ACRC

From the inside out: Why Africa’s development must be built with its people

Hannah — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0000

By Jerry Okal, Susan Mwanzia and Ismail Ibraheem

On Wednesday 6 May, ACRC colleagues met with the former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo at his Presidential Library in Abeokuta. The meeting was timely and insightful, and it turned out to be far more than a courtesy visit.

President Obasanjo spoke with enthusiasm and passion about Africa’s progress, missed opportunities, countries and cities getting it right, the true meaning of elite commitment, how to engage them and what happens when research and politics fail to meet the people they are supposed to serve.

It was a conversation that touched on one of the most pertinent questions facing Africa today: how are politics and development connected, and what does it actually take to build countries, cities and a continent that work for everyone?

Those in attendance included Folasade Tolulope Ogunsola, vice chancellor of the University of Lagos; Ismail Ibraheem, ACRC uptake director; Susan Mwanzia, ACRC Nairobi in-city politics lead; and Jerry Okal, ACRC Nairobi uptake lead.

The role of conflict resolution in Africa’s development

Africa’s development story cannot be told without reflecting on its political landscape. Across the continent, the promise of economic growth, social progress and urban transformation has often been hindered – not by a lack of resources or ideas, but by political instability, electoral contestation and unresolved, prolonged conflict, such as the case currently in Sudan.

The evidence shows that countries that invest in peaceful political transitions and conflict resolution consistently outperform their peers on virtually every development indicator – from infrastructure investment, to health outcomes, to foreign direct investment.

This is precisely why the role of respected voices remains crucial on a continent prone to fragile political systems and political uncertainty. President Obasanjo himself has been at the forefront of advancing peaceful transitions on the continent. Most recently, he played a critical role in mediating the post-election tensions that followed Kenya’s 2022 general election – facilitating dialogue between President William Ruto and the late opposition leader Raila Odinga, at a time when the country was on the brink of political turmoil. That intervention helped restore peace and preserve the conditions for governance and continued development at a time of grave national uncertainty.

This is a reminder that conflict resolution is not a soft add-on to development – it is a key ingredient to moving countries forward. You cannot build a country, city, empower a community or sustain a reform coalition in the midst of political instability.

President Obasanjo brings a deep understanding of the political terrain and has built a high level of trust through decades of direct engagement with various heads of state, politicians, governments and civil society across the continent. Hence, he is well placed to foster dialogue, influence strategy and decision-making, and strengthen high-level collaboration in ways that institutional channels alone might not achieve.

Political stability as the foundation of African progress

The importance of political stability to Africa’s development cannot be overstated. When there is political instability or conflict and governments are consumed by survival, citizens suffer and are more preoccupied with safety than prosperity. And the chance for development and investment simply diminishes. Ideally, research, urban planning, community mobilisation and policy reform all require peaceful conditions to take place.

The meeting reinforced something that development practitioners often understate: that in African contexts, development outcomes are shaped not only by formal institutions, but also by relationships, networks and the ability of influential key actors to convene and mobilise different constituencies around a shared vision. Political settlements are complex, and navigating them requires the kind of nuanced, trust-based engagement that figures like President Obasanjo have spent a lifetime cultivating.

ACRC’s work across African cities is premised on precisely this understanding. Building coalitions – between citizens and elites, research and practice, community organisations and local government – requires a political environment in which those relationships can be nurtured over time. President Obasanjo’s long view of African development, shaped by decades in government, diplomacy and post-political engagement, gave the ACRC team a better appreciation of what building coalitions and meaningful and lasting change demands.

With **communities, not for them**

Throughout the wide-ranging discussion, one message came out clearly: real change is not done for people. It is built with them. Elite commitment, however genuine, is not sufficient on its own. Research findings, however rigorous, gather dust without community ownership. Policies, however well designed, fail without the people they are meant to serve being active participants in their design and implementation.

President Obasanjo’s emphasis on community empowerment alongside elite coordination reflects a deep understanding that enduring transformation requires both top-down political commitment and bottom-up community approaches and engagement. Neither alone is enough. Sustainable urban development demands that institutions and citizens move toward shared goals together – not in parallel or in sequence, but in genuine partnership.

This is not a new idea. But hearing it from a man who has seen it all and has been President of Africa’s most populous nation, brokered peace across the continent, and spent decades promoting development across the continent gives it renewed weight. And it is, of course, the foundational logic of ACRC’s own theory of change.

ACRC’s theory of change

The discussion with President Obasanjo did more than affirm ACRC’s direction – it actively reinforced the importance of the four pillars of ACRC’s theory of change and its conceptual framework. These pillars – which guide engagement, collaboration, evidence-based action and sustainable impact – provide the foundation for ACRC’s approach to addressing urban challenges across the cities where it operates. They exist to ensure that no community is left behind in the process of transformation.

What emerged from the meeting is a recognition that ACRC’s theory of change is not operating in isolation. It is a complementary approach and a potential driver within the broader push for urban transformation that is inclusive, equitable and sustainable. At a time when African governments, multilateral institutions and civil society are all grappling with the pace and equity of urban growth, ACRC’s framework – grounded in citizen mobilisation and elite commitment working together – offers a tested and scalable model.

The opportunity now is to connect that model to the highest levels of political leadership. Political figures like President Obasanjo are uniquely positioned to engage and influence various leaders and make the case for combined strategic action in support of inclusive urban development.

Strategic relationships driving development

The meeting brought into focus how much ACRC’s impact depends not only on the quality of its research and the strength of its community coalitions, but on the strategic relationships it cultivates at the highest levels of influence. By leveraging these relationships, partnerships and trusted networks, ACRC can do something that research programmes rarely achieve: bring urban transformation into the room where national political decisions are made.

The opportunities available to ACRC across the cities where it works are significant but require an intentional strategy of relationship stewardship at the leadership level. These relationships are not one-time engagements; they are long-term assets that must be nurtured, activated, and deepened if they are to translate into the kind of policy influence and political backing that real implementation requires.

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New research: What does progress look like for household microenterprises in African cities?

Hannah — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0000

80% of urban workers in sub-Saharan Africa are employed in the informal sector and the vast majority work in household microenterprises (HMEs). They are so called because the owner-operator supplies the labour (sometimes alongside other family members) and usually based within the home.

A new paper, led by Stephen Gelb, outlines key findings from ACRC’s neighbourhood and district economic development domain research, which looked at HMEs in five African cities: Accra, Ghana; Lagos, Nigeria; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Lilongwe, Malawi; and Harare, Zimbabwe.

What does progress look like for HMEs?

The paper argues that “progress” for HMEs is not reflected in better income levels or reducing poverty/inequality at the city scale, but that it involves both the routinisation (stability and predictability) of activities and also security (regularity and permanence) of income – at both the level of individual enterprises and groups of HMEs.

This does not only concern revenues, but also direct and indirect costs for infrastructure and finance, as well as governance arrangements, bargaining power and HME owners’ time – which is especially crucial in small firms.

Understanding HMEs’ productivity challenges

Much existing literature focused on the informal sector and HMEs tends to focus on individual challenges facing these firms, without looking at the interaction between factors and how they are shaped by the political economy of a city. As such, the paper develops a coherent framework for analysing HMEs as firms, bringing together six issues which shape HMEs’ activities, but are often analysed in siloes.

Going on to examine each dimension in detail, the paper emphasises the importance of industrial sub-sector and spatial location in shaping how each dimension impacts an HME, using examples from the research across the five cities. In summary:

1. Formalisation – Critiquing the standard view that informality is chosen by HMEs, the paper argues that state-imposed formalisation, construction and management of market spaces are impractical. HMEs ignore formalisation, taxes are not collected, and HME locations are shaped by customer patterns rather than state orders.

2. Factor supplies – Aside from micro finance institutions, informal savings clubs and mobile money, HMEs often face financial exclusion, forcing them to rely on informal moneylenders. Ecosystems of interdependent institutions, policies and organisations that share a common purpose are therefore needed for both entrepreneurial training and financial literacy, but different ecosystems are needed for different types of HME.

3. Hybrid governance – Formal and informal rules and regulations co-exist for HMEs, with both based on the threat of violence. Informal groups including gangs, political party members or traditional authorities impose charges or “transfer rents” on HMEs – as often do formal state-linked agents, in addition to official fees. Some informal regulation systems, such as market queens in Accra, may also hold legitimacy for HMEs and residents.

4. Agglomeration – Literature on agglomeration in African cities tends to focus on congestion and its impacts – directly on productivity, and indirectly on health, crime and land values. But recent analysis showing that agglomeration benefits exist applies to HMEs too, as seen with sub-sectoral collocation in both services and manufacturing. The reasons include sharing (collective input acquisition), matching (lower transaction costs for customers and manufacturers), and learning from knowledge circulation (usually within sectoral clusters).

5. Value chains with larger firms – HMEs interact extensively with formal firms – both vertically in the same value chain (VC), and horizontally across a single product market. Many HMEs will be pushed towards codified business practices through VC inclusion, while their role in formal sector VCs may affect the latter’s profitability. HMEs have limited power over input and output pricing, and while their negotiation power is linked to their potential switching costs, those organised within a VC can jointly press for greater benefit.

6. HME organisation – While many national, regional or city-based HME associations have large membership numbers, they are not well-consolidated or strongly representative of HMEs. Their policies tend to be “lowest common denominator”, rather than specific to different members’ needs. The paper argues that “indirect formalisation” through registering highly localised networks could be a more useful way to address issues around infrastructure, market spaces, financial inclusion, public tenders and everyday politics.

Strengthening policy around HMEs

In each city, many people continue to earn their livelihoods by running HMEs or working for HMEs run by family members – and there is no sign of this changing significantly in the near future. HMEs provide an important service to consumers in their neighbourhoods, helping them to manage poverty. There is also a strong gender dimension, as women tend to run these enterprises out of necessity.

