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African cities and urban sustainability: A conversation with Shuaib Lwasa

Hannah — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 07:00:00 +0000

The Global Development Institute’s latest podcast episode features Shuaib Lwasa, founder and director of the Urban Action Lab, in conversation with ACRC’s co-research director Seth Schindler. They reflect on COP26 in Glasgow, discuss how Africa can position itself as an innovator in climate solutions, and talk about urban development in African cities.

Shuaib Lwasa is professor of urban sustainability at Makerere University in Uganda. Having worked extensively on interdisciplinary research projects primarily focused on African cities, but also in South Asia, he established the Urban Action Lab in 2010.

Seth Schindler is senior lecturer in urban development and transformation at the Global Development Institute and co-research director of the African Cities Research Consortium.

Transcript

The full podcast transcript is available below.

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Intro Welcome to the African Cities podcast.

Seth Schindler Thank you very much for joining us today. My name is Seth Schindler. I’m a senior lecturer at the Global Development Institute. And it’s really my honour and a pleasure to be here with Professor Shuaib Lwasa from Makerere University in Uganda. He’s also a coordinating lead author from the of the IPCC, and I think he’s founder of Urban Action Lab, which he will tell us about. And so, first of all, thank you very much, Professor Lwasa for joining us today.

Shuaib Lwasa Thank you. Great meeting you Seth. Thank you.

Seth Schindler Thank you. Thank you so much. So from my understanding, you were educated in, is it correct? Urban studies and planning, broadly speaking? And you know, as we all know, urban studies, it’s kind of a general term, but essentially it’s a very Euro-American discipline. The kind of general knowledge is still formulated typically around, you know, knowledge from a small number of cities London, New York, Berlin, etc. So at some point you must have unlearnt that and then relearned the theory that you’re talking about. Now the points you made yesterday in your talk about kind of new locales for generating knowledge from new places. So I guess I’d just like to ask you to reflect a bit on your personal journey, how you how you unlearnt mainstream urban studies. Were there key moments, key points, things that you witnessed?

Shuaib Lwasa I mean, great question. My learning journey has been quite interesting, and I find it interesting after reflecting on it most recently because a lot that has happened to unlearn the Eurocentrism, which is still part of me in many ways have are informed by my lived experiences. Boy, I was born where I grew up, where I studied and where I’ve spent most of, all, my time on that is the city of Kampala, at the Makerere University and living in an upper-income household family. But within a slum and under the age of the investor, quite an interesting kind of starting position there to do to have access to the university and see what academics are thirty years ago. And then at the same time, also they lived experience in a slum environment is something that has been for long informing the process of learning and unlearning, and that Eurocentrism, I think, has also been very good, I should say, because perhaps if I had not gotten this kind of training and was interested in governance, planning and urban studies, I would perhaps not been able to reflect on my own lived experience. And that could have both in some way boxed me in the position of thinking that all this is this is really what we were built for. This is doomed and unless somebody walks on it, we are most likely going to live like this. But I think having that lived experience has enabled me to unlearn and realise that we need to think about a lot of stuff in urban studies, a urban development differently, including the way we plan our cities and the fact that many of these cities where I grew up are most likely not going to be deconstructed. How would you turn that ship around? How do you unlearn the mainstream planning of problem, you know, analysis objective setting in the alternative plan formulation and discussion with policymakers, decide on one plan and then implement which never gets implemented in the case of Kampala 1939 Plan, 1972 plan, 1994 plan. I’ve been studying these extensively and deeply. None of those was except in 1926 and 1939 plans. The others subsequent ones perhaps only implemented up to less than five percent, especially. So then the reality is that there are a lot of things that have emerged. The failure of the public policy system under planning has enabled the emergence of very micro-level innovations for which we keep a blind spot on them because we are using, you know, Eurocentric frameworks and that has not enabled many people to realise what we understand about the potential, the working’s the limitations of the alternatives. And that is my academic journey.

Seth Schindler Wonderful. I mean, this point of these successive plans and a failing, I’m sure that planners the authors of those plans. Well, I imagine they will say that the problem is not the plan. The problem is the implementation. And I think probably another a counterargument would be like, well, the plan wasn’t fit for purpose, right? The plan was being applied in places where you had alternative systems that were already functioning or, you know, the plan should was what was the wrong starting point? So I wonder, you know, you mentioned that you already have plenty of things in place in terms of different types of infrastructural configurations and different social relations. Could you talk a little bit about how might those be scaled up and should they be institutionalised? And maybe this is a little bit of kind of what you’re doing with Urban Action Lab, and you could also tell us a bit about it.

Shuaib Lwasa Yeah, yeah. I’m an interesting comment earlier before the question, I think I’d go for the second lines won’t fit for purpose, and that is what the unlearning on my part has actually enabled me to visualise. And to some extent, also live. And therefore, if we’re going to see a scaling up of these micro-level innovations, I think this has to be a change and transformation in the way cities are managed and planning then becomes a small part of the city management and city management that I’m talking about and thinking about goes beyond the city authority’s utility companies and infrastructure companies that are usually the vehicle through which other infrastructure development is done. City management also goes beyond that to include local economic development opportunities, which is one of the problem of the plan. If we could go back to your earlier, you know, comment that the plan is not the problem, the problem, the plans have been partly the problem because the assumption is that when you have a specially organised area or city in terms of land use and separation and transportation linkages that seamlessly the demography and the population will fit in seamlessly, the urban labour market will work itself out because then industries will establish and then people will get jobs and then housing developments and housing markets will evolve and evolve and grow and expand. The plan is the problem. Yeah. So how do we then look back and say, what about these emerging innovations, how would you scale that you need a different view of managing cities to bring actors into the mainstream, especially with established cities, new cities, you can still configure them in the contemporary way. But existing cities, you need to bring the developers. The real developers of the cities is not municipalities, because in the case of Africa, it is the individuals, the family, the families, the companies, the small microbusinesses. They are the ones that are actually inch by inch transforming the landscape in the cities and adding small pieces of certain types of infrastructure with alternative technologies, which we need to think about. How to scale it up, where there is decency and potential and feasibility to provide the much needed services to the dwellers and therefore working with many stakeholders is important, but it’s also a challenge .

Seth Schindler I can imagine. And I mean, can you give our listeners an example of a successful example where one of these initiatives has been scaled up to some extent, right? Maybe not globally, but somewhere where you’ve brought you’ve seen this happen, where the stakeholders have come together in some sort of coalition to successfully kind of seize on an initiative and scale.

