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.

As part of this landmark event, Dialogue on Shelter for the Homeless Trust (DoST) and its Slum Dwellers International (SDI) affiliate, the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation, organised a side event on 1 November. Titled Understanding Climate Change-Induced Health Risks for Women and Children in Informal Settlements in Zimbabwe, the event attracted participants from informal settlements, community-based organisations, state representatives, academia and development agencies.

The side event highlighted pressing climate and health issues affecting women and children in marginalised communities, while providing a unique platform for residents to share locally led adaptation strategies and propose solutions to the daily challenges they face. As a result of this gathering, significant policy shifts were initiated, particularly around methodology and approach. Coinciding with the city’s Environment and Climate Policy making process, the session played a crucial role in encouraging the city to consult informal settlements separately to understand their complexities and harness additional ideas.

A gathering of voices

ACRC’s Harare research team took the opportunity presented by CHAC to share key findings from the programme’s foundation phase – particularly the informal settlements domain. To foster inclusive dialogue, speakers were carefully selected from informal settlers, international organisations, and the City of Harare.

Sekai Catherine Chiremba, one of the key speakers, opened the discussion by sharing her insights into how informal settlements – which are often excluded from development and disaster-response efforts – are disproportionately affected by climate shocks. She explained how the absence of basic infrastructure in these areas increases vulnerability to disasters like droughts, floods and poor energy access, disproportionately impacting women and children.

The second speaker, Lisben Chipfunde from the City of Harare’s City Environment Management Unit (CEMU), provided an overview of how the city is working to tackle multiple challenges sustainably. He discussed the financial and human resource constraints the city faces to maintain and expand the ageing infrastructure. He spoke on the urgent need for deeper collaboration with stakeholders as a way of ensuring inclusive resilience building across the city systems.

Additionally, he presented the Environment and Climate Policy that the city was working on, particularly highlighting its bottom-up approach, which involves consultations at the administrative ward level. However, informal settlers voiced concerns that this approach might overlook their specific needs. In response, the city committed to adjusting the consultation process to ensure that informal settlements would be consulted separately to address their unique challenges and emerging adaptation strategies.

The third speaker, Jeremia Mushosho from the World Health Organization (WHO), shared global perspectives on the intersection of climate and health, as well as talking about climate finance and how this is being employed in different contexts to address climate impacts. His discussion on climate finance generated significant interest, as participants sought clarity on how financial resources could be more effectively mobilised to address climate and health issues. The event emphasised the importance of long-term strategies to enhance climate action and urban health.

What made the session more transformative was its focus on co-production. ACRC’s Harare city manager, George Masimba, highlighted the two action research projects being implemented in Harare. Specifically, he mentioned the co-production of inclusive infrastructure at the Glen View 8 furniture complex, along with the documentation of climate change impacts in informal settlements and the targeted co-production of infrastructure works in Tafara. He reiterated the need to consolidate lessons from interventions to systematically design appropriate ways for cities to work alongside local communities, not only in responding to crises but in shaping their future development. 

Inclusivity: Shaping policy from the bottom up

In the months since the conference, the participation of the ACRC Harare research team has had ripple effects far beyond the event itself. The City of Harare has started incorporating community feedback into its policy design, recognising that policies can only be effective if they are informed by the local communities who will be most affected by them. The City of Harare’s Environment and Climate Policy methodology is using a bottom-up approach, embracing a more inclusive approach to governance.

To meet this ambition, DoST and the Federation have facilitated additional policy dialogue sessions with several informal settlements in the city. Residents from 12 informal settlements – are Dzivarasekwa Extension, Stoneridge, Hopley, Churu, Tafara, Mabvuku-Chizhanje, Boko Haram, Crowborough Paddocks, Caledonia, Budiriro, Lyndhurst and Hatcliffe – met with city officials to share their experiences and insights, directly informing the policymaking process. These discussions have elevated the voices of informal settlers, transforming their once marginalised status into a central part of the policy review and formulation process.

Specifically, residents identified insecure tenure as the biggest hurdle limiting climate resilience of informal settlements. Communities believe that appropriate regularisation modalities will unlock community potential and empower them to be equal co-production partners. To operationalise this ambition, communities identified the co-generation of climate vulnerability assessments across settlements and co-development of climate action plans as key. Additionally, communities presented the institutionalisation of community participation in infrastructural development, environmental stewardship and the inclusion of slum upgrading as a sustainable way of building resilience in settlements.