The paper argues that we need to look at HMEs not as a homogeneous group, but in a more differentiated way. This involves not only distinguishing HMEs from larger firms, but also from each other – in terms of sector, spatial location and gender, as well as their approach to risk and their markets. A “one-size-fits-all” approach cannot work across a whole city; instead, a “bottom up” approach is needed to inform policy and shape successful outcomes for HMEs.

Read the full report

Read the research summary

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Insights from the World Urban Forum 13: Co-producing knowledge for climate-resilient African cities

Hannah — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0000

By Peter Elias and Temilade Sesan

African cities are changing fast. They are expanding, absorbing new populations, confronting climate risks, and struggling with long-standing gaps in housing, infrastructure, health, sanitation and basic services. In many places, the pressures of urbanisation collide with flooding, heat, air pollution, biodiversity loss and deep social inequality. These challenges are too complex for any one institution, discipline or government agency to solve alone.

This was the central message of the WUF 13 Urban Library session titled “Multilateral Consortium and Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration in Knowledge Co-Production for Climate-Resilient Cities”, convened by the Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development, University of Lagos. The conversation brought together representatives from international research consortia, academia, government and public health to reflect on how African cities can become more inclusive, evidence-informed and climate-resilient.

At the heart of the discussion was a powerful idea: technical knowledge alone is not enough to solve the climate conundrum. Data, maps, models and scientific tools are important, but they must be connected to lived experience, public policy, community priorities and practical action. In other words, the future of climate-resilient cities depends not only on producing knowledge, but on producing it together.

Making invisible communities visible

A major message of the session was the need to make informal and deprived communities more visible in urban planning. Many African cities contain settlements that are poorly represented in official data. Roads may be unnamed, houses unmapped, services undocumented and risks underestimated. When communities are invisible in data, they often become invisible in policy and investment decisions.

The IdeaMaps Network was presented as one effort to address this gap by using spatial data, community knowledge, artificial intelligence and participatory methods to map deprivation and informality. Such mapping can reveal where people lack access to healthcare, roads, drainage, sanitation and other essential services. It can also help identify communities most exposed to flooding, poor environmental conditions and climate-related hazards.

But the panel also warned that data must not become an end in itself. One community voice captured this clearly: communities do not only need data; they need change. For residents living with flooding, poor sanitation, unsafe water or threat of eviction, the value of evidence lies in whether it improves their lives. Data must therefore move from visibility to action.

From research to reform

The African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) highlighted the importance of reform coalitions: groups of actors who come together around shared urban challenges to pursue practical change. These coalitions may include researchers, civil society, communities, government agencies, students, private actors and development partners.

The value of such coalitions is that each actor brings something different to the table. Academia contributes research and evidence. Government brings planning authority and policy mandates. Civil society brings advocacy and community trust. Communities bring lived knowledge. Development partners may provide resources and platforms. When these strengths are combined, urban reform becomes more possible.

One of the panellists cited an example from Mukuru, Nairobi, which shows how collaboration can move beyond research into concrete improvement. In that example, collective action helped resist forced eviction and later supported efforts to improve access to water and sanitation. This illustrates that resilience is not only about infrastructure; it is also about rights, dignity, tenure security and the ability of communities to shape their own future.

The role of academia

Academic institutions have a critical role to play, but that role must go beyond writing reports and publishing papers. Universities and research centres can serve as bridges between evidence, policy and lived realities. They can help interpret data, validate models, document local knowledge and translate findings into policy-relevant formats.

The experience from the Africa Centre for Excellence for Population Health and Policy (ACEPHAP), Bayero University, Kano showed how research can become more meaningful when communities shape the agenda. Initial work on mapping informal settlements evolved into a focus on access to maternal health services after community engagement revealed this as a priority. This is an important lesson: locally grounded research must be flexible enough to respond to what communities identify as urgent.

Academic institutions also provide continuity. Donor-funded projects may end, but universities and local research centres can remain as long-term anchors for knowledge, partnership and institutional memory.

Government needs practical evidence

From the government perspective, planning begins with data, according to the Lagos State Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development. Policymakers and planners need socio-demographic information, spatial data, environmental evidence and clear records of existing services. They need to know who lives where, what risks exist, what services are missing and which groups are most affected.

However, evidence must be presented in forms that government can use. It must connect with planning cycles, budget processes and institutional mandates. A good report is not enough if it does not speak to implementation. This is why continuous engagement between researchers, communities and government agencies is essential.

Evidence must help answer practical questions: Where should investments go first? Which communities are most vulnerable? What services are missing? Which agency is responsible? What funding source can support implementation?

Communities as partners, not data sources

Perhaps the strongest message from the session was that communities must not be treated merely as respondents or sources of information. They are partners in knowledge production.

Community-based movements such as the Nigeria Slums/Informal Settlements Federation know their realities in ways that outsiders often do not. They understand flooding patterns, water levels, local hazards, social networks, survival strategies and service gaps. Exchanges between the panel and members of the audience revealed how, in Makoko, for example, residents may not be able to describe their experiences using technical climate language, but they understand water, tides, risk and adaptation through daily life.

These reservoirs of local knowledge must be respected. Planning should no longer be about doing things “for” communities but doing things “with” communities. When people are involved from the beginning, interventions are more likely to reflect real needs and gain public trust.

Avoiding extractive partnerships

The session also addressed the danger of extractive research, where international or external actors collect data from communities without leaving meaningful benefits behind. To avoid this, partnerships must be built on dialogue, fairness and local value.

True dialogue means listening carefully, adapting priorities and recognising that not all knowledge comes from subject-matter experts. It also means producing outputs that non-scientific communities can use: maps, briefs, workshops, community exchanges, policy notes, blogs and practical tools, and not only academic articles.

Knowledge co-production should leave behind stronger local capacity, better relationships and evidence that communities and governments can use beyond the life of a project.

The way forward

The discussion ended with a clear call: collaboration must be institutionalised. Too often, partnerships begin and end with donor-funded projects. But climate resilience requires long-term relationships, local ownership and continuous engagement.

African cities need participatory governance systems where evidence, community voice and policy action are connected. They need stronger local government ownership, better inter-agency collaboration and deeper trust between institutions and residents.

For academia, the task is to produce knowledge that is rigorous, relevant and responsive. For policymakers, it is to turn evidence into inclusive planning and investment. For civil society, it is to sustain accountability and amplify community voice. For communities, it is to continue asserting lived experience as legitimate knowledge, ideally with the support of dedicated reform coalitions.

The future climate-resilient city will not be built by data alone. It will be built through shared knowledge, shared responsibility and shared action. It must be not only smart and sustainable, but also just, inclusive, visible and people-centred.

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Reflections from the ACRC Kampala cross-project learning workshop

Hannah — Fri, 29 May 2026 07:00:00 +0000

By Joy Birungi and Rosebella Apollo

ACRC held a cross-project learning workshop in Kampala during the last week of April 2026, bringing together the Kampala city team, representatives from the action research (AR) projects, and members of the senior management and central uptake teams.

Activities over the two and a half day workshop served as both an inspiration and a brain teaser, pulling reflections from the past research phase and highlighting learnings that could inform ACRC’s implementation phase in Kampala.

Participants were organised into four functional teams – writers, community knowledge, AR leads and research uptake – to allow inclusive involvement and full exploration of group capacities. As a result, they were able to gain substantial clarity on the mandate of ACRC, the core pillars, domains and application of the ACRC theory of change, and overarching influence on state policy, programming and practices.

Through quick fire panel discussions, functional team group discussions, world café presentations and fishbowl conversations, teams embarked on robust reflections about the ACRC journey – interrogating bright spots, challenges and possible ways of strengthening collaborations and forging integrated reform agendas.

Key learnings

Stakeholder engagement

Within AR projects stakeholder engagement was reported to have worked well, especially capitalising on existing relationships as probable entry points to key government offices. Pre-project preparations, such as preparing project profiles and framing key messages, acted as hooks for target stakeholders. In other instances, there was need to create and build new relationships critical to project outcomes, acceptability and continuity.

During discussions, it was noted that conducting discussions with stakeholders deepened insights of action research scooping studies, and that stakeholder mapping was helpful in identifying individuals who were well-aligned to influence specific policies and programming. Research teams conducted comprehensive community stakeholder mapping to determine potential community gatekeepers, devising strategic ways to engage these stakeholders to ease entry and enable local buy-in. For example, public markets required preauthorisation from the leadership at the City Hall to engage any market officers, dwellers and vendors. Likewise, teams had to continuously update the stakeholder matrix based on state and community feedback to ensure engagement remains relevant.

The importance of aligning ACRC Kampala projects with Uganda’s National Development Plan IV and Uganda’s Vison 2040, in addition the UN Sustainable Development Goals and African Union, was noted as a key reform entry point.

Power of community knowledge

The contribution of community knowledge leads in navigating community politics was undisputed.

“Community knowledge team was a great bridge between project researchers and community leaders and dwellers.”

Creative use of informal knowledge sources – such as community volunteers and Kamyufus, who do not have legal mandate but prove resourceful in mapping and capturing ground practices – enriched the documentation of AR projects. However, during the workshop, researchers were reminded to be more flexible and patient while dealing with various community dynamics for project entry and acceptance. Several communities are often influenced by cultural norms and beliefs, political parties and natural attitude towards strangers for fear of eviction.

Additionally, ACRC’s collaborative research approach supported communities and stakeholders to champion their own solutions through co-design workshops for the different projects. Plans to establish and steer dialogues between government agencies and communities through existing and emerging platforms would push the community agenda into the elites’ view. To sum it up, good entry strategies, patience and collaboration were a few of the requirements to work effectively with communities in Kampala.

Leveraging political opportunity structures

In the months before the AR projects commenced, Uganda underwent an active electioneering period – challenging timely access to key state officials, quality participation from informal settlement residents and uptake pathways for ACRC projects in the city. Collaboration across teams was central to navigating politics within the research process and ensuring neutrality. AR teams worked with each other on entry points, shared probable bottlenecks and collectively devised actions and strategies to manage contestations. Although the political season presented a fair share of setbacks, the learning meeting drew attention to potential opportunities, including rekindling relationships with incumbent officials, opportunities to align with emerging priorities and seizing active policy windows.