Shuaib Lwasa In the Urban Action Lab we’ve focused a lot of resources and energies on utilities like waste management and collection, as well as sanitation services, and we’ve piloted on the workings of some of these micro-level technologies, and we’ve assessed the different alternatives like, you know, turning organic waste into energy briquettes, which has been around for so many us. I knew about that over 30 years ago because my mom did it in the neighbourhood as a way of saving on charcoal because it was becoming expensive because of the rebel activities. The load of trucks could not go through the rebel zones to bring the charcoal to the city. But what we have seen is that by empowering more women-led groups, youth-led groups and all the kind of groups led by man into in communities and allowing them in the free space sort of to interact, share knowledge and experiences, work through product development, business plan, development, marketing of their product, branding of the product as part of it and identifying the Low-Hanging fruit. So if so, you should say. Marketing points for their products, because we know that if you change any product in the course of energy from charcoal or wood to energy briquettes is going to always be a question of uptake. But by identifying institutions and kiosks and markets as the initial marketing, you know, tools or points, we have seen some success in business is growing around energy briquettes in the urban chamber and we are still supporting with knowledge and walking with them. These different groups to amplify their skills and to bring new skills and study the market more and ensure that there is sustainable production because people will get disappointed if they start using briquettes and they get used to it. And then several weeks down the road, there’s no supply. So to bring that into the whole product development and rollout, we still continuing support and that is something which is slowly scaling up. And apart from Kampala, I know that in the case of Nairobi, it is grown to a level where medium level type of companies have picked it up.

Seth Schindler So I studied quite a bit of, you know, the large scale infrastructure projects which are back now, you know, for years, I think throughout this the high point of neoliberalism infrastructure was neglected simply because states were disempowered and many private investors from the OECD did not invest in infrastructure, large scale infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa. So now when you read the policy documents, the argument is that this is enduring growth and all we have to do is invest in infrastructure. And then these people you’re talking about can bring their products to market. But it sounds to me like you’re saying that’s not the main barrier for these people to scale up their activities. They can do it without the infrastructure. There are other challenges like you mentioned, kind of bringing people together, institutionalising some of these processes. Am I right? I mean, is there a role for infrastructure to play in these processes or is that a kind of red herring? And the real way to scale up some of these initiatives,

Shuaib Lwasa Perhaps to be much more to be a pessimist? The red herring is you could there’s not a better description of large scale infrastructure than the red herring. And that’s because I’m a pessimist of the infrastructure led development. Having a couple of one and a half years ago been part of a huge research project on city infrastructure for development in eastern Africa. And same thing that has been pursued for years. Infrastructure, road construction, enabling people to bring products to the market. How much are they producing and how much is used for home consumption and how much of that produce can get into the market? And what are the costs of transporting the market? And what are the, what are the dividends that come out of that kind of trade? I don’t see that happening. So. This is perhaps an indication that there is need to rethink infrastructure led development in cities, but also nationally and look at the different levers for enabling different producers to step up their production, and it’s not just about stepping up production, it is rethinking product development. So the whole value chain button is much not global value chain, but scaled down value chain. What product for whom the formerly targeting how we’re going to produce are going to sustain? What is the market condition like those questions? And besides neoliberalism also did something else about the agriculture sector. It wasn’t only just in infrastructure. There’s been a gradual but systematic phasing out of the traditional extension farmer extension system. Which was very useful so many years ago, and now it no longer exists because of structural adjustment programmes and other kind of initiatives, donor initiatives. And the farmers are struggling when the farmers struggle. Then there’s no value chain development and value addition down the road where you would expect that happening in cities if there is no real value addition, there no less opportunities in. If there are less opportunities, it is rendering the labour force in urban areas unemployed or underemployed, and that can breed a lot of challenges.

Seth Schindler Great, I mean, yeah, that’s fascinating, I see. We could we could take our discussion into a rural area as well because it’s quite interesting to me. A lot of the infrastructure initiatives are designed. I mean, that’s their stated purpose to kind of unlock this entrepreneurialism energy of farmers in rural areas. And yet I’m quite sceptical and the documents that I read, it seems to me that the plans are really for territory and the people are more or less absent. They’re expected to simply respond to the opportunities that a new road affords. Well, does it really afford so many opportunities? I mean, I think your answer is very clear. So I would like to ask you about the Urban Action Lab. You said, you know, you mentioned bringing people together, it’s challenging. Of course, every situation is different. But could you talk a little bit about this idea of co-production, how you actually bring people together to co-produce some of these plans?

Shuaib Lwasa Yeah, a little bit of history before I go into the question is we had a lot of international students and research collaborators coming for short periods of time to understand the workings in Kampala and in a lot of ideas came up, one of which was we thought knowledge is important. Knowledge is important to inform the most small steps of transformation at a local level. And we thought of a knowledge of an arena, local knowledge urban arena where we would work with communities, so to say like the best of our knowledge creation, traditionally in the development research world what you call the research site. We don’t call it the research site. The incubation centres, and that base would be occupied by southern actors, community members, households, small businesses, enterprises, companies and then the policy site; ministries municipality and then the academy; the academics and researchers, students, and then that would bring all these different categories of actors in the urban space in this urban knowledge arena, and that’s how we came up with the urban action lab and we started off in a very transparent manner with a series of kick workshops and meetings, informal and formal to say that, look, this is not another project. It is not another programme. It is simply a platform and an actor in this platform in the urban action lab can bring up an issue. Our role as academics in the Urban Action Lab will be amongst the several. Then we can go formulate questions, co-design questions and then generate knowledge, analyse it together, generate it together and then for initial R&D activities, co-implement them together to learn further. And then we start learning more on how to scale up. So the co-production is quite different from participation. And as we know, participation in research and development can be thought of along a gradation right from being passive to being empowered. And there are several steps in between, but being empowered gives a little bit of ownership of the way knowledge is utilised, but it may not necessarily mean that you are deeply involved in the design of the questions, you are deeply involved in the generation of the knowledge and you are involved in the implementation. Co-production goes beyond empowerment. It is not just knowledge we have co-generated, we have tested it out together, complimented and now you can look out for other opportunities and make bridges were necessary. So that’s the other role that the Urban Action Lab has played. We have bridged different actors, communities that need a little bit of support in terms of optimisation of micro and small businesses. And then there is the Swedish embassy that has a grant programme. Can you link with it? And we step out of the municipality or Minister of Lands and Housing and Urban Development that is interested in reviewing its urban policy, bringing those issues for formulating the questions, generating information or synthesising what we already have taking it to them and say in a discussion, this Urban Action Lab platform, this is what the reality is, what you are pursuing with this policy. A good number of it are very good and several of them are really good. Some of them actually are counterproductive to the reality. Then the minister takes that and changes, but we know that routes is very, very, very time consuming. It takes a long time for policy. So we invest more in spaces where action can be realised in relatively short time, and then the successes are picked up very easily by the policy actor.