The shift is profound. In the past, informal settlements were criminalised and ignored by local authorities. Now, these communities are recognised as essential stakeholders, with the potential to contribute to creating climate-resilient cities and policies. The Federation has also mobilised its members in other city wards, ensuring broader participation in future consultation meetings.

Consolidating the gains from collaboration and co-creation

As the ACRC Harare research team continues to implement action research projects, the lessons learned from these engagements will play a pivotal role in shaping future urban policies. The city has recognised that communities are not a homogeneous group, and the need to further accommodate residents who were once marginalised, such as informal settlers. The knock-on effects of these engagements have enhanced the institutional profile of the alliance as a key player in urban development.

Going forward, with a strong foundation for meaningful collaboration, the ACRC Harare team plans to continue its policy-related engagements and create pathways for innovative pilots to be integrated into actual policies. Through its role in the ACRC Harare action research, DoST has already been invited to join the technical team working on finalising the Environment and Climate Policy, and discussions are underway to explore more inclusive ways of reviewing the city Housing Policy.

Photo credits: Tarisai Manyowa, Teurai Nyamangara and Evans Banana

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.

By Kunal Sen, director of UNU-WIDER

Structural transformation involves the movement of workers from low-productivity to high-productivity sectors – often from agriculture to manufacturing and services – and is a necessary condition for sustained economic growth.

Around the world, we tend to see urbanisation and structural transformation happening together – as countries urbanise, productive jobs are created in manufacturing and services. But while sub-Saharan Africa is undergoing considerable urbanisation (and driving global urban expansion), the structural transformation that we would expect to see – and have seen, for example, in East Asia and Latin America – is largely absent in the region. One major challenge created by this absence is a lack of well paid, formal jobs to meet the needs of a growing population.

How can we bridge this gap between urbanisation and structural transformation in African cities? This is the question we are seeking to answer with ACRC’s structural transformation domain research, led by UNU-WIDER.

What drives structural transformation?

Over the last two years, we have worked closely with researchers in six African cities – Accra, Ghana; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Harare, Zimbabwe; Lagos, Nigeria; and Nairobi, Kenya. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, we have built on concepts developed in the Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) programme, with the aim of better understanding the political economy drivers of structural transformation – and the implications for individual cities.

To know how political economy drives structural transformation, we need to understand the way that cities, states and business interact. Historically, when we have collaborative or synergistic state–business relations – whether at the city, subnational or national level – we tend to see economic growth and structural transformation. That has certainly been the case in East Asia and Latin America. But what about in African cities?

To answer this, we categorise different types of enterprise, and look at which are most conducive to structural transformation.

> Magicians

Manufacturing and tradeable services firms – including IT and tourism – are key to structural transformation. They are export-oriented firms that drive investment and growth, but also rely on the state for policies that help them prosper and grow to face world competition. We call this set of firms “magicians” because they are competing in the global market and export within those constraints.

> Workhorses

Along with magicians, we also tend to see “workhorses”. These are informal enterprises, both in services and manufacturing, that operate mostly for the domestic market. Street vendors are a classic example of workhorses in African cities. They are not very productive enterprises, but they are important because they also face and create competition in the domestic market.

> Powerbrokers

The final group key to understanding the political economy drivers of structural transformation are “powerbrokers”. Powerbrokers are enterprises – such as utility companies, telecommunications providers and real estate firms – which also produce for the domestic market but tend to have a large share of the market. As they do not face the same competitive pressures as workhorses or magicians, they hold a lot of power.

We argue that the growth of magicians – and potentially workhorses – is crucial to driving structural transformation, while powerbrokers need to be kept in check. The role of powerbrokers in this scenario is to provide inputs, such as electricity and road infrastructure, that facilitate the growth of magicians and workhorses. Regulating the market power of powerbrokers is important to ensure that essential inputs are provided to magicians at reasonable cost.

Relationships with elites in African cities

We collected data and conducted key informant interviews with several enterprises in our six focus cities, along with speaking to business elites, political elites, city leaders and so on. Broadly, what we found is that powerbrokers tend to have fairly closed relationships with business elites and working elites. In other words, at the city level, only a few firms regularly engage with bureaucratic or political elites. These are also what we call ordered relationships – in essence, the relationships are reliable, and each party knows what they are getting.