ACRC theory of change as a roadmap

Teams gained overall clarity of how specific projects feed into the overall ACRC mission and theory of change (ToC). The workshop amplified need to design and develop cross-project plans and strategies, looking at engagement processes, documentation and communication outputs together. Participants discussed how the AR project approach ensures citizen mobilisation, through community participation coordinated by local leaders, which in turn is supported by the elite commitment to drive change.

In terms of elite commitment, this is shown by the inclusion of evidence from AR projects in revisions of national policies, programmes and regulations. A case in point is research findings from the CLASK project informing local government induction trainings and policy consideration for land matters.

Opportunities for the emergence of reform coalitions were identified, such as within the markets, and there is potential for both mainstreaming coalitions across different projects and deepening understanding around building state capacity – the final component of the ToC.

Taking the learning forward

Throughout the workshop, research uptake and the ToC were woven into the tapestry of conversations, highlighting the centrality of these two components in advancing a formidable reform agenda. A clear need for capacity sharing initiatives across the city was identified, to build on the research uptake strategy and forge deeper connections with the ToC.

From the workshop, aspirations for moving together included:

> Co-learning and co-creation of knowledge

The writers group committed to a learning agenda to cross-fertilise ideas and lessons across different functional teams. Most importantly, this is set to involve a collaboration between community knowledge team members and researchers that goes beyond documentation, to incorporating learning and co-producing knowledge.

> Desire for a joint multistakeholder engagement

Building on comprehensive stakeholder mapping to establish common interest and requests, different project teams could attend stakeholder meetings together to pursue common interests. For example, engaging with city authorities and ministerial bodies cuts across all projects. This approach would address a number of bottlenecks and failed attempts in gaining stakeholders’ attention and participation.

Developing and implementing a city stakeholder engagement strategy, plans and budget could facilitate this, by outlining project structuring processes and stakeholder needs, with participation from the uptake lead, AR leads and researchers. A detailed stakeholder database could also be created for easy retrieval of contact information.

> Joint communication and documentation

Many teams shared a desire to sharpen communication and dissemination activities in Kampala – from developing a toolkit to share best approaches, to adopting more community-centric communication outputs to increase access to information and capture community voices, to producing podcasts. Functional teams also shared aspirations to tell a city story, moving away from traditional action research stories.

Kampala’s overarching reform agenda

All in all, the workshop provided the groundwork for team Kampala to start looking at the AR projects as building blocks that are contributing to a bigger change process. As the curtains closed on the learning meeting, an important ask for the team was to think through a citywide reform agenda – mapping potential shifts and changes and weaving these into a coordinated effort to push the reform frontier.

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Navigating different approaches to urban reform in Harare

Hannah — Wed, 27 May 2026 07:00:00 +0000

By Kudzai Chatiza, ACRC Harare in-city urban development research lead, and George Masimba, ACRC Harare city manager

Urban reform in Harare is approached by the ACRC action research team from the recognition that the city is shaped less by formal plans and policies than by everyday practices of negotiation, self-provisioning and incremental adaptation across multiple systems.

In a context characterised by deep informality, constrained municipal autonomy and centralised political control, reform cannot be understood as a linear or technocratic process. Instead, it unfolds through contested, relational and often small-scale shifts in practice that gradually rework how the city is governed and serviced.

Guided by this perspective, the ACRC Harare team conceives reform as an iterative and practice-based process that is anchored in the lived realities of residents, informal workers, community organisations and mid-level state actors. Rather than seeking wholesale policy transformation as an immediate outcome, our strategy prioritises identifying and working through everyday entry points where alternative ways of governing, servicing and imagining the city are already emerging.

These entry points are understood as critical sites through which inclusive urban reform can be negotiated and expanded over time. Considering how deeply entrenched some of the constraining urban development practices have become in Harare, our strategy recognises that reforms in Harare are best approached as an incremental process.

Six pathways to urban reform

In operational terms, reform efforts are focusing on six interrelated and overlapping pathways:

1. The team is working to identify concrete reform agendas grounded in empirical research and everyday urban practices, particularly in relation to urban markets, community-led waste management and informal settlement climate action. These agendas are not treated as fixed blueprints but as evolving propositions that are continuously refined through engagement with affected communities and institutional actors.

2. Making progress in Harare depends on carefully identifying the everyday entry points for advancing urban reforms. This relies on closely examining institutional, regulatory and practice-related openings within the city. The ACRC Harare team draws on existing experiences working in the city, as well as maintaining a close check of the pulse around city priorities and on-going development agendas.

3. The strategy emphasises the deliberate building of reform coalitions by bringing together like-minded actors across state and non-state spheres – including municipal officials, community alliances, civil society organisations and technical practitioners who are already navigating the tensions between formal regulations and lived urban realities.

4. Reform is advanced through structured and informal dialogue processes that create space for negotiation, learning and trust-building across fragmented governance landscapes. Sectoral dialogues and thematic engagements are used to surface shared concerns, align interests and collectively interrogate dominant policy and practice paradigms that reproduce exclusion. These dialogic spaces are particularly important in a political environment where overt contestation may be risky and where reform often proceeds through subtle recalibrations of practice rather than explicit policy confrontation.

5. The strategy places emphasis on developing coherent and contextually grounded reform narratives that can circulate across institutional and community platforms. These narratives draw on research evidence and lived experience to legitimise incremental reforms and to challenge exclusionary urban logics without assuming consensus or political neutrality.

6. The ACRC Harare team seeks to catalyse reform through targeted engagements that link everyday practices to broader policy and institutional processes. This includes supporting pilot interventions, documenting small but meaningful shifts in practice and strategically feeding lessons from these experiences into ongoing policy debates and institutional reforms. Given the contested nature of urban governance in Harare, the strategy recognises that reform gains may be partial, fragile and uneven. However, such gains are treated as significant, both in their immediate effects and in their potential to open further reform possibilities over time.

Forum for constructive engagement – from policy to implementation

A central institutional anchor for this approach is the Slum Upgrading Project Monitoring Committee (PMC), which functions as a critical space for everyday reform work within the municipality. The PMC was established by the City of Harare in 2012 to help coordinate the Slum Upgrading Programme, a citywide slum improvement initiative that was jointly implemented by Dialogue on Shelter, Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation and the City of Harare.

In a context marked by frequent turnover of officials and punitive responses to policy innovation, the PMC provides a relatively protected forum in which technical staff and senior officials can engage constructively with community actors and researchers. The committee enables the translation of research insights and coalition-driven agendas into operational discussions around planning, service delivery and upgrading practices, thereby bridging the gap between policy intent and everyday implementation.

Overall, the ACRC Harare reform approach is grounded in the understanding that transformative change in the city will emerge not through singular policy moments, but through the accumulation of negotiated practices, institutional learning and coalition building across multiple sites. By working with, rather than against, the everyday realities of informality and governance constraint, the strategy seeks to contribute to a more inclusive and contextually grounded urban transformation in Harare.

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What is urban development? Reflections from Zimbabwe and Harare

Hannah — Fri, 22 May 2026 07:00:00 +0000

By Kudzai Chatiza, ACRC Harare in-city urban development research lead

“Urban development” is a term that is widely used but rarely unpacked. It often evokes images of new roads, housing estates and expanding city skylines. Yet, when viewed from the perspective of cities like Harare, urban development is far more complex, contested and dynamic than conventional definitions suggest.

Drawing on my role as an in‑city urban development research lead under the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC), this blog reflects on what “urban” and “development” mean in practice, and how urban development is unfolding in Zimbabwe.

Rethinking “urban” and “development”

In Zimbabwe, the term “urban” is commonly used to describe a geographical area with at least 2,500 residents, most of whom do not rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. Urban settlements are also typically more compact than rural ones. Importantly, these areas are not always governed by formally designated urban local authorities. They may fall under the jurisdiction of mines, farms, rural district councils (RDCs) or other authorities responsible for their establishment and management.

“Development”, on the other hand, relates to improvements in quality of life. This includes the provision and management of infrastructure, as well as social, economic and environmental services that support both human and non‑human populations.

When these two ideas are brought together, urban development can be understood as the process of improving areas defined as urban. This involves planning and re‑planning, investing in new and existing infrastructure, and managing urban spaces to meet social, economic, environmental and spatial objectives. These objectives are shaped by political decisions and implemented through state and non‑state governance and administrative institutions.

Ultimately, the success (or failure) of urban development is best judged by outcomes: people’s health and wellbeing, access to decent work and environmental sustainability.

Defining urban development in practice

Beyond formal definitions, urban development is often framed in narrower ways – like physical expansion, economic growth or the upgrading of infrastructure. Other perspectives emphasise development as a response to urban challenges, many of which differ in character, intensity and drivers from those found in rural areas.

Urban development is rarely neat or linear. It is shaped by politics, markets, social practices and institutional capacity. These dynamics become particularly visible in cities like Harare, where formal planning systems coexist with widespread informal development. The decisions and actions that support urban development in Harare (and other urban spaces in Zimbabwe) involve national, provincial and local government institutions alongside non-state actors. Often this results in contradictions and conflict.

Insights from a Harare brainstorming session

A brainstorming session with ACRC partners held at the Development Governance Institute (DGI) on 15 December 2025 provided useful insights into how urban development is understood in Harare specifically and Zimbabwe generally.

First, participants highlighted urban development as a multi‑actor and multi‑modal process of delivering constitutional rights (through providing services) to urban residents. It is not only driven by the state. It also involves self‑provision, self‑financing and non‑state mobilisation, all operating within a political economy that often defies conventional urban management models.

The results of this complexity are visible in the city itself. Houses built outside formal planning frameworks and cars purchased but not “counted” are generating enormous demand for water, sanitation, health, education and transport infrastructure and services. These demands expose persistent service gaps.