Seth Schindler That’s fascinating, I mean, I can’t help but think back to our first question, we talked about planning. There’s a book about the history of development during the Cold War by Sara Lorenzini, and she talks about how the mid-20th century you could almost rewriting history of development is almost like writing a history of planning. There was no difference, right? And in that sense, you get, you know, you get a project and then you try and get people to participate with you. And what you’re talking about has nothing to do with planning because it might take any number of directions, right? I mean, you just don’t get it at that at a certain stage, as you said, you step back and it’s not even your initiative. And so that might explain why co-production is not embraced by planners, right? I mean, it’s antithetical to mine perhaps. So that’s a great answer. We kind of closed the circle. I’m tempted to leave the podcast there, but I have one more question. We haven’t spoken about China yet, and I think, you know, we almost have to start by speaking about the Washington consensus. It’s essentially fragmented, even in 2006. Dani Rodrik talked about how he had an article entitled Something Like Goodbye Washington Consensus. Hello, Washington Confusion. So even at that time, there were, you know, there was a recognition that the model wasn’t working and that was in 2006 and then you had the financial crisis. And so, you know, the Keynesians are back. The state is back. And now China has emerged since the crisis has gone out and is doing Belt and Road Initiative, but all sorts of other initiatives. And it’s of course, there’s a long history of China in Africa, but I think we would agree that it’s scaled that up in the last decade. And so I don’t see a single hegemonic knowledge and instead I see a multiplicity of knowledges. And I wonder if you could talk about the implications of that for co-production and the Urban Action Lab. Are there opportunities there because you have all these different knowledge is or is it quite perilous and you have to be careful?

Shuaib Lwasa I mean, this a very good question, thanks Seth, and it is it reminds me of the Non-Aligned Movement versus the aligned involvement in the geopolitics so many years ago, where you would have to, you know, either lean on one side or the other. In this contemporary world, with the welcome Washington confusion, it seems as though it is much more strategic not to align with any side, but rather be strategic and upfront, transparent about what they co- benefits are the benefits for all parties. And in bringing it down to a little bit to the knowledge spaces for the Urban Action Lab, and the kind of work we do. I think the difference between China’s hegemonic approach to development with global north largely and not on the US is something that is worth exploring a little bit more and working with in conjunction with the global north led kind of knowledge spaces because knowledge is knowledge. And what we’re seeing is the geopolitics is some kind of bringing some kind of ideologies behind those spaces that kind of distinguishes, which is why I mentioned also Iran, because Iran has strongly developed its publication house with several Iranian best journals in their own language, so language is also very important. And of course, China is pushing back a lot of English language publication system and publishing a lot in China. And where they think there is a competitive edge, they allow that to be translated in English, which is the dominating language in this global north, you know, knowledge. So for us, there are opportunities on all sides. And if we detect opportunities and we can negotiate, it’s also negotiation in some way, then we can walk together and agree on mutual benefits. The basis would be mutual benefits. So of course, the power is disproportional between us and these different hegemonic knowledge spaces. But that is a challenge to navigate.

Seth Schindler Yeah, great. It is indeed a challenge. And everyone at the Urban Action Lab I’m sure you’re up for it, you’ve had made so many contributions so far. We look forward to hearing more about the Urban Action Lab and in your activities with them and the IPCC in the future. And I hope that you’ll join us again at some point in the future. But now I just like to say thank you for today. It was a pleasure speaking with you.

Shuaib Lwasa Pleasure as well, and thank you for having me. Looking forward to be back here.

Seth Schindler Thank you.

Outro You’ve 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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ACRC welcomes new cohort of postdoctoral research fellows

Hannah — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 07:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to welcome eight postdoctoral research fellows to the African Cities Research Consortium. Working across our eight urban development domains, the research fellows will be based at The University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute and will receive mentoring from dedicated members of the consortium’s research team.

The research fellows joining ACRC are:

Patience Adzande | Safety and security
Before joining the consortium, Patience was a senior lecturer in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Benue State University in Makurdi, Nigeria, where she also gained her PhD in urban and regional planning in 2017.

Elizabeth Dessie | Youth and capability development
Elizabeth completed her PhD in human geography at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden in 2021, with a thesis on the gendered livelihood strategies of migrant youth in Addis Ababa. She previously held roles in research and regulatory compliance with the Centre Jacques-Berque and the British Red Cross.

Miriam Maina | Housing
Most recently a postdoctoral fellow at the NRF Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, Miriam completed her PhD in town and regional planning at the university in 2020, with her thesis examining the influence of spatial planning on urban space economies.

Ademola Omoegun | Neighbourhood and district economic development
Ademola joins ACRC having been a lecturer in architecture and urbanism at the University of Lagos since 2016. He earned his PhD in urban planning and international development from Cardiff University in 2015, with a thesis on street trader displacements in Lagos.

Smith Ouma | Informal settlements
Smith is completing his PhD at Cardiff University – focusing on urban land and spatial governance processes in Africa – where he also worked as a law tutor in the School of Law and Politics. Additionally, he was a research assistant on a project led by the Katiba Institute, Muungano wa Wanavijiji and Strathmore Law School aimed at improving access to justice and basic services in Nairobi’s informal settlements.

Matthew Sharp | Structural transformation
Previously a senior postdoctoral associate at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government and research affiliate at the Centre for the Study of African Economies, Matthew completed his PhD in economic geography at the London School of Economics in 2020, with a thesis on spatial and labour economics.

Abdifatah Tahir | Land and connectivity
A member of parliament at the Federal Parliament of Somalia in Mogadishu since 2016, Abdifatah has also chaired its committee for roads, ports, airports, transport and energy since 2017. He received his PhD from the University of Sussex in 2016, with a thesis on urban governance, land conflicts and segregation in Hargeisa, Somaliland.

