Research findings

Political settlements

Politically, Accra was outlined as swing voting city with 3.6 million registered voters. With a multiethnic population, power in the city is dispersed and distributed across various actors, including 29 mayors, members of parliament and traditional rulers. The local chiefs, given their position as gatekeepers, were found to exploit residents for their own gains. The city is also subject to frequent political transitions and a weak decentralised system, driven by politically motivated fragmentations whose efficiency in governance and service delivery is highly questionable. The city’s economic viability is exacerbated by competition from different government levels, unresolved boundary rows between different regions, divergent interests from different actors and overall governance challenges.

Economic front

Using indicators for inclusive growth, such as movement of labour from the low-productivity agricultural sector to equally low- or moderately productive sectors in Ghana, the research established that structural transformation has occurred in Accra over the last decade. Lack of worker fidelity, macroeconomic instability, increasing sole proprietorship, high inflation and limited access to infrastructure for business were identified as key constraints to structural transformation.

As far as neighbourhood and district and economic development is concerned, the research found several issues to be hampering the operations of small-scale traders in the city. These include a lack of affordable credit, challenges in accessing spaces for business operations, and unregulated conduct of “market queens”.

Built environment

Land was identified as an emotive issue in Accra – proving to be a major source of tension and a driver of various distributional demands for national and city authorities. Land tenure rules deny indigenous people access to land for agricultural purposes, with chiefs wielding power and control over the same. The high cost of land, increasing land disputes, poor planning and weak enforcement of regulations have adversely impacted land and connectivity in Accra. The poor performance of land taxation and property tax revenue streams have further incapacitated the government’s service delivery. Even though the government is working on a unified revenue collection system, there is a need to invest in administrative and technical capacities to provide oversight for revenue collection in the city. Enhancing mobility and accessibility within Accra is another key priority, requiring intentional investments in urban transport infrastructure and possibly reviving deliberations around the bus rapid transport system.

The research identified more than 265 informal settlements within Accra, with over 60% of the city’s population living in poorly planned and overcrowded housing conditions occasioned by rapid urbanisation. These highly populated informal settlements were found to be based on a symbiotic relationship between politicians and residents, where support for political power was traded for favour and recognition. Politicians and other powerholders – including religious and traditional leaders – were found to exploit residents of these settlements for electoral and political purposes, using their power to lobby for certain programmes via both formal and informal channels. Following successes registered by previous reform efforts on slum upgrading, there is a need to explore informal upgrading to enhance access to basic infrastructure and improved housing, and to safeguard tenure security to reduce spatial inequality and improve life chances for informal settlement residents.

Closely tied to these findings was the housing domain research, which established that 47.6% of residents in Accra live in rented spaces and an estimated 16.7% live in non-conventional housing structures, including kiosks, metal containers and wooden structures. Increasing demand for rental housing has driven private informal housing providers to deliver substandard housing to meet soaring demands. Weak enforcement of housing regulations and limited access to land in areas closer to work has exposed renters in Accra to exploitation.

Despite high rental demands occasioned by deficits in housing, Ghana’s housing policy has not prioritised rental markets. Given this gap, there is a need to explore public–private partnerships and sustainable funding models for the provision of rental housing in the city. Additionally, alternative measures are needed to improve access to land and facilitate the construction of houses close to popular working areas.

From evidence to action

Given the interrelated nature and systemic challenges of Accra city, there is need for innovative approaches to drive action across policy, practice and programmes in relation to affordable housing, the land tenure system and economic development. Ghana’s FCDO office, ministers and reform coalitions on urban transformation committed to advance different facets of the work, calling for an integrated approach in developing sustainable urban solutions.

ACRC’s collaboration with the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development was deemed particularly beneficial to resolving interrelated and systemic challenges in Accra. And while the workshop positioned ACRC as a commendable initiative, key actors challenged the consortium to prioritise translating the research into impactful policy and practice, to secure affordable housing, economic development, and land tenure for Accra’s residents. Stakeholders called for follow through on implementation of the stalled rapid bus transfer to enhance transport, mobility and efficiency of the public transport system in Accra.