We find that these kinds of closed and ordered relationships with powerbrokers can be problematic, for two main reasons. First, they can lead to situations with a lot of collusion, rents being shared and, in some cases, even corruption. This is not a good thing, and often means that powerbrokers are not really under pressure to supply good quality inputs to magicians and workhorses. Second, because powerbrokers are in this closed relationship with political and bureaucratic elites, they receive a lot of attention and the elites do not have the same level of interest in magicians and workhorses.

Conversely, workhorses and informal enterprises tend to have disordered relationships with local elites and city officials. This creates an unstable business environment which is not conducive to economic development. Consequently, it is unsurprising that in African cities, we tend to find very small household enterprises that do not grow or employ other workers. As for magicians, they are key drivers of structural transformation, but we find very few of them in African cities.

Wanted: More magicians

So, why are magicians missing in African cities? In our view, there are two main reasons.

First, they are not of strong enough interest to political and city elites – in part because they are not yet of a notable size or scale and there are not enough of them. Second, they need good infrastructure, which is currently lacking in these cities. They need ports, electricity, and business environments to facilitate their growth. And the absence of these essential conditions is, of course, partly linked to the lack of interest from political and city elites.

This is something our research has uncovered as fundamentally important in understanding why we have not yet seen structural transformation in sub-Saharan Africa, despite rapid urbanisation. To drive structural transformation in African cities, we need to find a way to build an environment in which magicians can grow and nurture stable and predictable relationships with elites.

Watch our structural transformation explainer video with Kunal Sen:

Header photo credit: Erik Hathawa / Unsplash. A market in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

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: Random Institute / Unsplash. An informal settlement in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

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.

ACRC has published a new report exploring the political dimensions of urban development in Harare, Zimbabwe. Authored by George Masimba and Anna Walnycki, the paper synthesises key findings from research undertaken by in-city researchers, analysing how Harare’s political settlement and city systems shape its urban development domains. It aims to provide an overview of the political economy of development in Harare and identify priorities for future action research and interventions.

Harare’s political terrain is highly complex, providing both challenges and opportunities for transformative urban progress in the city. Post-colonial decentralisation in Zimbabwe has led to de-racialisation but not democratisation, with local government institutions having little autonomy and enduring significant interference from central government.

Over the last two decades, Harare’s infrastructure has largely collapsed – connected to national-level macro-socioeconomic and political developments. With reconstruction requiring an estimated $10 billion, Zimbabwe’s political isolation at the international level has left the city unable to secure funding to address critical systems failures. The research findings show the contested and contingent nature of urban systems in Harare, with hyperinflation, exclusionary regulatory frameworks and a growing population only compounding these difficulties.

Against this backdrop, the report explores findings from four urban development domains: informal settlements, land and connectivity, neighbourhood and district economic development, and structural transformation. Within every domain, informality was cited as a binding constraint, with the recommendations made in this study highlighting the need for council-led integration, regulation and institutionalisation of informal practices.

Informal settlements

The nexus between informal settlements and politics in Harare is much debated. Low-income areas are sites of political contestation, with elites making critical decisions and ordinary residents facing the consequences. As well as dealing with inadequate basic services, low-income urban residents have to cope with everyday challenges of land tenure precarity – including evictions and demolitions.

There are more than 60 informal settlements in Harare. Despite strong ties with political elites, grassroots political structures are often not recognised at higher levels of government. As a result, politically connected local actors have become adept at navigating formal authorities in their struggle for land tenure security. While many upgrading and regularisation processes have been led by politically aligned groups in informal settlements, other actors – including central government – have also been involved and there are examples of successful participatory initiatives.

Land and connectivity

Areas of high-density housing – mainly for low-income residents – have grown significantly over the last two decades in Harare.

The research finds the land and connectivity domain in Harare to be characterised by competitive land authorities, stressed physical planning systems, strategic infrastructure gaps and fragile urban land management. These difficulties have driven the city’s failure to optimise land for development and led to a struggle with policy and administrative structures.

The authors argue that joint action between the city council and national government is key to resolving strategic land conflicts and regularising settlements legally within Harare’s jurisdiction. This has the potential to open pathways to secure tenure and formal urban land administration in the city.

Structural transformation

Harare has witnessed rapid urbanisation, but little growth. Deindustrialisation and informalisation of the economy, originating from massive GDP loss between 1999 and 2000, have been worsened by disruption arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. Many workers lost their jobs and incomes, and more than 76% are now employed informally.

The city is in a precarious financial situation, due to national macroeconomic challenges and inconsistent fiscal transfers from central government over the last 20 years. New avenues to finance social services and critical infrastructure are urgently needed to drive an economic agenda that in turn catalyses growth-enhancing structural transformation.