Ezana Haddis Weldeghebrael | Cross-cutting
Ezana has been at The University of Manchester since 2014, completing his PhD in planning and environmental management in 2019, with a thesis on inner-city redevelopment in Addis Ababa. He was awarded a GCRF Postdoctoral Visiting Fellowship for a participatory research project exploring post-Covid-19 slum upgrading in Addis Ababa and joined ACRC as a research associate in 2021.

Sign up to our e-newsletter for further updates about our research programme, and keep an eye on the African Cities blog over the next few months for more information about the postdocs and their work.

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Can housing reform help cities deal with climate change whilst reducing poverty?

Hannah — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 07:00:11 +0000

By Hannah van Rooyen, African Cities Research Consortium digital communications officer

More than 1 billion people around the world currently lack access to adequate and affordable housing – a figure expected to triple by 2030. During this period, climate-related threats to the lives and livelihoods of urban residents are projected to increase, with decisions made around the location, design and construction of housing set to profoundly shape our collective future.

And yet, there are real tensions between different goals and an alarming disconnect between housing and climate agendas. These tensions were the focus of a recent workshop hosted by the African Cities Research Consortium, as part of the Innovate4Cities 2021 Conference – co-hosted by UN-HABITAT and the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM).

Organised by The University of Manchester, ODI, Reall, and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the event brought together a range of stakeholders to discuss housing reform in the global South, with a goal of exploring holistic interventions to secure a “quadruple win”: low-carbon, climate-resilient housing for all, delivered in ways that strengthen local economies.

The African Cities Research Consortium’s CEO Diana Mitlin introduced the session, framing the workshop with the question: how do we enact housing reform with four potentially competing priorities that we need to shift onto a more complementary platform? Climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, economic transformation and poverty reduction were the four priorities up for discussion.

Noting the timely nature of the workshop with COP26 on the horizon and emphasising the urgent need for a low-carbon transition, Diana Mitlin stated that we are already facing the need to adapt to climate change and seeing the consequences of inaction on our city streets – with flooding, high temperatures and other impacts.

Covid-19 has exacerbated and highlighted the need for enhanced productivity among low-income communities, she noted, with large numbers in informal work and struggling to get the basic incomes they need to survive.

She added: “We urgently need a new path that will enhance the economic development options facing those who live in towns and cities in the global South… Our collective task is to work out ways to simultaneously address those four priorities, each of which has to be recognised as of prime importance for a global agenda.”

After being divided into breakout rooms to discuss the four topics of climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, poverty reduction and economic transformation, the wider group came back together to summarise and discuss the takeaways from each conversation.

Climate mitigation

Led by Flavio Coppola (Carbon Free Energy in Cities) and Laetitia Pettinotti (ODI), the group highlighted the mitigating potential of increasing densities near transit nodes in order to promote the use of mass transit, but pointed out associated risks of displacement, an increase in heat island effect and gentrification.

Upgrading and retro-fitting informal settlements was another key topic of conversation, with Laetitia Pettinotti emphasising the importance of land rights and including communities in upgrading processes. Other ideas included waste management improvement as part of a wider circular economy, and the “win win” opportunity of urban green spaces in terms of nature-based solutions and improving health.

Climate adaptation

David Dodman (IIED) and Clare Wildfire (Mott MacDonald) guided the adaptation discussion, highlighting security of tenure as a key priority for the group – enabling gradual adaptation that homeowners can control, and providing a safe and secure baseline for development.

Also covered was the importance of service provision, with primary education and healthcare central to creating underlying community resilience and ensuring the ability to recover from any shocks that do happen. Transport networks were also noted as being fundamental to relocation success, providing viable links with accessible jobs in areas earmarked as safe.

Poverty reduction

Diana Mitlin (The University of Manchester) and Sazini Ndlovu (Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation) led the poverty reduction group, setting out the agreement that informal settlement upgrading is critical to addressing the housing needs of low-income groups. Royal Mabakeng (Namibia University of Science and Technology) also raised the question of how government can become a catalyst to enable people to drive their own housing development, and how more funding can reach communities directly, supporting them to improve their dwellings and enabling the government to focus on infrastructure investment.

Issues of resource scarcity, improved tenure security and bulk infrastructure to enable networked services were set out as three key considerations, along with the consensus that low-income groups need to be seen as partners and able to collaborate with local government.

Economic transformation

Guided by Donovan Storey (REALL) and Sumedha Naik (Syntellect, India), the economic transformation group highlighted the need to incorporate finance within development plans at the earliest possible stage, to ensure inclusivity and that improvements in the build environment can be maintained – noting that the question of affordability is often left until the end.

The need for much more dialogue to break through siloes and integrate sources of finance was also explored, along with the importance of focusing on affordable housing, services and infrastructure in conjunction to meet other felt needs in low-income communities.

Aerial view of Accra, Ghana. Workshop participants discussed the various benefits presented by urban green spaces. Photo credit: Kwame Kwegyir-Addo / Getty Images

Arising from these discussions, three cross-cutting priorities were identified and explored further by the wider group:

1. Legal land titles

Royal Mabakeng pointed out that legal titles are not always the answer with low-income groups and what people most need is security of tenure. There was general agreement that those who feel secure and have land rights are more likely to invest in their own homes and communities.

2. Affordable resilient housing materials

David Dodman noted that despite poor construction and ventilation worsening the effects of heat for city dwellers, the availability of building materials and technologies that residents can use to alleviate these has been low on the agenda until now. Diana Mitlin and Royal Mabakeng further commented that it seems difficult to get resilient building materials that are also affordable for low-income households and many informal settlement dwellers.

3. Urban green spaces

Green spaces proved a hot topic on which to close the session, with participants noting the various benefits they can serve for urban cooling, flood prevention and mitigation, sports fields and urban agriculture, and other global agendas including biodiversity. Donovan Storey noted that a key challenge exists around how we value urban green space, and that while something like a road or a shopping mall has an intrinsic value within a city, a much broader approach is needed to prove the tangible benefits of green spaces.

Amidst the wide-reaching discussions and myriad priorities to consider, one message was abundantly clear: there is an urgent need for a global agenda that integrates poverty reduction with climate change resilience within cities.

The main discussion from the Innovate4Cities event is available to watch via YouTube.

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Photo credit: Abenaa / Getty Images. Kroo Bay is just one of Freetown’s many coastal informal settlements that is prone to flooding.