Second, there was a recognition that many infrastructure and service gaps in Harare stem from largely informal urban growth. Housing and economic activities often precede infrastructure provision, placing after‑the‑fact demands on institutions already weakened by the pace and nature of urbanisation. In this sense, service gaps are not necessarily evidence of “non‑development”, but of development occurring ahead of formal urban systems.

This reality also challenges the assumption that urban development is solely the responsibility of urban local authorities. In practice, alternative authorities and actors often shape urban outcomes, sometimes bypassing formal institutions altogether.

Third, participants recognised that significant urban development is taking place in spatial and governance peripheries. Communal areas, peri‑urban zones and spaces outside designated urban boundaries host distinctive forms of urban development, often under contested and polarising conditions.

These peripheries have generated important lessons on planning, resilience and governance. The lessons are driven from above, below and through uneasy combinations of the two. Following the backlash against Zimbabwe’s once highly ordered urban development model, institutional reforms have lagged behind demand, especially for housing and economic spaces. As a result, urban development in these areas appears fragmented and emergent. This emergent character is only visible upon closer reflection.

Harare as a case of “indigenous” urban development

When applied specifically to Harare, these reflections reveal a city experiencing rapid and uneven urbanisation. Small‑scale construction, largely dominated by housing, coexists with uneven service provision and evolving, make‑do governance practices.

Viewed through an intergovernmental lens, political tensions between an opposition‑run local authority (the City of Harare) and a ruling‑party-led national government have shaped urban development outcomes. These tensions have often undervalued resident agency, even where political affiliation has been used as a means of accessing urban land and economic opportunities.

At the same time, value and economic dynamism have shifted from formal industry and commerce to informal housing and economic sectors. This has made traditional measures of urban development increasingly blurred and difficult to apply.

In recent years, urban development in Zimbabwe, and Harare in particular, has taken on a distinctly “indigenous” character. The state has alternated across the roles of enabler, regulator and lagging service provider. These overlapping and sometimes conflicting roles help explain the coexistence of notable achievements – such as large‑scale land delivery for greenfield housing – alongside serious infrastructure gaps and service failures in both established and newly developed areas.

Self‑provisioning and self‑financing have become defining features of Harare’s growth. Cluster housing, “micro‑malling”, industrial renewal and the rapid spread of fuel stations, food courts and automobile‑spares hubs all point to a city developing through multiple, decentralised nodes, rather than a single, coherent plan. Perhaps the recently concluded Master Plan, if appropriately funded, will be an instrument for managing spatial governance and development contradictions.

Conclusion: Urban development as a living process

Urban development in Harare, and in Zimbabwe more broadly, is neither static nor uniform. It is a dynamic, evolving process shaped by local realities, institutional gaps and the ingenuity of urban residents themselves. While progress has been made, city authorities continue to grapple with both long‑standing and emerging challenges.

Under my role as the ACRC urban development research lead in Harare, the aim is to deepen understanding of these complexities and support more informed policymaking and implementation. A more sustainable and resilient Harare will depend not only on formal plans and institutions, but also on recognising and engaging with the ways urban development happens on the ground.

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Acknowledgement: This blog draws on ACRC‑supported work but does not represent the views of the Consortium or its funder, FCDO (United Kingdom). The contributions of ACRC Harare colleagues – especially George Masimba and Tapiwa Nyamukapa – and participants in the 15 December 2025 brainstorming session are gratefully acknowledged.

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Is knowledge power? Reflections on water, sanitation and survival in informal settlements

Hannah — Wed, 20 May 2026 06:15:00 +0000

By Oluwaseun Muraina and Rasheed Shittu, ACRC Lagos action research project co-leads

When a key character in Game of Thrones tells Queen Cersei that “knowledge is power”, her immediate response is to order his death, with the retort that “power is power”.

We can draw a lesson from this. Knowledge alone does not determine outcomes – authority, institutions, enforcement and the ability to shape decisions do. The tension between knowledge and power is not confined to fictional kingdoms. It plays out daily in African cities, particularly in informal settlements, where communities possess deep knowledge of their realities but often lack formal authority to influence their preferred realities over land, infrastructure and services.

When the ACRC Lagos water and sanitation (WASH) team visited Mukuru in Nairobi, for a learning exchange, we carried a simple question: how do informal settlements secure dignified water and sanitation access in cities that often overlook them? What can Lagos learn from Nairobi in the struggle for equitable water and sanitation?

What we observed in Mukuru was not just community innovation, but well-organised influence. Alongside the improved water and sanitation provision, we witnessed how communities convert knowledge into structured bargaining power. In Mukuru’s informal settlements, the presence of community data, organised committees, transparent billing systems, and strategic engagement with city authorities has transformed lived experience into negotiating strength.

What we returned with was a series of more difficult questions: Is knowledge really power? How does a community move from understanding its deprivation to shaping the systems that govern it? And how does information translate into institutional authority?

Using data as a tool for community advocacy

Our visit began with Akiba Mashinani Trust (AMT), which hosted the delegation and is a central protagonist of the Mukuru Special Planning Area (SPA) story. AMT revealed a critical insight: communities that are not counted are easily ignored. Through systematic profiling, mapping and documentation, AMT and Mukuru residents have strengthened their engagement with county authorities, in some cases contributing to more structured responses to displacement and upgrading.

In many of Nairobi’s informal settlements, communities document their conditions, map households, profile residents, and generate credible data. Yet data alone does not constitute power. Formal authority continues to reside in planning offices, budget committees and political institutions. But as we saw in Mukuru, communities can build negotiating power by forming alliances, demonstrating competence, and formalising their role in service delivery. In this way, data moves beyond information and becomes a tool for securing planning recognition, resisting eviction, and demanding inclusion in formal urban processes.

Building public trust, one sewer line at a time

Mukuru’s simplified sewer systems, facilitated by the state-owned Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company, serve hundreds of households through cost-effective design. Pre-paid water dispensers operate through token-based billing, reducing disputes and increasing transparency. These are technical solutions, but their deeper value lies in governance. Clear billing systems, defined management structures and accountable committees build trust. Trust strengthens legitimacy. Legitimacy strengthens negotiating authority.

What this means for Lagos

For Lagos, particularly in Okerube, where ACRC’s WASH project is ongoing, this lesson is critical. infrastructure must be accompanied by systems that institutionalise community governance. Without this, even the best technical model remains fragile.

The Lagos WASH team returned with clear actions to follow up on:

> Strengthening community data collection for advocacy.

> Deepening engagement with government and political office holders.

> Adapting proven solutions from Mukuru to improve service access, transparency and sustainability in Lagos informal settlements.

The broader insight is this: information without influence is vulnerable. Knowledge without organisation is limited. Power is the structured capacity to shape outcomes – built through committees, data systems, alliances, transparent management and sustained engagement with institutions.

In Mukuru, we witnessed how mobilised communities are combining all of these to deliver results – one water point, one dataset, and one negotiation at a time. The approach to WASH provision there demonstrates that when communities combine technical knowledge with collective organisation and strategic political engagement, they can move from surviving the city to shaping it.

Ultimately, power is the ability of ordinary citizens to influence how the city works. This is what we want to build.

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From Mukuru to Okerube: Reflections from the Nairobi–Lagos WASH exchange

Hannah — Wed, 20 May 2026 06:00:00 +0000

By Patrick Njoroge , Rex Otieno and Maureen Musya

In early February, the Akiba Mashinani Trust (AMT) led a nine-person delegation from Nairobi for a weeklong learning exchange visit to Okerube informal settlement in Lagos. The visit built on a previous exchange, when the Lagos city team visited Mukuru informal settlement in Nairobi to learn from an established WASH intervention. It forms part of ACRC’s wider effort to strengthen learning across cities and projects.

The visit aimed to build institutional consensus and strengthen collaboration around an integrated planning process for Okerube – an approach proposed during the earlier Mukuru exchange to support coordinated and inclusive settlement planning. It created a space for the Kenyan delegation – comprising AMT, Nairobi City County Government (NCCG), Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company (NCWSC), and representatives from Mukuru community – to meaningfully engage with local government leadership, research institutions, technical partners, and community actors in Lagos.

The University of Lagos Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development hosted the visit with the ACRC Lagos city team and the Shantytown Empowerment Foundation (SHEF). Discussions focused on governance, service delivery, participatory planning and climate resilience. Further lessons were drawn from the Mukuru WASH intervention in Nairobi and contextualised within Lagos’s institutional framework.

Meeting local council members and visiting Okerube

The first day included a visit to the Executive Chairman of Igando/Ikotun Local Council Development Area (LCDA), a transect walk through the Okerube settlement and a meeting aimed at aligning government commitment with community priorities.

Meeting the Igando/Ikotun Chairman reinforced a need for structured collaboration between local and state governments in order to improve service delivery. He highlighted the importance of multistakeholder partnerships to address infrastructure deficits and expand access to basic services, also noting the need to grant greater autonomy to local governments to strengthen accountability and improve delivery.

During the engagement, the Chairman also formally confirmed institutional support for the WASH project in Okerube settlement, committing participation from relevant departments within the local government – specifically Budget and Planning, Agriculture, Health and Social Services, and Works and Development. The visit concluded with the Chairman expressing readiness to scale development interventions following implementation of the research project, reaffirming the institutional commitment to collaborative planning.

Following the meeting, the team visited Okerube settlement to better understand the spatial realities of the area – particularly the infrastructure conditions and flood-prone zones – as well as its socioeconomic dynamics. Unlike many highly congested informal settlements, Okerube has open spaces and defined plots, but inadequate infrastructure, weak drainage management and environmental vulnerability compound flooding in the settlement. While an active informal economy has emerged to fill service provision gaps, these enterprises are often located in high flood risk areas.