Yet, while the situation seems bleak, the research highlights myriad opportunities to recapture development and push for change. By working closely with city authorities and national government, there is scope to take advantage of “low-hanging fruit” – such as creating a new vision for the city by developing a new spatial transformation programme to guide urban development. Support will be needed if Harare is to develop an overarching vision – but discussions are already underway.

Neighbourhood and district economic development

With 37% of the nation’s urban population living below the poverty line, Zimbabwe’s informal economy plays a significant role in poverty reduction, job creation, income, livelihoods and food security enhancement. As Zimbabwe’s primary economic and commercial hub, Harare attracts residents from surrounding areas, who contribute to an informal sector accounting for 58% of employment in the city.

Household microenterprises (HMEs) are a prominent fixture in Harare’s informal sector, but there is little research into the challenges they face. Reliable information around the scale, magnitude, character and spatial distribution of the informal economy is limited by a lack of coordination across government ministries, public bodies and local authorities. HMEs also face obstacles in the form of inadequate labour protection and social security provisions for informal workers, along with weak collective bargaining and representation of rights.

A number of current reforms are identified in the report – some taking place already, as well as potential interventions. These include the launch of the Informal Sector Policy (SME) in 2023, the opportunity afforded by membership associations to inclusively reshape the informal sector, and the growth in grassroots collective savings as an instrument for informal traders to access funding.

The research highlights that development processes in Harare are inseparable from politics, meaning that politically nuanced approaches and sustained commitment from elites are critical to confront urban challenges.

Header photo credit: VV Shots / iStock. Busy traffic on Samora Machel Avenue in Harare, Zimbabwe.

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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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By Kate Lines

From early in the Covid-19 pandemic, global inequalities compromised the success of local vaccine rollouts in the global South. At the same time, it remains important to understand contextually-specific processes affecting vaccine deployment and uptake, including structural, socioeconomic and political considerations in informal settlements, which are home to most residents of African cities.

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. We draw on two rounds of action research, conducted in 2021 and 2022–23, with grassroots organisations in Harare, Lilongwe, Kampala and Nairobi. The first round is summarised here and the latter in our new ACRC working paper.

Vaccine inequalities

As well as the obvious protection to life and health, why are global Covid-19 vaccine inequalities important for low-income urban citizens? In short, they matter because of the consequences for communities’ capacities to withstand crises and to recover afterwards.

During the pandemic, the continued absence of vaccines for all or some of a country’s population implied the need for other measures (and for a longer time) to control the spread of infection. Most commonly, these other measures were called “non-pharmaceutical interventions” or NPIs – implemented as lockdown, curfews and restrictions on gathering or mobility. Especially in urban areas of the global South, the socioeconomic impacts of Covid-19’s NPI restrictions landed disproportionately hard on low-income households and informal workers. But these groups’ capacity to withstand the impacts was already compromised by poverty, marginalisation and inadequate access to basic services, infrastructure and public health care.

So, in some countries, low vaccine supply meant longer lockdowns – along with all the economic and social hardship that entailed. Indeed, the data shows that in the second half of 2022, for example, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Malawi’s NPIs were all significantly more stringent than rich countries with better, earlier supply and far higher vaccination rates.

Uptake and hesitancy

“My son was very [hesitant], paying heed to circulating conspiracy theories. [But] when he was faced with the ultimatum of either get vaccinated or lose his job, he had no choice.”
– Female community member (Hatcliffe Extension, Harare)

Vaccine hesitancy is a major global concern found in wildly different groups across low- and high-income countries. In any setting, underlying cultural and historical influences on vaccine anxieties and attitudes need to be understood. We found vaccine uptake to be subject to locally specific influences – religious beliefs often held particular sway, for example, and cultural dimensions linked to gender, age and occupation sometimes also influenced vaccine uptake (see Figure 1). In our study context, these influences also connect to longstanding structural inequalities and the pandemic’s heavy impact on low-income communities – more below on this.

Information and misinformation

“People do not have enough information. Due to lack of basic services like electricity, [many] people do not have a radio or television from where most true information is disseminated.”
– Male community member (Stoneridge, Harare)

Another important factor was the availability of clear information from trusted local sources. Systemic exclusion can lead to politicisation and distrust of government information campaigns, further influencing uptake; we also found many expressions of distrust in national and local government leaders and perceptions of pandemic mismanagement and corruption.