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

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Applications now open for eight postdoctoral research fellowships at ACRC

Hannah — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 07:00:48 +0000

Do you have a commitment to driving positive urban change in African cities? Do you have a PhD in a relevant field, or are you close to completing one? Read on to find out more about our postdoctoral fellowships and how to apply…

The African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) is offering up to eight 18-month postdoctoral awards for early career scholars interested in engaging with the consortium and its research on the political economy of integrated urban development in 13 African cities.

Funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the consortium is led by the Global Development Institute at The University of Manchester. Over the next six years, ACRC will conduct policy-oriented research in some of Africa’s fastest growing urban areas, to generate new evidence to catalyse integrated, sustainable and inclusive approaches to urban development.

These eight fellowships offer the opportunity for outstanding individuals to make a significant contribution to the work of this exciting international research programme.

You will need to have been awarded (or be very close to completing) a relevant PhD focused on urban development in Africa and/or on the use of political economy approaches to analyse relevant development challenges in Africa, although direct experience of working in one of the 13 focus cities will not be necessary.

Successful applicants will be based with one of our partners and work with ACRC teams to research critical challenges preventing poverty reduction, social inclusion, economic development and environmental sustainability in African cities.

Depending on your research area, you are also likely to have the opportunity to spend time with other partners in Africa. In addition, you will become part of a peer group of ACRC postdocs, for which a number of joint activities and events will be organised.

To find out more and apply, please see the full listing via The University of Manchester’s job portal.

Deadline: Friday 1 October

Informal inquiries may be made to ACRC’s CEO Professor Diana Mitlin or Deputy CEO Professor Samuel Hickey.

Apply Now

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The political opportunities and obstacles associated with Africa’s urban challenges

Hannah — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 08:00:37 +0000

By Ezana Haddis Weldeghebrael, research associate at The University of Manchester

“Forget planning, politics first.”

– Shuaib Lwasa
Urban Action Lab, Uganda

As part of the Development Studies Association Annual Conference, the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) hosted a roundtable discussion exploring ‘The political opportunities and obstacles associated with Africa’s urban challenges’.

Bringing together the expertise and perspectives of grassroots social movement leaders and academics, the discussion strongly emphasised the need to rethink the conventional African urban development trajectories of imposing infrastructures and urban models that do not address the needs of the majority African urban citizens. Instead, the panellists advanced the necessity of working with the informal settlement residents, informal/popular economic actors and the natural environment to address African urban challenges.

The panellists identified that African cities are faced with housing, transport, education, health, food security and employment related challenges. Joseph Muturi provided an example of Mukuru informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, which has only two legally recognised schools serving more than half a million people. He also noted that they found hundreds of informal schools and health centres staffed with unqualified professionals in their assessment of the settlement.

In most parts of Africa, development priorities and policy responses to urban challenges are shaped by city managers, urban professionals, politicians and developers, with urban development planning mostly focused on infrastructural expansion with minimal input from, or benefit to the majority urban poor. For example, Shuaib Lwasa of Urban Action Lab stated how many African urban governments invest heavily in motorised transport infrastructure, which mainly serves less than 10% of city dwellers.

The panellists highlighted political exclusion as the major obstacle to addressing urban challenges in African cities. One such group facing persistent political exclusion is refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs), who are considered transient residents despite their permanent resident status. As a result, tens of thousands of refugees and IDPs live in African cities – mostly in informal settlements – without the necessary support or full citizenship rights. Lucy Earle of IIED stated that in Mogadishu, Somalia, for example, IDPs are denied voting and other citizenship rights, which exposes them to forced eviction as land value increases.

Political competition to control urban rents for personal enrichment and patronage was discussed as another key barrier to addressing African urban challenges. Many African politicians consider urban services, infrastructures and land as private or group asset accumulation sources. This has led to intense political competition to control these resources, resulting in poor service delivery and skewed resource allocation.

Even democratic multiparty electoral competition has limited effect in ensuring accountability of politicians, the panellists noted, due to entrenched identity-based political mobilisation of the majority illiterate electorate. Notably, the representatives of social movements on the panel expressed that the tendency of some politicians to prioritise personal enrichment from every project has made it difficult for them to build long-lasting partnerships with authorities to address the needs of the urban poor.

The roundtable also highlighted the increased recognition among many African governments of the role that urban centres and urbanisation play in their national development plans. For example, Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai of the University of Ghana Business School talked about the increased political significance of urban centres, especially Accra and Kumasi, in Ghanian party politics, national development planning and resource allocation.

However, the panellists also identified four significant limitations with this increased emphasis on urbanisation in Africa. Firstly, most national development plans view urban and rural areas as distinct spatial categories and fail to consider the particular features of peri-urban spaces.

Secondly, there is a tendency to focus on large and capital cities at the expense of secondary cities and smaller towns, which are rapidly urbanising.

Thirdly, in most parts of Africa, urban local governments are constrained from allocating resources based on local priorities, due to limited fiscal decentralisation. Patience Mudimu, director of Dialogue on Shelter, noted that limited fiscal decentralisation in cities administered by an opposition party tends to exacerbate the discord between the city and national government, with significant adverse impact on service delivery, citing Harare, Zimbabwe as an example.

Finally, most African national development plans heavily emphasise flagship infrastructure-led development without considering the needs of the majority of urban residents living in informal settlements. Accordingly, the panellists suggested rethinking how urban development is integrated into national policy formulation and development planning.

The panellists underlined the necessity of doing urban development differently by shifting the focus from infrastructure-led to people-centred development, and capitalising on the creativity and improvisational skills of the majority urban poor. People-centred development involves bringing excluded segments of the urban population (such as slum dwellers, refugees and IDPs) to the table, to set the development agenda for their settlement and cities.

However, inclusive development and participatory planning should not be done as a box-ticking exercise, by inviting a few community leaders into five-star hotels for photo opportunities. Instead, the urban poor need to be in charge of collecting and analysing information about their communities and prioritising their development needs. Joseph Muturi shared his experience of the Mukuru Special Planning Area (SPA) in Nairobi, Kenya, to demonstrate the potential of informal settlement residents and their grassroots organisations in planning the largest informal settlement upgrading projects ever in collaboration with multiple development partners.

Crucially, with the advent of Covid-19 health emergencies and climate change impacts, the panellists also emphasised how urban development planning also needs to be geared towards building the environmental and socio-economic resilience of communities.