Photo credits: KnowYourCity TV Ghana

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

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

By Kweku Koranteng, ICLEI Africa

Navigating urban reform

The Freetown uptake workshop on 23 March 2023 examined how to integrate research evidence from ACRC Freetown city studies into processes and activities to achieve congruence between policy actions and urban transformation practices and programmes in the city. It was organised by ICLEI Africa, with support from the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre (SLURC) and SDI affiliate, the Centre for Dialogue on Human Settlements and Poverty Alleviation (CODOHSAPA). The event convened over 50 participants from the Sierra Leone government (various ministries, departments and agencies), civil society organisations, development partners, community members and private sector partners in Freetown.

The workshop unpacked challenges and opportunities related to the politics of urban reform, the systems approach to city services, and research findings from four of ACRC’s thematic areas – housing, informal settlements, health, wellbeing and nutrition, and youth and capability development. Each of these study areas provided insights into the complexities of urban development in Freetown. Disaster risk management in the city was highlighted as a crosscutting theme and a critical area needing urgent attention and intervention.

Political dynamics and the struggle for urban transformation

The politics of urban reform in the city demonstrates a complex relationship between political actors and their influence on the development of urban spaces. Politics serves as both an enabler and a constraint for urban reform, exacerbated by competing interests that create an atmosphere of contestation amongst stakeholders. Competition and disconnect are most visible when different political parties serve at different levels of government, such as national and local authorities. However, such contestation can occur even within the same party, as internal factions pursue control over urban development initiatives. Therefore, navigating the city’s political settlements becomes a crucial pathway for achieving development.

The scarcity of resources available for development hampers aspirations for urban reforms in Freetown. Limited resources intensify competition amongst interest groups, resulting in fragmented and inefficient urban planning, ultimately undermining the city’s potential for sustainable growth, economic development and improved quality of life for its residents.

Deconstructing informality: Service provision, economic resilience and power dynamics

In Freetown, the lack of access to adequate service provision has given rise to a myriad of informal socioeconomic and political activities. Informality is defined as emerging when only 35% of service is offered to any settlement in Freetown. These limited services include access to water, sanitation, schools, healthcare and electricity. The absence of these services breeds a complex array of informal activities to provide alternatives to service delivery. These activities serve not only as coping mechanisms for the residents but also as platforms for informal power dynamics and economic transactions.

The inadequate formal service provision creates a gap that fosters a conducive environment for the informal economy to thrive in underserved communities that constitute the bulk of Freetown’s population, with limited access and poor connections to the city’s infrastructure of basic service provisions. Many residents are forced to rely on informal service providers to meet their basic needs – for instance, by establishing makeshift water distribution systems or creating informal community waste disposal sites. These grassroots initiatives could be viewed as adaptive responses to challenging circumstances. Due to their unregulated nature, however, they often have unintended consequences, such as health hazards, safety breaches, environmental degradation and economic exploitation. Given these contextual realities, there is a need to consider embracing informality as a way to safeguard marginalised communities and meet a glaring gap in service delivery.

The lack of formal service provision in these areas has also given rise to intricate informal political structures. Community leaders, popularly known as “slum lords” or “gatekeepers”, wield significant power and influence without effective state governance. These informal leaders may negotiate access to services on behalf of their communities, often in exchange for loyalty and political support. In the long term, these informal arrangements have the potential to evolve into a complex web of patronage networks that could entrench social and economic inequalities within the settlements, perpetuating further injustices and exclusivity.

Small group discussions at the Freetown uptake workshop.

Vertical agriculture has the potential to significantly improve healthy diets in Freetown by maximising the use of limited urban space to grow fresh fruit and vegetables. This farming method involves cultivating plants in stacked layers or vertically inclined surfaces, such as walls and rooftops, reducing the land required for traditional farming. By promoting and investing in vertical agriculture, the city has the potential to increase the availability of nutritious food options, reduce food insecurity, and promote healthier eating habits among its residents. Additionally, vertical farming has the potential to create new employment opportunities for the youth and also reduce transportation emissions associated with distributing food from the hinterlands of Sierra Leone to Freetown. The co-benefit of vertical farming programmes will extend beyond the provision of a balanced diet to city inhabitants by offering economic and environmental benefits to the City of Freetown.