During our earlier research at the height of the vaccine rollout, misinformation was rampant in many of the studied settlements. Further fuelling misinformation were uncertain national supplies and local challenges accessing vaccines. The former meant that governments’ information campaigns were hamstrung; the latter gave fewer residents in informal areas the opportunity to see neighbours and peers safely vaccinated, and in this way change their minds.

Post-pandemic, we found that communities’ interests in getting vaccinated had declined even further, but also noticed the drivers of continued low uptake had shifted over time. Earlier (2021), worries about the potential harm of vaccination were dominant. Later (2022–23), most talked about their perceptions of the low severity of the Covid health threat, which was not helped by the dwindling availability of accurate public data on cases and deaths.

“I have never seen anyone with [Covid-19] being taken from this place to the hospital, that is what made most people not to receive the vaccine… The government is looking for people to vaccinate for free and they still do not want it. They are still asking where the Covid-19 is.”
– Community health worker (Mathare, Nairobi)

Systemic inequalities and structural barriers

“We had a medical centre [nearby] and people used to access every service there, including vaccination. But now they have relocated away from [us].”
– Male community member (Nakulabye, Kampala)

“Vaccines are very far [not accessible nearby], as compared to back then, hence some people give up. After all, the coronavirus is not a problem nowadays. People are busy with the cholera vaccine.”
– Male traditional and federation leader (Area 50, Lilongwe)

Even those who want to be vaccinated can face heightened barriers to access. At the height of the global rollout in 2021, these included long queues, distant vaccinating centres, poor information about vaccine types and about centres’ opening days and times. The barriers are even higher for vulnerable groups like migrants (who may lack ID cards to access public health services) or people living with disabilities (who may struggle to travel to vaccinating centres or to communicate with health professionals).

Some researchers argue that overemphasis on vaccine hesitancy in research and public discussion has made systemic barriers less visible: individuals are blamed, even when access is not equitable. In the study, we explored how structural barriers to vaccine deployment and access (at national or city levels) were exacerbated in marginalised urban areas by longstanding pre-pandemic inequities in infrastructure, basic services and local governance.

For instance, in many areas poorly linked to health centres, belated improvements in global vaccine allocation and national availability often didn’t translate to improvements in local accessibility. This was because the emergency measures during the pandemic had by then been rolled back, with vaccinating centres (and all public health services) once again further away. This represents an unfortunate coincidence: growing normalisation of Covid vaccines alongside reduced accessibility, as emergency healthcare measures were rolled back.

“My business challenges are far worse right now, I will go for the vaccine later”

“It’s now the rainy season, so people are focused on farming their small plots. Going to get vaccinated would be an interruption they can’t afford.”
– Female community leader (Hatcliffe Extension, Harare)

For many, what remained of Covid-19 vaccination campaigns had in the wake of the pandemic been eclipsed by other concerns. The effects of overlapping crises (like the rising cost of living, climate impacts, food insecurity and new disease outbreaks) are now compromising many low-income residents’ and informal workers’ adaptive capacities and exhausting their already depleted assets. This finding links to another impediment to vaccine uptake: for many, the daily time pressures in the pandemic’s socioeconomic aftermath have left little time or interest to go for vaccination.

Celebrating and recognising grassroots capacities

“In the first few months, local authorities improved their working relationship with community governance structures, but now there are few engagements taking place.”
– Female youth leader (Area 36, Lilongwe)

There is a great need for co-creating innovative, locally tailored solutions to crisis response in informal contexts, and community knowledge can play a crucial role in meeting this need. Working with communities and trusted local voices is therefore crucial for governments, in planning for accessible responses, providing practical information, building trust and countering misinformation.

In Mumbai, India, which was included in the 2021 study, we found local groups developing innovative strategies to tackle long waiting times. In Lilongwe, we found community groups advocating for and identifying the best locations for mobile vaccination clinics. In Kampala, effective community health worker training and outreach was conducted in collaboration with local authorities. In Nairobi, grassroots organisations have used creative media to promote vaccine awareness, complemented by youth groups’ engagement. In Harare, the influence of faith leaders and other local voices again helped in promoting uptake – albeit in the face of onerous vaccine mandates on many groups and workers.

Such locally rooted strategies can considerably strengthen social capital and serve vulnerable urban groups. Supporting organised groups in community-led actions for crisis response and recovery, as we learnt throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, can foster resilience in the face of both chronic and acute shocks.

