhile, small food vendors, who are a key provider of food for low-income urban residents, face neglect or harassment.

In this new ACRC working paper, the authors synthesise findings from studies undertaken by dedicated research teams across the five cities. While each city presents unique geographical, political and socioeconomic characteristics, they have all experienced rapid population growth. Large proportions of their residents live in informal settlements and are likely to be equally, if not more, food-insecure than their rural counterparts.

The findings contribute to knowledge on health, wellbeing and nutrition, especially in cities of low-income countries, and help inform wider debates and initiatives, as policymakers become increasingly aware of the crucial importance of health and nutrition for individual and societal wellbeing.

Methodology

The research focus of “healthy diets” was chosen because of its importance at the apex of food and health systems, and the relative lack of analyses bringing these two systems together in urban contexts. The study was co-designed by domain- and city-level researchers, with overall focus and research questions agreed across all five cities, whilst each city research team explored context-specific issues.

The conceptual framing of the research focused on the following factors:

• The central problem – a vicious cycle of malnutrition and poor health;
• Drivers of this vicious cycle;
• Intersecting inequalities and vulnerabilities;
• Actors, politics and governance.

Researchers adopted a predominantly qualitative approach to explore the challenges and opportunities shaping residents’ dietary practices, from the perspectives of key stakeholders. This involved literature reviews, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, participant observation and stakeholder workshops, followed by thematic analysis of findings by city and domain researchers.

Key findings

In all five cities, there was an increase in the incidence of non-communicable diseases in recent decades, driven by several factors:

• High costs of healthy food products, including fresh fruit and vegetables;
• Inadequate access to basic infrastructure and housing;
• Expanded access to ultra-processed foods, with high salt, sugar and fat levels;
• Exclusion of important actors, including informal food vendors;
• Control of food and health systems by powerful elites.

Implications for urban reform

Civil society is an active player in all five cities. However, any strategy and policy to improve health, wellbeing and nutrition needs to address multiple systems, convening multiple actors to create joint initiatives. This requires a wide reform coalition that includes local and national governments, community organisations, civil society and the private sector.

City governments can run awareness campaigns and contribute to modify consumer behaviours, including through relative food pricing in combination with social security mechanisms, such as cash transfers and school feeding programmes. They can also act on distribution, through lowering business taxes for food retailers, and supporting street vendors.

Partners in driving reform need to include primary healthcare and youth development and adolescent health services. In the private sector, engaging both large-scale, powerful commercial actors – who have the ear of national politicians – and small-scale formal and informal food vendors is crucial.

Header photo credit: emretopdemir / iStock. A food vendor at a street market in Kampala, Uganda.

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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).

Urban land is a crucial economic, environmental and social resource in African cities. It is also highly politicised, frequently becoming a source of conflict and a factor in growing urban inequalities. Often dysfunctional and under-resourced systems of land administration have to engage with highly inequitable colonial legacies, widespread speculation and forms of elite capture, placing huge pressures on the sector.

Authored by Tom Goodfellow (University of Sheffield), Abdifatah Tahir (University of Sheffield), Liza Rose Cirolia (University of Cape Town) and Ransford Acheampong (The University of Manchester) in collaboration with city-based researchers, this report discusses findings from a six-city comparative study. The research explores how the nexus between land and connective infrastructure is shaping the way land is valued, used, transacted, fought over, managed and taxed in African cities.

Its main focus is on how land challenges intersect with connectivity – with the development of transport and mobility infrastructures, and with digital infrastructures that can change the way land is used, valued, exchanged and managed. Exploring what this can reveal about the realities of land value creation, extraction and capture – as well as the technopolitical dynamics of land administration – the report presents policy implications for urban reform.

Research approach

The authors conducted a selective review of literature on urban land and infrastructure in African cities. Six largely qualitative city studies were produced, each led by an expert with a long track record of work in the specific city. These studies draw on secondary sources (such as policies, government documents, reports, existing studies), interviews with key stakeholders (such as officials, land brokers, community representatives and developers), and the authors’ extensive experience and observations in the sectors. The research in each city covered a wide range of issues, around three central themes:

1. Land tenure, administration, management and conflict.
2. Taxation, land value and value capture.
3. Infrastructures and networks related to transport, mobility and digital connectivity.

In addition, a series of cross-city workshops brought together city domain researchers and the core team, to co-develop the framework and co-integrate the findings.

The report draws together crosscutting findings, considers some of the ways in which urban land and connectivity sits within the political settlement, and finally reflects on the findings and their interlinkages, presenting implications for urban reform and for future research priorities.