A community meeting was also convened to allow direct dialogue with Okerube residents. Although some community members were hesitant to openly discuss local challenges, other residents highlighted a number of priority needs – including improved water and sanitation, flood management, electricity supply, road and drainage infrastructure, secondary education, streetlighting and security. Flooding in particular emerged as a critical concern, with community members reporting severe flooding at least every two years and one resident describing having to carry her child on her shoulders through chest-level floodwaters to safety.

At the end of the day, the delegation had made progress in contextualising Okerube’s vulnerabilities and securing formal commitment from the LCDA to support the implementation of the WASH action research project.

Institutional learning and knowledge sharing

The second day of the exchange visit focused on sharing knowledge and laying the groundwork for coordinated participatory planning, bringing together representatives from the Nairobi delegation, ACRC Lagos, SHEF, academic partners and local stakeholders to examine the political, institutional and community frameworks shaping urban development processes in Nigeria and Kenya.

ACRC Lagos in-city politics lead Damilola Agbalajobi delivered a presentation on Nigeria’s political and governance system, contextualising the planning environment for the Okerube WASH initiative and exploring the political dynamics that influence development processes in Lagos.

Funmilayo Daniel separately presented on the Women Water Committees, covering their leadership structure, operational model and how organised community groups have improved water accountability in underserved areas. Her presentation underlined how women’s groups have emerged as critical actors in improving water access in communities.

Following this, the Nairobi delegation shared practical experiences from Kenya – with Maureen Musya presenting the Mukuru Special Planning Area process and Rex Otieno covering the Homa Bay planning process, detailing the methodology and highlighting how long-term frameworks can provide stability and allow for phased investment.

Designing an integrated plan for Okerube

The third day transitioned from knowledge sharing to structured design. Collectively, delegates made progress in defining a shared vision for Okerube informal settlement and outlining the structured actions required to guide the planning process. With support from AMT, the ACRC Lagos team prepared an integrated participatory plan for Okerube informal settlement, moving beyond WASH issues to address broader and interconnected challenges – such as flooding, infrastructure deficits, land issues, social amenities and environmental risks.

For relevance and sustainability, the plan required integration at several levels:

> Integration with existing statutory and development plans

> Sectoral coordination across thematic areas

> Spatial and non-spatial linkages

> Climate and environmental considerations

> Structured input from diverse stakeholders

By the end of the day, it was clear that structured governance arrangements, early and sustained stakeholder engagement, standardised data systems and data-led decision making were key to a phased and methodical planning pathway.

Building capacity around data collection

The fourth day saw the team returning to Okerube settlement for a field-based capacity sharing initiative, which involved hands-on training on enumeration and real-time testing of tools to prepare for a full-scale data collection exercise. After preliminary deliberations to agree on a numbering structure, the session formally commenced with an orientation exercise for 17 community researchers on data collection. The pilot exercise allowed testing of research tools and refinement of questions, to sharpen numbering prior to a full rollout.

Involving community co-researchers proved instrumental in facilitating access and building trust. Their familiarity with local pathways and residents helped cooperation and minimised resistance. The pilot also worked to strengthen enumerator confidence, clarify workflow expectations and provide a shared understanding of quality control standards.

Reflecting and mapping a way forward

As the Lagos and Nairobi teams met one last time for a structured debrief on day five, it was clear that the visit had successfully secured institutional commitment from the Igando/Ikoton LCDA, strengthened collaboration across city teams, and built a shared understanding of an integrated, community-centred and evidence-based planning framework. Strong emphasis was laid on the centrality of co-production between community members, government actors and technical partners.

The exchange visit closed with mutual commitment to advancing the integrated planning process for Okerube settlement, with a collaborative framework linking SHEF, the University of Lagos and the local government. Conscious of the comprehensive nature of planning processes, the team charted a two-phase approach, aligned with statutory planning frameworks and institutional mandates. The first phase will focus on generating evidence and building capacity for comprehensive household numbering, mapping and enumeration, and the second on collective interpretation of the evidence and consolidating the integrated people’s plan.

Continued learning and collaboration

The five-day visit illuminated a complex governance landscape in Lagos state, along with clear physical and environmental vulnerabilities in Okerube, the need for strategic planning and alignment with government priorities, and the centrality of community and evidence in collaborative planning. Beyond securing institutional commitment from the LCDA, the learning exchanges have led to commitment from regional and national governments to advance WASH reforms in Okerube, with SHEF being invited to submit a 145 million Naira (approximately USD 105,700) proposal towards upgrading of WASH infrastructure in Okerube.

As the teams in Nairobi and Lagos continue to grapple with ways of catalysing inclusive urban transformation, the exchange has helped mark a clear path ahead for the ACRC initiative in Okerube: forming multistakeholder consortia, settlement-wide enumeration and mapping, validating findings, and preparing an integrated people’s plan to submit through local government structures.

SDI affiliate SHEF will anchor the process locally, while AMT provides technical advisory support, guiding the strategic approach and ensuring methodological rigour. The team will also explore cross-project collaboration with other ACRC initiatives, such as flood modelling, property tax and waste management.

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Podcast: Building community-driven WASH solutions in Lagos

Hannah — Fri, 08 May 2026 07:00:00 +0000

“Sustainability for us would mean leaving behind capability and capacities, not dependency.”

In the informal settlement of Okerube in Lagos, the community faces significant challenges in accessing clean water and sanitation, which disproportionately impacts women and children. An ACRC action research project is aiming to address these issues through establishing a sustainable, community-driven social enterprise model.

In this podcast episode, Deji Akinpelu is joined by guests Temilade Sesan, ACRC Lagos city manager, Funmilayo Daniel, a woman leader from Okerube community, and project co-leads Oluwaseun Muraina and Rasheed Shittu. They discuss the importance of building trust with the community, harnessing existing women-led structures to advance water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) solutions, and supporting residents to advocate for their rights, so they can actively shape their community’s future.

Highlighting how community-driven initiatives like these can challenge urban inequality – by strengthening the capacities and capabilities of residents, and advocating for greater representation of informal settlements in urban planning – they also talk about the need for collaborative planning and community ownership, to ensure sustainability over the long term. Looking beyond Okerube to other informal settlements in Lagos, they conclude by talking about what a just and sustainable future would look like for these underserved areas.

Deji Akinpelu is co-founder of Rethinking Cities, an advocacy group working on urban development issues in Lagos, and part of the ACRC Lagos uptake team.

Temilade Sesan is a social development researcher and ACRC’s city manager for Lagos.

Funmilayo Daniel is a woman leader from the Okerube Water Committee in Lagos.

Oluwaseun Muraina is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development, University of Lagos, and co-lead of the ACRC WASH action research project in Lagos.

Rasheed Shittu is the founder and executive director of the Shantytown Empowerment Foundation (SHEF) and co-lead of the ACRC WASH action research project in Lagos.

Transcript

The full podcast transcript is available below.

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Deji Akinpelu Welcome to the African Cities podcast, brought to you by the African Cities Research Consortium, ACRC. Today we’ll be taking a closer look at how everyday communities are driving real change in water sanitation and hygiene, known as WASH, in the city of Lagos here in Nigeria. Our focus is on the Okerube community, one of the action research sites under the ACRC’s Lagos portfolio. This episode will explore how academic research connects with grassroots action and how communities are reclaiming local governance and how sustainable planning is taking shape from the ground up. With me on today’s episode are four amazing guests, who have all played key roles in this journey so far. I will allow them to introduce themselves. First, Dr Temilade, kindly introduce yourself.

Temilade Sesan Hello, everyone. My name is Temilade Sesan. I am the city manager for ACRC in Lagos.

Deji Akinpelu Thank you for being here. So let us have Mrs Daniel Funmilayo, a woman leader representative from the community. Mrs Daniel, can you please introduce yourself?

Funmilayo Mulikat Daniel I am Mrs Daniel, the women leader from Okerube water committee.

Deji Akinpelu Thank you for coming. Okay. Next is Seun. Please, can you introduce yourself?

Oluwaseun Muraina Thank you. Good morning, everyone. My name is Oluwaseun. I’m a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development. I am also the co-lead on the WASH project at Okerube.

Deji Akinpelu Thank you. Followed by Mr Rasheed.

Rasheed Shittu So my name is Rasheed Shittu, the executive director of Shantytown Empowerment Foundation, SHEF, the professional support organisation to Nigerian Federation, Slum Dwellers International, SDI, affiliates, also the lead on the ACRC WASH project in Okerube community under Oluwaseun.

Deji Akinpelu Great, thank you to everyone for joining us. So we’ll just get it all started. Temilade, let’s start with you. What made Okerube such an important site for the ACRC project? And what does its story reveal about urban inequality in Lagos?

Temilade Sesan Thank you very much and thank you again for having me on this really important conversation. So ACRC really is all about demonstrating through what we call exemplar projects and how communities that have been historically overlooked in urban development can really lead the way in helping us to rethink and reimagine what a good African city should look like? You know, what is that definition of a good city, a good society? Hint, the answer really is, you know, a city that carries everyone along in development and leaves no one behind. And Okerube is one such community. Okerube, if you’ve been there, I have had the privilege of being there several times. It’s got great social, cultural, economic, even political capital, right? But it’s really on the fringes, right? In terms of services and infrastructure, like water and sanitation, which is one of the many wicked problems in the community that, you know, ACRC has chosen to start with. And what does it say about our society, you know, and urban inequality? The second part of your question. I think that Okerube and, you know, similar communities, I think that they hold up a mirror to who we are as a society. I think they show us how short-sighted we are and how inequality really is an unproductive strategy, if we can call it a strategy. So just imagine, I’ll give a thought experiment here. Imagine for a second that tomorrow there’s a cholera outbreak in Okerube, which is in one of the most populated, maybe even the most-populated LGA in Lagos, Alimosho. That there’s a cholera outbreak in the area due to the inadequacy of WASH facilities, what we’re trying to address. The ripple effects are going to be enormous, schools may be closed, travel advisories will be issued. We’ve seen advisories being issued for even, even less, shall I say consequential, occurrences, you know, investors will be wary. You have things like shares dropping, share prices and things dropping, in other words like, you know, the big big dreams – in Lagos, we like to say big big things, which is after big big things – but the big dreams that we are chasing as a city would be severely threatened by this seemingly humble and simple you know thing that is inadequate water and sanitation in the city. So it just shows that inequality does not pay. At the end of the day, it does not pay anyone. And if it doesn’t pay anyone, then it doesn’t pay everyone.