With special thanks to the paper’s co-authors:

• Michelle Koyaro, Elvira Songoro, Jane Wairutu and Joseph Kimani (SDI-Kenya)
• Sheila Muganyi, Tarisai Manyowa, Teurai Nyamangara, Patience Mudimu and George Masimba Nyama (Dialogue on Shelter Trust, Zimbabwe)
• Stanley Dzimadzi, Happiness Zidana and Zilire Luka (CCODE Malawi)
• Hakimu Sseviiri, Paul Isolo Mukwaya and Viola Nuwahereza (Makerere University, Uganda)
• Junior Alves Sebbanja (ACTogether Uganda)
• Alice Sverdlik (Global Development Institute, The University of Manchester, UK)
• James Tayler and Xola Mteto (SDI, South Africa)
• Henrik Ernstson (KTH, Stockholm, Sweden)

As part of this phase of our Covid Collective work, we produced a series of infographics to show findings from community survey data reports conducted in Lilongwe, Harare and Kampala around the vaccine rollout in informal settlements. Click below to open in full screen.

Header photo credit: Know Your City TV Zimbabwe. A community group meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe.

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.

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.

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.

By Alice Sverdlik, lecturer in global development at the Global Development Institute

Covid-19’s socioeconomic, health and political aftershocks are still reverberating in African informal settlements.

As Covid intersected with cost-of-living crises, many informal workers’ incomes declined markedly. Access to emergency relief and social protection proved inadequate for most, with few households making a robust economic recovery. Gains made during the pandemic in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) provision lasted only temporarily.

These lingering impacts reflect the short-term nature of support and political biases in the distribution of social protection, as well as a lack of reliable data on beneficiaries. But building upon grassroots-led strategies may help to foster more progressive change.

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.

Building on our previous work, we also explored local efforts to enhance access to WASH, Covid vaccinations and community healthcare provision. More positively, we looked at SDI’s inclusive initiatives and strategies to revitalise community savings groups. These schemes are integral to SDI’s bottom-up model of change in informal settlements.

As explored below and in our working paper, we noted a number of trends across the cities studied – along with inspiring examples of collective action from grassroots groups to address community needs.

Poor maintenance of WASH improvements

Across the four cities, we uncovered the return of poorly maintained, overcrowded WASH facilities, starkly illustrating governmental neglect of informal settlements.

In Kampala, upgraded water tanks had been largely abandoned or broken down at the time of our fieldwork (in November 2022). Malawi’s cholera outbreak in early 2022 belatedly spurred WASH improvements in Lilongwe, but many informal settlements still grapple with low-quality provision and associated risks of communicable diseases. In Nairobi, the local authority started providing free water to informal settlements in April 2020, but this was halted by early 2022. Although youth groups helped to maintain WASH facilities in Nairobi’s informal settlement of Mathare, handwashing facilities deteriorated because of poor maintenance and vandalism. In Harare, there were maintenance concerns and paltry government commitment to WASH. As an SDI leader lamented, water kiosks in Harare’s settlement of Hatcliffe were implemented early in the pandemic but later eliminated. This resulted in crowded, low-quality provision, which particularly burdened women and girls.

Although WASH improvements were often appreciated, sustaining political will, maintenance and ongoing responsiveness is crucial to ensure long-term benefits for low-income citizens.

Increasingly precarious livelihoods

Some informal workers in the four cities successfully shifted into alternative livelihoods and found new spaces of work – often utilising digital tools to bolster their incomes. During the height of the pandemic, it was common for workers to pivot to selling masks and sanitisers, with some using this as a temporary cushion before returning to their previous trades.

But these workers were the exception. We found that informal labourers’ recovery was often hampered by major state-led evictions (“clean-ups”), including in Harare and Kampala. Our small-scale surveys conducted in late 2022 – with 58 community leaders in Lilongwe, 90 in Harare and 130 in Kampala – indicate that many informal workers were still struggling in the wake of pandemic-related shocks.

As Figure 1 shows, an average of 67% of respondents across the three cities said that their incomes had declined from late 2021 to late 2022. Our surveys also found many informal workers were no longer working (see Figure 2).

In Nairobi and Kampala, our respondents highlighted the links between unemployment, school disruptions and increased levels of crime. Livelihoods in Nairobi had remained stagnant or deteriorated, while residents faced rising costs of living, which led to a spike in insecurity:

Things are becoming worse because [insecurity] is getting worse; because the youth do not have jobs, they are mugging people and stealing their phones.