Overall, the roundtable enabled the panellists to talk about the key urban challenges facing African cities, share their own experiences of addressing them, and provide ACRC with examples of avenues to do urban development differently. Perhaps the most important takeaway from the panel is that African urban socio-economic problems are political, and so the solutions must also be political

Panellists

> Patience Mudimu (Director, Dialogue on Shelter, Harare)
> Joseph Muturi (grassroots leader from Kenya, chairperson of Slum/Shack Dwellers International)
> Shuaib Lwasa (Urban Action Lab, Makerere University, Global Adaptation Centre)
> Lucy Earle (IIED)
> Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai (University of Ghana Business School)

Convener

> Diana Mitlin (Professor of Global Urbanism, The University of Manchester and CEO, African Cities Research Consortium)

Photo credit: Muungano wa Wanavijiji / Know Your City TV. Ongoing removal of housing structures located on roads by residents to pave way for construction of road network at Mukuru Kwa Reuben.

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

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Partner Spotlight: The University of Manchester

Hannah — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 08:00:00 +0000

One of the world’s leading research institutions, The University of Manchester is dedicated to advancing the sustainable development goals through its research, education, public engagement and responsible campus operations. The University is the lead partner in the African Cities Research Consortium, with operations based out of the Global Development Institute (GDI), part of the School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED).

Diana Mitlin is Professor of Global Urbanism at GDI, Principal Researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium.

What do you think is the most important thing The University of Manchester brings to the consortium?

I think Manchester brings three things in particular to ACRC. Firstly, we bring a lot of experience of working across academic scholarship, community experiences and community knowledge. And thrown into the mix is our experience of working on the edge of policy – both with think tanks and on our own – as well as thinking through conceptual work and new forms of practice. This is really important for the successful realisation of this ambitious programme, which has to both bring together disparate views and experiences, and work both through research and action research to contribute to new and better ways to address longstanding challenges.

We have strong experience with co-producing knowledge, which influences the construction of the consortium and the way we’ve put it together, but it will also influence how we build answers to the research questions that we’ve set ourselves.

The second thing we bring, which is distinctive within the consortium, is the knowledge of political settlements. We have a broader understanding of politics than the political economy beyond political settlements, and other colleagues do add to that knowledge in particular areas as well. However, the eleven years of research within the Effective States and Inclusive Development research centre enable us to contribute new insights into the politics of city and state relations, and urban politics itself.

Thirdly, we have a diverse group of scholars within GDI and SEED more generally who have been working and writing on urban issues for many years through the Global Urban Futures research group, and the Manchester-based Urban Institute.

Can you tell us about your background and research interests and how you came to be involved in ACRC?

As soon as I read the FCDO terms of reference for African Cities, I was excited about the potential of this work.

From the very early 1990s, I’ve been working on issues of urban poverty and inequality; I’ve also been working with social movements. I had a particular focus on issues of disadvantage and marginalisation, alongside a focus on neighbourhood and spatial development. But even before that, I was a public sector economist, so the economic stuff is also something I can engage with quite easily, as I have prior understanding and an interest in it.

So in terms of the subject matter, my experience to date is a good fit with what seems to be required. In terms of the focus, it’s also a good fit. I’ve been working on both Africa and Asia over most of my career, with a very little bit in Latin America. And over the last few years, I’ve been doing more with Africa.

It’s also a good fit in the sense that the project needed a very diverse set of knowledges to address the key challenges outlined by FCDO, and I’ve always been interested in working in a highly multi-disciplinary way. My first degree (at The University of Manchester) was in sociology and economics, my master’s was in economics, and my PhD was in social policy and administration, so organisational development. I’ve done lots of different social science disciplines and I’ve worked, over the last 15 years, primarily with planners and architects on issues of urban development.

In terms of working across the academic and policy frontier, it’s also a good fit. Through my work with IIED, I have engaged with multiple policy issues in respect of urban development, issues such as housing and service affordability, the challenges of improving access to sanitation, inclusive approaches to housing finance, and most recently potential policy responses to the climate emergency in cities.

My work in IIED has also given me experience of operational urban development. Working with both Shack/Slum Dwellers International and the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, I managed about $30 million of donor funding for innovative community-led solutions to secure tenure, develop housing and improve access to basic services.

So in many respects, the fit between this programme of work and my own experience was perfect.

“You could say that Africa encapsulates the challenges that all cities face.”

Looking at the project more broadly, what do you think is most interesting or unique about ACRC’s approach to urban development?

I would say that the approach is still under development. We obviously have the terms of reference and our own understanding of how to do that, but we are absolutely developing our knowledge. None of this is unique, but the combination is quite unusual, with the strong focus on politics. Building on Effective States and Inclusive Development’s work to establish a strong national understanding of politics is important. But at the same time, thinking about city and sub-city level is also critical.

Recognising the integrated nature of urban interventions, through our ‘city of systems’ approach, is really important. As social scientists, we understand the constraints in some of the systems theory to date – with a strong focus on data, which is not always available, and modelling, which leaves out some of the more political, ethnographic knowledges. So we’re going beyond that mathematical approach to understanding systems, into something that is more nuanced and more qualitative.

Combining theoretical and conceptual academic knowledge with things that are going to make a difference is both challenging and intellectually interesting, but also really important because we want our knowledge to be useful.

I also do think our partnership is unique. Our investment in economic capabilities through UNU-WIDER, for example, will both deepen our engagement with the urban economy but also ensure that economics is balanced alongside other disciplines. Then we’re bringing in health through the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, which is such an important issue in development in general, and urban development in particular – because of the risks associated with very high density populations, the under-provision of basic services, the agglomeration of economic activities, and the subsequent effects of pollution, for instance. So before you even get to looking at the different policy institutes (IIED, ODI, PASGR) and then IRC, ICLEI Africa and SDI, I think that is all pretty unique.

What do you think is the most crucial challenge for development in African cities?

This is possibly the hardest question. Arguably, the core challenge is inequalities. Inequalities in political inclusion, for example, in addition to inequalities in wealth and incomes. Such inequalities emerge from the colonial legacy in Africa and have been exacerbated by more recent trends in urban development.

You could say that Africa encapsulates the challenges that all cities face. You have very unequal patterns of development; you have certain people able to take up opportunities and others unable; you have weak states because they have few resources, in addition to a lack of historical institutional development.

So, I certainly don’t think Africa’s challenges are unique. Some of the challenges faced by those living informal settlements in Africa, are very similar to those faced by people living in low-income neighbourhoods in Manchester. But some of these challenges are more acute in Africa, because of the barriers to development, the lack of opportunities, and the very poor set of options faced by many of the lowest-income urban citizens.