Deji Akinpelu Thank you very much, that was quite insightful I must say. Yeah, so let’s hear from the community side directly. So I’ll be moving on to Mrs Funmilayo. So Mrs Funmilayo, can you please paint a picture of what everyday life looks like in Okerube, especially around water and sanitation? What has been the challenges so far?

Funmilayo Mulikat Daniel The Okerube community is a place here that is highly populated and the population is increasing on a daily basis due to the newly constructed road in the area. But unfortunately, as the community is growing, the issue of water and sanitation is becoming larger. Water and sanitation are major issues in the Okerube community. When people wake up in the morning, the first thing they move for is water to start the day’s activities and in the process of doing that, since they wake up early, the people that give free water, the few of them that give free water, they are not set to come out to give them and the houses where they have to go and fetch the water, where there are water vendors, it’s about five to eight houses, far away from the users. And at that point, when our women and children, when they go to fetch water, looking for water around, they are victims of being attacked by miscreants in the community. And we all know that the provision of potable water gives way to sanitation and good health. Without water, there’s nothing, we cannot be talking of sanitation. Frankly speaking, Okerube is currently experiencing bad sanitation due to lack of water. And most houses don’t have clean environments, resulting to water-borne diseases. Unfortunately, the community is not pushing enough to get water and sanitation. So the CDA (Community Development Association) is purely funded by the residents. And the focus is not for them to be able to pay for the security charges, the maintenance of electricity, and some self-help projects that does not require intensive expenses. This is because even majority of the residents, they don’t believe that it is their responsibility to do that. They are waiting for government. Government is not forthcoming. And this nonchalant attitude has led us to this level. Even the development levy, the levies that we normally collect monthly, the people don’t pay. And there’s no legal backing for the CDA to be able to get their money from the residents. And that is another challenge that we have. You have to use appeal. You appeal to them to pay the little money they want to pay. And when you don’t enforce anything, you don’t want to enforce, our people will not even take it seriously. So that is the challenges that we have. We are just hoping and hoping that there should be community development awareness campaign among our people and then there should be a legal way from government for us to be able to collect our levy. Then if that’s the goal, we’ll be able to get what we want.

Deji Akinpelu Okay, I’ll come back to you, Mrs Funmilayo, again. Right now, I’d like to move to Mr Rasheed who is the project lead on this. Mr Rasheed, so far, what are the key activities in trying to address this issue? What are the activities that have been carried out in Okerube and how has the reception been?

Rasheed Shittu Yeah, thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be part of this podcast with regards to the WASH project in Okerube. Well, basically, since the inception of the project, the activities that we’ve been able to carry out in Okerube, one, we visited the community with the ACRC team from Manchester across all of the African cities. And there was a high level of enthusiasm from the community to receive the large team of ACRC and also the project itself. And again, we went around the community to visit the proposed land site for the hub, where the toilets and the borehole and the bathroom infrastructure, under water and sanitation. We visited the site, proposed site, with the ACRC team, with the community representatives. Also, one of the activities that we’ve been able to carry out was that we did a pre-project introduction in the community in ensuring that we are able to at least give the community an insight to the project that we intend to implement in their community and also we did the main project introduction in the community to be able to formally launch the project. And which, with regards to the reception, yeah, there was a high level of acceptance from the community during the project introduction and also joining the main project introduction, which is positive and we aim to ensure that the projects empower the women in the community and also key governance actors, to be able to improve water and sanitation services delivery in Okerube community. And also, there was a good acceptance from the local political appointee, which is the honourable councillor that is serving urban in Okerube Ward B, under Igando-Ikotun LCDA. Which also, there was the reception from the Lagos representative that attended the main launch of the project, and that would definitely address the challenges, the community phase in terms of water and sanitation, which also will serve as a learning space or a learning centre for all other informal settlements and slum communities that we work with in the city of Lagos.

Deji Akinpelu Thank you very much. It is good to hear that there are other stakeholders like government agencies and government appointees also participating in the project so far. And now to you, Seun. You also, you are a co-lead on this, so, okay. Okerube project, from what I gathered, was considering a very interesting approach in solving the WASH challenge in the community, using a social enterprise model rather than the traditional aid approach. Why this direction?

Oluwaseun Muraina Thank you. So the decision to adopt this social enterprise model it came about, or emerged from years, I’ll say years, of learning that the benevolent and the purely aid-driven projects often fail or collapse once external funding ends. And the same also applies to government provided infrastructure that hasn’t exactly put in the proper manmade frameworks increase. And so this persistent problem in these communities have often come from weak financial governance structures. So the first thing we did in Okerube was to, just like Mr Rasheed mentioned, there were a lot of preliminary activities, right? And the first thing we did was to know what currently exists and understand the people’s everyday realities, right? Some of things we wanted to find out: where the facilities, the services are available, you know, the mode of operations and the management existing. And what we found that was we noted was that the WASH interventions in this community have mainly been benevolent-based, you know, provisions, many times although they rely on government projects or charity. But the situation where what is available are meant for coming out. So we started to see that these things have not been sustained over time. For example, on toilet facilities, right, we noted one that was provided by the senator representing that district, another provided by the government, and another that’s privately owned, but mainly for commercial users. One of these three toilet facilities, especially the one provided by senator, you know, is currently non-functional. And another one, the one that’s provided by government has been taken over by an individual. And then the last one, of course, that’s privately owned for commercial users, where people have to pay tokens to access it. So we’re seeing situations where there is abandonment, there is non-functionality, and then we know what’s being meant for communal use that they’re taking over by an individual because proper structures have not been put in place, even with the government. And on the other hand, we’ve also realised that these residents are paying inflated prices for water. Of questionable quality, water that is not even potable, just to meet their daily need, and they are paying to unregulated water vendors who they have to rely on to provide this water. So, having analysed [inaudible] on ground is why we are proposing a more sustainable model, which we believe is going to be community-driven, of course, and which is in the form of this social enterprise model, so that we bridge the gap, and then they are able to move from of dependency to more self-reliance. So what is the social enterprise model? It is a model that is often adopted to address specific challenges and where a substantial portion of income generated through the sale of goods or services are then clawed back or reinvested into expanding the enterprise. And in this case, rather than this community solely relying on maybe donations or grants, they’re able to generate income that helps them to maintain this facility. So in form of [inaudible] in the form of remuneration for people who will be managing, you know, all of that. So that even when after long after we are out, this project has ended, these facilities are maintained long after this phase and then basically. So, of course, they need the greater details of it to still be fleshed out because there’s still a phase where we have to do community profiling and mapping to determine the exact needs of this community. But at least this is what we are proposing, a sustainable model. And every other thing we’re still planning.

Deji Akinpelu Thank you for that very in-depth explanation to the model being adopted for the programme. I’d like to move to Mrs Funmilayo, you’re a woman leader in the community and I would just like to know what has been the role being played by these women so far during this project and what are the possibilities that you see coming your way as a community, particularly as women?

Funmilayo Mulikat Daniel The role that women have played, they are numerous. They are numerous. Number one, the volunteering spirit of the Okerube Water Committee to work as a team is the key factor that plays a very vital role in shaping these initiatives. The spirit of unity in us. And we have been able to reach out to community members, creating awareness to the youth, to the market women, political office holders, advocating for the support of this initiative. And also, we hold our regular meeting, brainstorming on how to meet the initiative resources. And again, by active participation on all the programmes that are on ground for the initiative. That is the work that we have been doing. Now, we are hoping that with all this put in place, we will get where we are going. Thank you.

Deji Akinpelu Oh, thank you very much for that, your response. And still on the issue of gender, Dr Temilade, from your own research lens, how do you see gender shaping the outcome of this particular project?

Temilade Sesan Okay, thanks for that question. So I think one of the things that really excited me at the start of this, you know, while we were even shaping this proposal led by Mr Rasheed, was really this woman-led lens, because it is absolutely central to what we’re trying to do here. Women and children, you know, are traditionally the custodians of water provision, water access, I mean in households and communities here. So that’s something that you would write in like a research paper, right? In an academic paper. But what does it really mean in practice? I mean, for me, I do have lived experience of this. Growing up, the other day, I was telling my ten-year-old, and I tell them some of these scary stories about when I was growing up sometimes just to scare them straight. And I’m like, you know, when I, as your age, I used to fetch water. My mum would send me and my siblings, all girls, naturally, to go and fetch water in buckets on our heads that we’d carry on our heads two streets away. So I remember it was this military barracks, not very… for children was quite far, like a, I don’t know, ten-minute trek. So you’d go, and then fetch the water and balance it on your head and cross streets with cars, moving cars, no sidewalks, nothing. And back, I really don’t know how, you know, we survived that phase, but this is the picture of people, women, children, growing up in Lagos. And so you find that they are more implicated than any group, than any demographic in this problem. And so having women on the supply side and in management, right, as this project is doing, really does improve the quality of the decisions that are made with regard to community-led water provision. For example, like, you know, inciting the infrastructure and safeguarding it. Mrs Daniel mentioned earlier how sometimes, you know you have, you know harassment going on with the young girls that go to fetch water. These are everyday realities and we cannot hide our heads in the sand pretending they don’t exist. They do. You know, pricing the water, all those kinds of decisions, having women, not just as maybe sitting ducks, waiting for decisions to be made on their behalf on something that they are the most affected by, you know, it’s really a relief. And so we will have more of the lived experiences of women going to those decisions. So that’s a really big win for the kinds of outcomes that we can expect from this kind of project. And maybe just to add, finally, that beyond the actual infrastructure provision and use, we’re looking to use this project as an opportunity to broaden the space for women, not just for agency and being able to do things, but also for voice, for being able to express their voice, not just at the community level, first of all, starting from there, but also at the local government and state government levels. It’s not a secret that Nigeria has one of the lowest levels of women’s representation just in decision-making politically at all levels. And so this is also going to be a window to begin to make more space for those voices to be expressed.