Nascent partnerships

At the same time, we found some inclusive collaborations between residents, decisionmakers and service providers in the four cities. In Kampala, a partnership during the Covid-19 and Ebola outbreaks between health workers, federation leaders and the Ministry of Health underscored the value of multi-level partnerships. As an SDI federation leader explained:

Our health and hygiene coordinators [in the federation are] now increasingly being recognised by city authorities and government… These continue to be part of the Ministry of Health and city health department’s [system] to deliver health services at local level.

Meanwhile, Lilongwe’s community-led task forces have monitored the impacts of Covid interventions and identified gaps in government programmes, including addressing women and girls’ needs.

Some initiatives preceded Covid-19, such as Harare’s Urban Informality Forum, but have provided valuable platforms for post-pandemic collaboration. In Nairobi, residents have mobilised for inclusive partnerships and advocated for a “Special Planning Area” to upgrade Mathare. The Kenyan SDI federation has used art therapy amongst youth and community health volunteers to support wellbeing in Mathare.

SDI federations also created a “Dignified Urban Life” campaign (on social media as #DignifiedUrbanLife), which features youth-led songs and explores how to advance alternative visions of urbanisation.

In Nairobi, the federation has relaxed its requirements for savings and developed new ways to foster solidarity and food security. Many savings groups eliminated their requirement to save daily – instead allowing members to save either weekly or fortnightly) – and reduced the minimum amount of savings to just Ksh. 50 ($0.37) per week, or even eliminated it altogether. In a new initiative to strengthen food security, a group in Mathare’s Hospital Ward started a communal food fund in 2021, where members contribute by sharing flour or other staple items. As a leader explained, this has expanded the group’s rapport and membership, thanks to small contributions:

We contribute food and share the food, as this brings people closer… Things are still hard, so I am using my strategy to bring people on board.

In Harare, informal workers used WhatsApp to launch collective projects. After their market stalls were demolished, members of a federation savings scheme in Stoneridge used savings to start a thriving poultry project:

This project has helped us as a group during and post Covid… We started with only 50 chicks, but now we have 200 chicks in different batches.

WhatsApp also helped Harare’s informal workers in trades like food or clothing:

Buying and selling through WhatsApp sustained us during Covid… It really helped move our businesses. Most people have adopted this kind of trading, even up to now.

In Lilongwe, the SDI federation introduced mobile money services for savings and loans – helping to reduce transaction costs and time of managing loans. The Malawian federation also provided food and masks, alongside skills training via mobile learning to enhance livelihoods (for example, in sausage making).

In Kampala, the SDI federation and its NGO partner, ACTogether, sought to revive livelihoods via savings, enterprise development and skills training, focusing on youth and women entrepreneurs. Using start-up capital from a Cities Alliance-funded SDI project, “Build Back Better”, 110 livelihoods groups were formed in Kampala. They were encouraged to revitalise their savings practices and diversify livelihoods to help cope with future shocks.

Future priorities

These initiatives illustrate the pivotal role of bottom-up organisations in responding to crises, and in advocating for alternative visions that can foster recognition. But we also found some concerning evidence of eroded assets and fraying trust – especially linked to unpaid loans – which can produce a vicious circle of dwindling social and financial capital at the grassroots level. While community-led responses were integral throughout the pandemic’s acute phase, the challenges in rebuilding grassroots movements indicate the profound and chronic crises still facing many people who live and work informally in African cities.

Moving forward, it will be crucial to build on emerging collaborations and generate new strategies to revitalise SDI’s savings schemes. This may include:

• Flexible requirements for savings and loans.
• Equitable, concrete efforts to foster food security (as in Nairobi).
• Alternative modes of organising and providing trainings, including in digital skills.

Other key recommendations include:

• Prioritising community health workers
• Developing processes to ensure equitable, transparent access to social protection.
• Promoting digital inclusion and strengthening informal livelihoods.
• Co-creating multifaceted strategies to enhance SDI’s savings groups.