Everywhere including Africa now faces new threats from climate change, with changes in precipitation, drought, increased temperatures, flooding, and lack of access to basic resources including water. All these things are added to the existing challenges.

What are some of the challenges facing ACRC and how will you overcome them?

Two contradictory things are required. First, we need everyone to be contributing their particular skills and expertise; we have brought them into the consortium because of those skills, that’s how we’ve carefully constructed the consortium. At the same time, we need people to be very astute with recognising when they’ve reached the constraints of their knowledge, and to act with humility around new or emerging areas where they may know part but not all of the answer. I think that’s challenging for us. We have to recognise much more carefully the limits of our knowledge and where we need to draw in others to build new knowledge.

Another challenge is that we transition quite fast into doing operational work, and urban operational work is often tricky to set up as there’s a lot of politics involved. So we’re not only studying politics; we’re going to be doing politics. That’s always difficult when moving into spaces that are quite contested, but we’ll be working with people who are very good at managing those spaces.

Additionally, while we do have a big budget, it’s still quite small for doing urban development. In order to use it to best effect, we’re going to be navigating quite strong interests, and getting that right is bound to be difficult.

“There’s this sense in the consortium that we are well-positioned to understand where reform efforts have got to and work out how to add to them, which for me is really exciting.”

What is most exciting for you about this project?

The partnership is very exciting, especially the experience of working with local experts in African cities – be they academics, professionals or communities. There’s this sense in the consortium that we are well-positioned to understand where reform efforts have got to and work out how to add to them, which for me is really exciting.

Many efforts in African cities have been working in isolation and have been underappreciated, so there is a core body of experience there that we have to find a way to add value to. We’ll identify gaps and areas where we can contribute, so the challenge is to work out both what we can do and how we can do it in a way that contributes to a critical mass committed to urban reform in at least some of our cities.

Obviously, what is interesting and substantive and important is the goal of what we’re trying to achieve. But understanding how to achieve is also key. For me, it’s very much a building capabilities project as well. I want to make sure that people learn from it and are able to go on and develop the next level of projects and programmes.

The project also happens to be taking place at a time when the pandemic has brought a new attention to urban deprivation, entirely coincidentally. For some years now, there’s been momentum building with urban work in Africa– the World Bank has written about it, OECD has built up a programme, and the African Union is becoming more interested in urbanisation issues. I think Covid has highlighted to government and international agency staff that they need to consider urban, even if addressing urban poverty and inequality raises difficult issues of public management and public policy that need to be resolved.

So the timing is really good. It’s just up to us work with longstanding interests and new attention, and contribute to the momentum for change.

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

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Community mapping in Kenya improves state Covid-19 response

Hannah — Thu, 13 May 2021 07:00:00 +0000

By Professor Diana Mitlin, CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium

This case study – originally published as part of the Covid Collective Research for Policy and Practice series – shows how an urban social movement was able to produce the knowledge that state agencies needed when the pandemic struck, securing more inclusive policy responses and building legitimacy for alternative knowledge processes and associated development ambitions.

As soon as the Covid-19 pandemic struck Kenya, the Muungano Alliance began to collect data from its community leaders, who are based in 313 informal neighbourhoods across 21 counties. From March-June 2020, the Alliance collated information from hundreds of community leaders and produced regular reports of the situation on the ground. As the data collection processes were fine-tuned, the collection process tracked six informal settlements in Nairobi County, three settlements in Kisumu County, and one in Nakuru County.

The Alliance is a coalition of three agencies working closely together. Muungano wa Wanavijiji is a social movement made up of 1,360 grass-roots savings groups in informal settlements across Kenya. These groups attract women residents who are unable to save within their home and who are keen to secure development opportunities for themselves, their families, and communities. SDI Kenya is a small technical assistance NGO that supports the work of Muungano in respect of advocacy and material improvements (tenure security, access to basic services, and housing developments). The Akiba Mashinani Trust is a loan fund which provides the capital Muungano savings groups require to expand both income generation and housing investment.

Ensuring conditions in informal settlements were well understood by county and national governments was an immediate concern of the Muungano Alliance. In addition, the Alliance wanted to help provide appropriate advice to the 89,153 Muungano members in savings groups as well as all their neighbours living in informal settlements.

The data collection process was focused on three main areas: incidence of Covid-19 (cases, deaths, testing), government and community responses that reduced the health emergency, and access to the resources needed for survival. Narrative reporting was carried out by youth documenters in Muungano covering what was going on in their settlements.

Underpinning the Muungano Alliance’s work is the objective to amplify the voice of women within Kenya’s urban development policy and planning. As information triggers understanding, women and men who are part of Muungano begin to organise their families and neighbourhoods to address the pandemic. As a programme of required activities becomes clearer to local activists, their demands become stronger that government address health and economic emergencies. The speed and depth of the Alliance’s collection and aggregation of data reflects capabilities built up over decades.

Once information began to flow upwards from the community to government and downwards to community leaders, then action was catalysed. Community groups began to improve access to handwashing stations and masks. They identified isolation centres and provided emergency access to food. The relevant authorities began to reach out to the Alliance, recognising the value of the information, which triangulated well with other sources, and the significance of their work.

SDI Kenya was invited onto the Ministry of Health’s taskforce on Covid-19 in informal settlements. Earlier findings from the West African Ebola outbreak highlight the importance of local ownership of decision-making by informal settlement leaders (working closely with the health ministries) for the required action to be taken.

Youth in Korogocho informal settlement, Nairobi, put up public health posters in their neighbourhood. Photo: Muungano KYC.TV

Muungano representatives distributing personal protective equipment to community health volunteers in Nairobi. Photo: Muungano KYC.TV

Since March 2020, government policy and programming has shifted significantly.

First, Nairobi Metropolitan Services finally began infrastructure improvements in Mukuru, an informal settlement of 100,000 households on private land. Research in 2015-16, led by the Muungano Alliance, catalysed the gazetting of a Mukuru Special Planning Area in August 2017. Nairobi County, supported by the Alliance and a consortium of 40 agencies, finalised some sectoral plans in March 2020. Nairobi Metropolitan Services is facilitating the process for finalising the overall integrated development plan in the next few months.

Second, by July 2020, the Alliance recognised the imperative to register as many informal settlement residents as possible, in order to pressure the government to provide a universal programme of support for all informal settlement residents. When the government subsequently rolled out an emergency cash transfer programme it included, for the first time, informal settlement residents. The cash transfers represent a positive and significant shift in government response to disasters in informal settlements that Muungano hopes will continue beyond the Covid-19 response.