Key findings

• Land values are driven by multiple factors often overlooked in conventional property development and value capture models.
• Many societal actors are involved in capturing the rising value of urban land, including various forms of brokers.
• Urban growth and residential development often proceed particularly rapidly in areas without connective infrastructure – in contrast to planning assumptions that urban growth is stimulated by increased connectivity.
• Systems for property taxation vary massively, making cross-city learning challenging.
• Digital innovations feature heavily in land systems and can make a difference to “low-hanging fruit” in terms of land registration and taxation.
• Three types of politics – land, territorial and institutional – are evident throughout the domain, with their relative weight differing, depending on the nature of the political settlement.
• Different forms of land politics coexist, but some dominate in particular cases.

Implications for urban reform

• Reform approaches may need to work more on building government legitimacy versus state capacity, depending on which individuals and agencies are seen as the primary “land-grabbers”.
• The varied balance between land politics, territorial politics and institutional politics in different cities has implications for reform prospects.
• Finding ways to engage with land brokers and other intermediaries will be crucial to reform efforts.
• Policymakers should maintain awareness that technical interventions can mask or even worsen existing political and institutional conflicts.

Header photo credit: Andi Edwards / iStock. A road in Kampala, Uganda in the wet season.

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Date: Monday 20 May 2024

Time: 13:00-14:30 BST / 14:00-15:30 SAST / 15:00-16:30 EAT  

Register: bit.ly/ACRCUrbanLandWebinar

Summary: In many African cities, land is governed by a complex arrangement of actors – public and private, formal and informal, local and international. In the context of speculative land markets, porous bureaucracies and conflicting transaction records, land governance has remained hotly contested. Reform efforts aimed at optimising systems or addressing injustices have often had to confront these conflicts, engaging directly with questions of power and politics in the urban land space. 

As part of ACRC’s land and connectivity domain, a team of researchers undertook detailed studies in six African cities, with a keen eye on the relationship between land administration and governance, land value and markets, and land reform efforts.

Chaired by Tom Goodfellow and Liza Rose Cirolia, this webinar will draw on research conducted in Accra (Ghana), Bukavu (DRC), Harare (Zimbabwe), Kampala (Uganda), Maiduguri (Nigeria) and Mogadishu (Somalia), focusing on the following questions:

• How do these multiple and contested land governance arrangements “present” in different cities? Who is involved and what roles do they play? What are some of the key historical forces and contextual factors that have shaped the emergence of these players and the establishment of these roles? What are the politics of these arrangements – in other words, how is power established, maintained or lost by different actors and where do key sites of contestation sit? Do these actors draw on, for example, social contracts, the law, violence, finance or other sources of power and legitimacy to establish themselves? 

• What factors are shaping land value in the different cities (in particular where there are rapidly changing land values)? Taking account of the contestation discussed in the early sections, how is this value being captured, and by whom? What processes and technologies are supporting this capture and how just or unjust is the outcome? 

The event will begin with an overview of the research aims and design, as well as previewing some of the headline crosscutting comparative findings from the ACRC land and connectivity domain report. This will be followed by two panel discussions in which city researchers from some of the six cities will provide an overview of key findings in relation to the themes above. Finally, we will consider implications for urban reform and future research.

Header photo credit: David Attricki / Pexels (via Canva Pro). Aerial shot of buildings and road in Accra, Ghana.

Note: This article presents the views of the author featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

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ACRC has published new research, exploring safety and security in six African cities: Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Lagos, Nigeria; Maiduguri, Nigeria; Mogadishu, Somalia; and Nairobi, Kenya.

Insecurity, crime and violence have a profound impact on the lived experiences of African city residents. They produce significant fear and suffering, often burdening women, children and disadvantaged communities the most.

Both perceived and real threats of violence can limit mobility, impacting the education, livelihoods and general wellbeing of urban residents. The prevalence of urban insecurity also shines a spotlight on governance approaches at both the city and national level, with different forms of political settlement shaping patterns of violence and responses to insecurity.

Addressing the challenges of insecurity and urban violence is therefore an urgent agenda for African cities. In this paper, authors Patience Adzande, Paula Meth and Stephen Commins argue that coalitions across community groups, informal security providers, the police and schools are critical sites for future security reform.

Research was conducted in collaboration with city-based domain teams and researchers focused on city systems and political settlements analysis. Our research challenged singular readings of insecurity within African cities through an everyday insecurities approach. Capturing the lived experiences of lower-income communities was essential to understanding safety and security in the different focus cities, with teams drawing on a mixed methods approach to gather data – including interviews, security diaries, surveys, media reports and community consultations. The lived experience approach adopted in the city studies revealed differentiated accounts and notions of insecurity, both within and between cities.