With special thanks to the paper’s co-authors:

• Michelle Koyaro, Elvira Songoro, Jane Wairutu and Joseph Kimani (SDI-Kenya)
• Sheila Muganyi, Tarisai Manyowa, Teurai Nyamangara, Patience Mudimu and George Masimba Nyama (Dialogue on Shelter Trust, Zimbabwe)
• Stanley Dzimadzi, Happiness Zidana and Zilire Luka (CCODE Malawi)
• Hakimu Sseviiri, Paul Isolo Mukwaya and Viola Nuwahereza (Makerere University, Uganda)
• Junior Alves Sebbanja (ACTogether Uganda)
• Kate Lines (Global Development Institute, The University of Manchester, UK)
• James Tayler and Xola Mteto (SDI, South Africa)
• Henrik Ernstson (KTH, Stockholm, Sweden)

As part of this phase of our Covid Collective work, Know Your City TV produced a series of video blogs, exploring how communities responded to the Covid-19 pandemic in the four focus cities of Harare, Kampala, Lilongwe and Nairobi. Watch below…

Header photo credit: Donwilson Odhiambo / iStock. A group of women line up to collect local food aid in Kibera, Nairobi.

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.

The African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) has confirmed the cities going forward into its implementation phase: Accra, Ghana; Harare, Zimbabwe; Kampala, Uganda; Lagos, Nigeria; and Nairobi, Kenya.

This follows the foundation phase research and engagement work in 12 cities, which has taken place over the last few years. The holistic exploration of city systems, political settlements and urban development domains enabled city teams to identify priority complex problems. Their proposed strategies to address these problems played a pivotal role in determining the cities moving ahead. 

With pilot projects and the first four selected cities announced in November 2023, Kampala is the final city chosen to proceed to ACRC’s next stage. 

Along with action research project proposals during the foundation phase, the final city decision took the overall balance of implementation cities into account – ensuring diversity in geography, size, income levels, fragility and political context. 

Over the next few years, local ACRC city teams will implement a number of urban development interventions in the selected cities, designed to address challenges identified in the foundation phase research and advance urban reform. Initial projects being rolled out in the cities are outlined below. 

The Kampala project will focus on Ggaba food market, a key source of fresh produce for the city and one of seven major markets owned by the Kampala City Council Authority (KCCA). Vendors at Ggaba market face multiple challenges related to inadequate sanitation, poor hygiene and substandard food safety practices. 

This action research intervention is aimed at enhancing the market’s food safety and sanitation systems. Through establishing a coalition of key stakeholders across public, private and civil society sectors, the project will build on previous experience to improve sanitation by developing a community-led approach and employing technologies for faecal sludge management. The system will generate gas to meet some on-site energy needs and support business enterprises, while compost byproducts will enable urban farmers to generate sales income. The project also aims to establish and formalise food safety certification processes. 

In Accra, the first action research project aims to develop an innovative business model for a community-led organic waste management system. Old Fadama – a historic informal settlement, with a growing population of over 120,000 – is the location of one of the city’s largest fruit and vegetable markets. Waste is a highly politicised issue in Accra, dominated by large private contractors. As a result, informal settlements like Old Fadama are excluded from the formal refuse collection system, meaning that waste – mostly organic – goes uncollected. Informal settlements and markets therefore depend on informal collectors. 

Promisingly, there is appetite for change. Initiatives by the city assembly to support and formalise informal waste collectors, together with policies that foster climate resilience and the green economy, are shining a spotlight on the critical importance of recycling and better waste management. This community-led waste management project therefore seeks to establish an organic waste value chain – including household waste separation, sorting and collection – along with a composting business, which will provide employment and better working conditions for waste collectors. 

Researchers in Lagos are currently developing several action research proposals, centred around improving access to housing for low-income families, implementing climate resilience action plans to provide flood protection in low-income neighbourhoods, and tackling violent crime hotspots with better street lighting.  

As shared previously, pilot action research projects are already underway in Nairobi and Harare, which were the first two cities confirmed to be proceeding to ACRC’s implementation phase. 

In Nairobi, the pilot intervention is focused on improving children’s access to healthy diets, by strengthening and expanding an existing school feeding programme to encompass schools located in informal settlements. 

The Harare project centres around upgrading and regularising informal enterprises located in the Glen View Eight complex, by supporting informal traders to mobilise, establishing a technical working group to address key challenges and conducting action research to inform negotiation and implementation processes. 

Although the five cities selected for the implementation phase will be ACRC’s primary focus in the next phase, the consortium is continuing to work with the seven cities not going forward to maximise the positive impact of the work undertaken so far. This will include supporting city teams with smaller action research projects, continuing to provide support around research uptake and engagement, and providing funding for other interventions.

Header photo credit: vlad_karavaev / iStock. A street vendor selling pineapples at a market in Kampala, Uganda.

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.