Deji Akinpelu Thank you. Very, very important. Having a gender lens into development issues is very, very key and important. It’s one of the key learnings that have come out in previous research works all over the world. And that will bring me to my next question to Seun. What are some of the key learnings so far and how are you thinking about sustainability going forward? I know that’s a two in one question, but just help us to just quickly address that. The key learnings so far and then sustainability going forward.

Oluwaseun Muraina Alright, thank you. There’s been quite a few learnings so far, to be honest. Speaking from someone coming from the academia, to having to work on the action research projects. People in ACRC would know that an action research project is definitely different from the way that we do traditional research, right? And so for me, I’ll speak to a few learnings. But one major one is that trust and transparency are the foundation of community collaboration, right? So we didn’t come in assuming trust will be automatically gotten from these people, right. We realised earlier on that, you know, community buy-in must be earned. Which is what informed many of the project teams for engagement meetings and activities. So I think understanding that early on has helped us and especially in the any buy-in and acceptance that we’ve gotten so far. So we went in, assuring them, you know, through different formats and meetings, helping them to clarify our roles, helping to clarify expectations, you know. Creating forums and dialogues to clear out issues early on and then we could see the results in the major town hall meeting that we had. So all of this helped us to also prevent conflict. So that’s one major thing for me, not to assume that community buy-ins, it’s automatically gotten, but should be earned. Another thing which applies to a typical action research is that it is a dynamic process. It’s more like iterative. There’s always a constant back and forth, buy-in, right? So we don’t come in with fixed solutions, right, but we’re co-creating all of this with the community and they know, which is why we have community, you know, representatives on the team, who are more like the face of the entire community and it doesn’t stop there. We also take it to the larger house so that we are all speaking with one voice and some of the feedback we get, we go back to the table, the drawing table, you know, to also make sure that all of that is reflecting to the best of how we can, you know, impute all of the feedback that we’re getting. And so it’s more iterative than one-way. So there are no fixed solutions, we are co-creating and then adapting as we go on, right? And so that’s also a major key point for me. And another one I would like to share is the fact that these women-led structures are in fact very effective. We are happy to ride on the work that the key NGO, the last year, has been doing so far. And so having to build on that has been very helpful for us. Recognising these informal structures, the governance at play, you know, is what has been helping us achieve success so far. Well, if I do say so, success so far. So, recognising this community and the work that they’ve done so far and also helping to strengthen their capacity, especially in the areas of governance, has been very key. So, yeah, those are the key learnings I will speak to. There’s so much more. Now, to the second question you asked, on how we are thinking about sustainability going forward. I will say, sustainability for us would mean leaving behind capability and capacities, not dependency. I spoke earlier about the fact that even when the research phase is over, you know, we can still pinpoint to the fact, that even years down the line, that this project is successful because the project we want to leave behind, we still find it’s [inaudible]. And so that’s what sustainability [inaudible], we’re living behind capability. And so going forward, we want to further strengthen the structure that is available in terms of all the groups, not only the women now, all the groups, all the groups. Somewhere that they can continue without the need for external support. And if, because it’s still the pilot phase, if this is accepted, it means that we can replicate the same scale up across even the larger Okerube community, and then other informal communities, you know, in the future. That’ll be taken on in the future. So that’s what sustainability critically is to us. You know, how we’re able to leave behind capabilities. And also, recognition and representation. So by the time you develop these people’s capabilities, they’re aware of their needs and how they should demand for their needs to be met. And they are not going there without informed knowledge. So they are able to know who’s responsible for what. And call them into action because we’ve empowered them. You know, they call these people into action and they’re able to ask for their rights and also basically just shape their lives going forward. And they can do all of this with the information that they have. And one thing we’re also trying to do is the mapping and profiling base will get them involved, especially the youth. So the community owns this information in the form of data. And they can demand for their rights, yeah, from that.

Deji Akinpelu Yeah, thank you so much for that lovely response. I mean, this is really speaking to the possibility of change. And my next question will go to Dr Temilade. At the ACRC, there is the concept and the theory concerning change. So far, from the ACRC conceptual framework, what are you seeing in terms of the possibility of change coming up from this project, from the ACRC theory of change?

Temilade Sesan Okay, great. So just to say, first of all, that we are testing the theory of change on ACRC, meaning that we have come in with this theory and seeing how it will pan out in practice. And our experiences on the ground will inform this theory of change, ie, are there parts of it that need to be tweaked, you know, to fit the reality as opposed to the other way around? So the four central pillars of the ACRC theory of change: the elite commitment, enhanced state capacity, mobilised citizens, and building reform coalitions. I would say that the latter, the last two, are the first ones that we are sort of starting with, because this is very much community-driven. So mobilised citizens at the grassroots level, mobilised through organisations, movements like the Federation and SHEF, which is like the presiding organisation for SDI and the Federation. And then those movements and organisations linking to broader allies, as it were, with like people, organisations of like mind, right, and trying to build momentum, right, around not just infrastructure in one community, but also just raising the profile of WASH more broadly in Lagos. So in the short term, these are the pillars that we are starting with. But in the long term, we see, as Seun has just said, the evidence coming out of that, we see that then informing potentially elite commitment, political elites at the local government and state government levels, as well as enhanced state capacity to engage with communities. Yes, there is the technical capacity that maybe a lot of people focus on, but it’s also the capacity to work with communities to determine what the needs are, you know, and to respond appropriately. So that would be like, if you will, in a sense, WASH 2.0 from our perspective. But yeah, that’s what we hope to do from the short to the medium to the long-term.

Deji Akinpelu Thank you very much. And to Mr Rasheed, as we close the… wind up. Mr Rasheed, tell me, what are your hopes for this project in terms of not just Okerube, but in terms of Lagos in general? What do you hope that this project will be able to achieve, in terms of how the government relates with informal communities in the city of Lagos? What do you think you are going to be able to achieve with this initiative at Okerube?

Rasheed Shittu Thank you so much for that brilliant question, Deji. I’m glad you came up with that question. Yeah, I will use two words to kind of explain and maybe expand it more. [Inaudible] to assessibility and acceptability because reason being that the informal and slum communities have been marginalised. They are deprived communities. Which the gap has been created between the government and the governed, and which the community or the informal people doesn’t have any trust when it comes to government officials’ engagements. Because the reason being that it has been planning for them, not planned with them. There has been a major reason why most of the project has been a failed project or abandoned project. But when there is accessibility, the project we give room as Okerube as a learning space and as a pilot to be able to have access to the government, the political elite, and to be able to accept them, and that we kind of give a change that Dr Temilade spoke about when it comes to sustainability. And now and again, there’s going to be acceptability because if they cannot assess the government or the political elected representative, how would they accept them? So after that, there is going to acceptability of the concept itself, and also what is coming from the community. Because the majority of them believe that these community people has nothing to offer or has no knowledge at all. But I’m glad that one of the responses from Seun, she made mention of the academia, research is just a pure, maybe theoretical aspects. But the project gave room for, the AR project gave room for action research projects, which kind of let people understand that the community have their own knowledge, they understand their community more, they know where it pinches, they are the one that wear the shoes. So, by and large, at the end of the day, we were able to achieve the assessibility and acceptability on the part of the political elites, who would definitely achieve a greater part in scaling up and also accepting the project, not only in Lagos alone, but across Nigeria as a nation. Thank you so much.

Deji Akinpelu Oh, great. Fantastic. So we’ll just wrap up with the with pretty much our last question to everyone. Maybe I’m going to start with Dr Temilade. And this is what I call the picture painting session. So tell us. We’ve spoken about Okerube as an informal settlement, but just tell us in your closing remarks, what exactly should a just and sustainable future look like for informal settlements like Okerube in the city of Lagos? What should we be aspiring towards? That would be our last question. I’ll let Dr Temilade go first.

Temilade Sesan Great. Thanks, Deji. So you’re giving me a blank canvas here. I could paint. I could paint, you know, all day on this. I think that the big picture is broad, is very broad. But I’ll just pick on maybe one thing, and piggyback on Mr Rasheed’s last comment around, you know, what would a just and sustainable future look like? It would be one that harnesses the assets, you know, in Okerube and similar communities. I think that for too long, we have approached, when I saw we – government, development actors have approached – communities like Okerube from a deficit perspective. And it is true that, you know, they are vulnerable, they are marginalised, but that’s because, that’s a cause and effect thing. That’s because they’ve been, you know, they’re not actually poor, but impoverished, right? It’s a condition that has been brought about by structural issues, but the reality remains that there are assets in the communities, there’s knowledge, there is experience, there are resources, there is capital even, there is money, for example, which is what we’re trying to demonstrate through the AR project, where the monies that are being currently used, we just want to pull it together more efficiently, right, and manage it better. So including those communities as active shapers of policy and practise as equals, really. So we’re talking of equality and equity, okay? And so we will have more equitable outputs if we were to start from that premise. Thank you.

Deji Akinpelu Thank you. Seun, can we have your perspective?