Key findings

• Safety and security relate to political, personal, social, health, financial, environmental and psychological dimensions.
• In Freetown, criminality and gang violence are key social insecurity issues, while a primary safety challenge in coastal neighbourhoods is flooding.
• Incidences of robbery, assassinations, rape and sexual violence, issues of witchcraft and fetishisms, unregulated gambling, abduction and kidnapping were widely reported in Lagos, Mogadishu, Maiduguri, Nairobi and Bukavu.
• Poverty, gender, ethnicity and displacement directly exacerbate residents’ vulnerability to insecurity.
• City studies illustrated the varied complex intersections between politics and (in)security operating across urban, regional and national scales as manifested in the different configurations of key actors, who often shaped access to resources, controlled land and determined security strategies.

The safety and security domain research findings highlight opportunities and challenges that could shape reform efforts in African cities in three key areas: what constitutes (in)security, integrating plural security governance systems, and possibilities to transform formal and/or informal security platforms into reform coalitions.

Header photo credit: Diana Mitlin. Landslide in Bukavu, DRC.

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Catch up on our webinar introducing the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) and outlining how the Consortium and its international partners are planning to tackle complex, political and systemic problems in some of Africa’s fastest-growing urban areas.

ACRC has been awarded a contract of £32 million from the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) over the next 6 years. Building on the political settlements analysis established by the Effective States and Inclusive Development research centre, ACRC will adopt a city as systems approach to addressing complex urban problems. Through engaged action research we aim to catalyse progress for disadvantaged communities in a number of focus cities and beyond.

Speakers

• Professor Diana Mitlin, The University of Manchester
• Professor Sam Hickey, The University of Manchester
• Dr Martin Atela, Partnership for African Social and Governance Research, Nairobi
• Chaired by Dr Admos Chimhowu

Find out more

• The African Cities Research Consortium
• The Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre
• Follow the African Cities Research Consortium on Twitter
• Sign up to the African Cities Research Consortium newsletter

This post originally appeared on the Global Development Institute Blog.

Note: This article presents the views of the author featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.

Researchers from the Global Development Institute have been awarded a new research contract of £32 million to establish the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC), funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) as part of UK Aid.

Led by Professor Diana Mitlin, ACRC and its international partners will tackle complex problems in some of Africa’s fastest growing urban areas. Over 6 years, research will generate new evidence to catalyse integrated, sustainable, inclusive approaches to urban development.

African Cities will approach urban areas as complex systems, undertaking engaged political analysis, in order to address large scale development challenges. A ‘city as a system’ approach aims to move beyond the sectoral silos of research and interventions by treating each city as a complex system. It builds upon the political settlements analysis establish by our Effective States and Inclusive Development research centre, and will integrate political and technical analysis undertaken alongside key players on the ground.

The African Cities Research Consortium brings together engaged partners including the UK-based IIED, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and ODI, African-based groups such as ICLEI Africa, PASGR and SDI, as well as international organisations, such as the IRC and UNU-WIDER. Closer to home, it will utilise expertise from across The University of Manchester,  particularly within the Manchester Urban Institute and the Global Inequalities research beacon.

CEO Diana Mitlin said, “The long term prospects for much of Africa will hinge on creating more sustainable, equitable and inclusive cities. The African Cities Research Consortium will enable us to tease out the complexities and highlight potential solutions to improve urban centres across the continent.”

ACRC has the ambitious aim of generating new evidence to catalyse integrated, sustainable, inclusive approaches to urban development challenges. An initial focus on 13* African cities will allow us to undertake focused, inter-connected research that delivers real insights for local authorities, civil society and donors. 

Tade Akin Aina, Executive director of the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR), based in Kenya will be the Uptake Director for the Consortium. He said, “Covid-19 is highlighting structural inequalities within cities across Africa. By taking a holistic approach and bringing together communities with local authorities and donors, I’m confident the African Cities Research Consortium will play a vital role in improving urban areas.”

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Manchester commented, “The University of Manchester is proud of its contribution towards tackling global challenges and the new African Cities Research Consortium epitomises this approach. With rigorous research, combined with the engaged networks and insights of partners from very different spheres, we’re confident that great progress will be made.”

* The initial 13 African cities are: Accra (Ghana), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Bukavu (DRC), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Freetown (Sierra Leone), Harare (Zimbabwe), Kampala (Uganda), Khartoum (Sudan), Lagos (Nigeria), Lilongwe (Malawi), Maiduguri (Nigeria), Mogadishu (Somalia), and Nairobi (Kenya).

Photo by Virgyl Sowah on Unsplash

This post originally appeared on the Global Development Institute Blog.

Note: This article presents the views of the author featured and does not necessarily represent the views of the African Cities Research Consortium as a whole.

The African Cities blog is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means you are welcome to repost this content as long as you provide full credit and a link to this original post.