This rapid process of Covid-19-related information-gathering and dissemination reflects the substantive capabilities within the Muungano Alliance. Logistically, they were able to manage the initial interest by hundreds of their members, develop an appropriate monitoring framework, and roll out multimedia posts. Strategically, the information became a way of demonstrating the organisational power of informal settlement residents. It raised the profile and legitimacy of the Muungano Alliance and helped to extend and deepen relations with relevant state agencies.

It is likely that this work had a positive influence on inclusive responses to Covid-19 by the Government of Kenya.

This article originally appeared in the Covid-19: Community resilience in urban informal settlements briefing paper, part of the Covid Collective Research for Policy and Practice series published by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS).

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

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Valuing water in the Global South

Hannah — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 09:00:32 +0000

To mark World Water Day 2021, Diana Mitlin, Professor of Global Urbanism at The University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute, discusses the issues the Global South face when it comes to accessing clean water.

Diana Mitlin is currently leading the African Cities Research Consortium. Her research, and that of her colleagues, explores how people living in the Global South continue to face issues around accessing clean water and how the COVID-19 pandemic has unearthed additional problems.

Global commitments to improving access to water have long been in place but it is evident that there are continuing problems in terms of access. One of the groups that is facing particular problems are the residents of informal urban neighbourhoods in towns and cities in the Global South. An estimated one in seven of the global population live in these areas.

Problems of affordability

Generally households in urban areas have to pay for water. There are shallow wells that provide some supplies without charge but in dense areas this water is likely to be non-potable.

The piped water through the public network can be too expensive for the lowest income households. World Resource Institute (WRI) data suggests that low-income residents in informal settlements may be spending more than 5% of their income on accessing the minimum quantities recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). This finding is consistent with earlier research with affiliates from Slum/Shack Dwellers International in Malawi, Namibia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

The crisis of piped water affordability is in part because the benefits of subsidy regimes are captured by higher income households, as researched by GDI colleague Professor Dale Whittington. It is also because insufficient attention is being given to the realities of life in informal settlements.

Multi-occupancy households – generally caused by informal renting – mean that water bills move into higher tariffs (unit charges increase). Tenants renting informally from the land or structure owner generally pay a premium above the piped water charges to access supplies from the landowner. Even when the government provides a subsidy, they don’t benefit.

The economic consequences of the pandemic have exacerbated the problems that they face because incomes have fallen as well as the global demand for goods and services.

Diana Mitlin / Professor of Global Urbanism at The University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute

Without access to public piped water (either because the network hasn’t reached them or because there is no water in the pipes), households buy informally. They may buy from neighbourhoods with access (perhaps because they have sunk boreholes) or from informal neighbourhood enterprises.

The informal sector also collects water from the piped network (where it is available) and brings it to the local neighbourhoods. Buying like this is more expensive as even without profiteering, there are additional costs including transport charges. Tanker water was up to 52 times more expensive than piped water in the cities studied by WRI. Lucky households may be supplied by non-governmental organisations or other civil society efforts at a subsidised price.

Limited access to piped water

While access to piped water has improved, there are still those without. The WHO and UNICEF have reported that only 56% of urban Africa’s population have access to safely managed water; for the least developed countries the equivalent figure is 59%. In such a context what are the opportunities to access adequate supplies of affordable water?

These households have to buy from private suppliers, their neighbours in adjacent settlements with access to the piped network, or otherwise make do.

Even when there is access (either at the level of the plot or dweller or a nearby kiosk, pay-per-use meter or standpipe), it can’t be assumed that there is water in the pipe. In many contexts the piped water supply is intermittent. A recent study from the WRI that focused on 15 cities across the Global South highlighted that a consistent water supply (running throughout the 168 hours in each week) was only present in three of the cities. In two cities there was water for less than ten hours a week, and in a further four, water was running in the pipes between 10 and 83 hours a week.

Increasingly lack of access for households is exacerbated by water scarcity with limited municipal supplies, as researched by Dr Nate Millington from the University’s School of Environment, Education and Development.

The pandemic effect

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the problems as the requirement for access to water for handwashing and other hygiene measures as an important risk reduction measure has increased. The economic consequences of the pandemic have exacerbated the problems that they face because incomes have fallen as well as the global demand for goods and services.

The pandemic has also challenged governments to reconsider their approach to informal settlements and the lack of basic services that threatens health and wellbeing. At the same time, many local organisations have redoubled their efforts to address local needs.

The Global Development Institute is working with civil society organisations in both the UK and Africa to understand how residents’ associations and their members in Kampala, Mogadishu and Nairobi have managed during the pandemic, and how co-production – collaboration between citizens and state – may offer new effective strategies to improve access to water and other basic services.

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This post originally appeared on the University of Manchester’s website.

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

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Webinar: an introduction to the African Cities Research Consortium

Hannah — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 09:00:53 +0000

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

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

Speakers

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

Find out more

This post originally appeared on the Global Development Institute Blog.

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

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Symposium to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester

Hannah — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 09:00:29 +0000

On 17th October, the Global Development Institute held a day-long symposium to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the 5th Pan-African Congress which was held in Manchester.

Organised by its Africa Research Group, the event brought together researchers to discuss ‘75 Years after the 5th Pan-African Congress: Decolonising Africa’s Development Agenda’. You can catch up with the presentations and panels below.

The 1945 Pan-African Congress was held in Manchester and brought together intellectuals and activists such as W.E.B Du Bois, Kwame Nkrumah, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Jomo Kenyatta. The Congress was a springboard for these key figures in connecting with each other and developing new national strategies towards hastening decolonisation.

Africa: 75 years after the Manchester Pan-African Congress – HE Dr Amani Abou-Zeid, African Union

Challenges of Africa’s Economies and Prospects for post Covid-19 Recovery – Dr Samuel Maimbo, World Bank

De-colonising Africa’s Development: The Challenge – Prof Aminu Mamman, The University of Manchester, Sally Ncube, Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe, Prof Paul Mativenga, The University of Manchester

Citizens Driving Africa’s Development – Prof Diana Mitlin, The University of Manchester

Major Limb loss in Uganda and research in Kenya on Covid-19 prevention – Prof Mahesh Nirmalan, The University of Manchester

This post originally appeared on the Global Development Institute Blog.

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

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