Oluwaseun Muraina Yes, so I think I’ve spoken earlier about what sustainability is, so I’ll emphasise more on a just future for communities like Okerube, you know, for all informal settlements. To me, it would mean recognition and representation; recognition that these communities are parts of the city, not temporal spaces to be ignored or displaced. You remember when Dr Temi was speaking about the implication of ignoring them much earlier in our discussion, because often for long, right, we viewed informal communities as a nuisance, right? So far. But we’re increasingly seeing that they can be centres of local agency, which is what’s been influencing this project, right. Centres of resilience and local agency. I think the way it comes to me is that these people, in spite of the conditions of their environment, is their ability to still survive. So you want to look critically at, you know, the adaptive tendency of human beings, right? How are they surviving in this community? It means that there’s something that they hold that we need to really look into, right. So for me, it’s essentially now shifting from doing it for these communities or doing for these communities to doing it with them. So much that the system gives them the right to shape decisions affecting their lives, where governance is collaborative, data is co-owned, and infrastructure is built on local knowledge. So yes, I will say it in a word, it will be like, this is our project, our data, our future, you know, and having the capacity to sustain it without wanting for external help. Thank you.

Deji Akinpelu Thank you, Mr Rasheed.

Rasheed Shittu It’s been a very productive and insightful discussion today. And I will say that from my end, I will hang the discussion till when we’ll pick it up by saying that there will be need for government to kind of promote community ownership, not by saying, but by doing. And by so doing, there should be more community engagement through participatory planning. That will kind of include the community, not only just like maybe okay we’ve engaged them, no from inception there should be uh they should be involved in the planning and also in the implementation. That would now kind of ensure community ownership that will translate to long-time maintainers and sustainability, so that is where I’m going to hang for now. Thank you so much.

Deji Akinpelu Okay, thank you very much. Mrs Funmilayo.

Funmilayo Mulikat Daniel Okay, I just want to say that our little little effort that should help us out, so that we can have what will make better our life, both from the ACRC and the government, that this should be made to government as well so that our people will live a better life. God will help us.

Deji Akinpelu Thank you so much. And it’s all about a better life for the people. I’d like to thank everyone who has been part of today’s show. The discussion so far shows that transformation begins when knowledge meets shared experiences, particularly in our local communities. Okerube’s story to us right here is not just about water. It’s about power, participation and giving the people the opportunity to reclaim the control of their own urban futures and planning with them and developing ideas with them. You’ve been listening to the African Cities podcast. I am your host, Deji Akinpelu. Until next time, keep building cities rooted in the strength of the people. Thank you once again to all our guests. Bye. See you next time.

Rasheed Shittu Thanks, bye.

Temilade Sesan Thank you.

Outro You have been listening to the African Cities podcast. Remember to subscribe for more urban development insights and interviews from the African Cities Research Consortium.

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Nairobi to Naija: Inclusive service delivery in African cities is not a pipe dream

Hannah — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 07:00:00 +0000

By Temilade Sesan, ACRC Lagos city manager

One of the less visible but highly impactful aspects of the ACRC programme is the opportunity for cross-learning that it presents for urban development researchers, practitioners and policymakers working in different city contexts.

This was precisely the case for an ACRC Lagos delegation that went to Nairobi on a learning visit in December 2025. The delegation comprised researchers helping to launch a community-led water and sanitation (WASH) project in Okerube, an informal settlement in Lagos; community members leading mobilisation and data collection efforts on the ground; and officials from relevant local, state and federal government departments.

The Lagos team set out to gain inspiration from an established WASH intervention in Mukuru – a sprawling informal settlement in Nairobi in which, as of 2017, only 1% of the population of roughly 400,000 people had access to private WASH facilities.

Following years of advocacy and dialogue by a broad-based reform coalition co-chaired by local NGOs and the Nairobi County City Government, Mukuru moved from being a target of demolition to being declared a Special Planning Area by the latter.

Crucially, this declaration has paved the way for reform actors, including the county government, to expand access to WASH infrastructure in the community, resulting in a rise in plot-level sewer connections to an impressive 20% as of 2025. These features make the Mukuru case highly interesting and instructive for us in Lagos.

Lessons for governance

Lagos, a “megacity” of about 22 million people, has a severe public water deficit, with existing waterworks serving less than 10% of the population. This falls far short of the urban average of 57% coverage (and even the rural average of 22%) reported for sub-Saharan Africa. It certainly lags behind coverage in Nairobi, where 71% of the city’s 5 million residents are connected to the public water system, which is run by the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company (henceforth Nairobi Water).

Apart from the direct benefit of piped water access for the majority of residents connected to the service, what the coverage data in Nairobi show is that the state does have the capacity to operate and maintain a substantial, albeit incomplete, networked system for WASH. This, in turn, ensures the existence of a public service around which residents can engage the state and hold it accountable.

The observed contrast with Lagos threw a key lesson into relief for the delegation to Nairobi: poor public service delivery in the former – in WASH, but also in health, education, transport, waste management and several other sectors – makes it difficult for residents to participate in a vibrant democracy premised on tangible experience of a social contract with the state.

How are citizens supposed to hold their government accountable when there is very little – in concrete terms – to hold it accountable for?

A public water point fitted with smart metering technology in Mukuru

Cities of systems

This takes us to the core of ACRC’s “city of systems” approach, which recognises that urban development systems – for water, energy, health, education, and so on – are interdependent and must therefore be considered in relation to one another. Our engagement with state agencies is premised on the assumption that they do, in fact, run these systems in service of the public good, and that interaction with evidence-informed advocacy and action can help them to do better. This scenario appears to have played out more or less as expected in the Mukuru WASH case.

Mukuru, like many other informal settlements in Nairobi, has been historically excluded from the formal water and sewerage connections managed by Nairobi Water. Upon the declaration of the community as an SPA, however, Akiba Mashinani Trust (AMT), a key coalition member, began working with Nairobi Water to build a Simplified Sewer System that enables temporary but durable connections from individual plots to main sewer lines.

Combined with access to finance facilitated by AMT and other coalition members, this has made it possible for many more landlords to construct shared toilets for residents. In addition, Nairobi Water installed public taps with smart metering technology that provide residents with water at a fraction of the cost charged by private vendors – a big win from an equity standpoint.

Work underway on Mukuru’s Simplified Sewer System

A plot-level toilet in Mukuru connected to Nairobi Water’s Simplified Sewer System

The crucial point to note is that these state-supported improvements to WASH in Mukuru were possible precisely because there was already a state-run system in place; advocacy and action by reform actors provided the impetus for the state to do better by bringing in populations that were previously excluded from this system. This was an important insight for the Lagos delegation: the idea of the city taking responsibility for WASH service provision in one of its most disadvantaged neighbourhoods – and in the process, strengthening both its systems and its social contract with citizens.

The Lagos delegation came away with a realisation of how the dearth of functional networked systems makes our attempts to apply a city of systems lens in our work decidedly more challenging. Fortunately, we also emerged with ideas for how to make incremental progress toward the change we seek in our context.

Moving forward

It is important to note that there are sectors – such as transportation, waste management and health – in which the Lagos state government has taken steps to build out existing public infrastructure. While the reach of the state is often narrow compared to that of private actors, especially those in the informal economy, these sectors are obvious candidates for the task of coalition-enabled systems strengthening.

We outline below some transferable lessons from the Mukuru WASH case in this regard, in line with the four components of the ACRC theory of change.

1. Elite commitment: Progress is accelerated when organs of the state join up to promote the wellbeing and welfare of citizens. Nairobi Water investing in short- and medium-term WASH infrastructure in Mukuru, while the housing ministry works to resettle residents and rebuild the neighbourhood with long-term sewerage connections, is an example of this.

2. Enhanced state capacity: State agencies stand a better chance of enhancing their technical capacity to deliver infrastructure and services if they begin with a commitment to manage small-scale systems effectively for the public good.

3. Mobilised citizens: Communities must continue organising for improved service delivery grounded in secure land tenure. The experience of Mukuru indicates that, while it is not yet Uhuru, sustained advocacy at the grassroots can ultimately lead to the ceding of ground to residents of informal settlements.

4. Reform coalitions: Professional elites, especially those in academia, civil society and the media, must take up the charge of mobilising various forms of capital – whether financial, social, political or cultural – and channelling these toward improved service delivery across the city, including in historically disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

Back in Lagos, we continue to work from the understanding that the city’s political settlement is one in which power is highly consolidated among a few key actors. The difference is that we are more inspired than ever to work with reform actors, including those within the government, to transform the might of the state into meaningful action for all citizens.

ACRC

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ACRC’s theory of change

Strategic relationships driving development

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New research: What does progress look like for household microenterprises in African cities?

What does progress look like for HMEs?

Understanding HMEs’ productivity challenges

Strengthening policy around HMEs

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Insights from the World Urban Forum 13: Co-producing knowledge for climate-resilient African cities

Making invisible communities visible

From research to reform

The role of academia

Government needs practical evidence

Communities as partners, not data sources

Avoiding extractive partnerships

The way forward

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Reflections from the ACRC Kampala cross-project learning workshop

Key learnings

Stakeholder engagement

Power of community knowledge

Leveraging political opportunity structures

ACRC theory of change as a roadmap

Taking the learning forward

> Co-learning and co-creation of knowledge

> Desire for a joint multistakeholder engagement

> Joint communication and documentation

Kampala’s overarching reform agenda

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Navigating different approaches to urban reform in Harare

Six pathways to urban reform

Forum for constructive engagement – from policy to implementation

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What is urban development? Reflections from Zimbabwe and Harare

Rethinking “urban” and “development”

Defining urban development in practice

Insights from a Harare brainstorming session

Harare as a case of “indigenous” urban development

Conclusion: Urban development as a living process

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Is knowledge power? Reflections on water, sanitation and survival in informal settlements

Using data as a tool for community advocacy

Building public trust, one sewer line at a time

What this means for Lagos

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From Mukuru to Okerube: Reflections from the Nairobi–Lagos WASH exchange

Meeting local council members and visiting Okerube

Institutional learning and knowledge sharing

Designing an integrated plan for Okerube

Building capacity around data collection

Reflecting and mapping a way forward

Continued learning and collaboration

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Podcast: Building community-driven WASH solutions in Lagos

Transcript

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Nairobi to Naija: Inclusive service delivery in African cities is not a pipe dream

Lessons for governance

Cities of systems

Moving forward

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With **communities, not for them**