Leveraging social media and influencers has emerged as a powerful strategy for driving desired behaviour change through public health campaigns. By harnessing the extensive reach and influence of popular social media platforms, these campaigns can effectively disseminate critical health information and promote positive healthy behavioural shifts among diverse populations, especially the youth of Freetown. Influencers, with their large and loyal followings, can serve as credible and relatable spokespersons for public health messages, making complex concepts more accessible and engaging to their audience. Through strategic partnerships with influencers, public health campaigns can amplify their impact by tapping into the trust and rapport that these figures have established with their followers. By combining the persuasive power of social media platforms and the credibility of influencers, public health campaigns can reach a broader audience, foster informed dialogue, and ultimately inspire individuals to adopt healthier behaviours for the benefit of their communities and society at large.

Towards a resilient and inclusive Freetown: Addressing challenges and embracing opportunities for urban development

Stakeholders called for continued engagement beyond the foundation phase of the ACRC project. They suggested there is a need to package the research evidence in more accessible formats, such as stories of impact (videos), infographics, presentations in bilateral and town hall meetings, and policy briefs.

In conclusion, fostering sustained urban development in Freetown requires a multifaceted approach that addresses the challenges posed by political contestations, informality, health, nutrition, and disaster risk management. By promoting collaboration between different levels of government, prioritising service provision in informal settlements, and adopting innovative strategies to improve health, wellbeing and nutrition, the city can create a more inclusive and resilient urban environment. The adoption of integrated, rather than sector-silo, approaches to development was recognised as key to achieving better and more valuable outcomes in the city. The urgent need to resolve bottlenecks in devolution and decentralisation was also highlighted as a pathway for enhanced coordination.

Policy reforms to strengthen governance systems, foster collaboration amongst government agencies, and establish mainstream accountability and enforcement planning regulations were recommended as enablers of urban reforms. Furthermore, proactive disaster risk management strategies emphasising low-cost, high-impact solutions and capacity-building can help Freetown adapt to the challenges posed by natural hazards and climate change. By addressing these critical issues, Freetown could pave the way for a brighter and more prosperous future for its residents.

Photo credits: ICLEI Africa

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

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

By Rosebella Apollo, ACRC research uptake officer

The ACRC Nairobi team convened a final research uptake workshop on 9-10 March 2023. The two-day event aimed to stimulate policymakers, community representatives, county government officials, urban practitioners and professionals, to actively champion reforms for positive urban transformation in the city.

The workshop marked the close of the foundation phase of ACRC research in Nairobi. Over the past two-year period of co-creation and co-production with key stakeholders, ACRC has generated robust knowledge, expanding the frontiers of evidence‐informed decisionmaking in the city. This uptake workshop provided an additional platform for disseminating evidence from ACRC. The proceedings gave a clarion call for stakeholders to take action towards enhanced service delivery, poverty reduction and improving life chances for residents in the city.

Evidence from ACRC research delineated Nairobi as integral to Kenya’s national politics; a hub for trade and business. Politics in Nairobi city directly facilitates or constrains commitment from elites to spur inclusive development. Central to the politics are prevailing ethno-inequalities, regional imbalances and electoral systems that reward ethnic patronage. Although the city has just elected a new governor from the government of the day, he has to work closely with elected officials from the opposition to deliver his mandate in the city.

Based on this analysis, key forces to support potential reforms in the city include the county governor, the Nairobi county assembly, the national executive, civil society organisations, rent seeking political elites and development partners which can build the capacity of state actors.

Despite capital investments in the city’s infrastructure, Nairobi city systems – namely, transport, education, healthcare, water and sanitation – have been adversely affected by a number of factors. The gap between demand and supply in service delivery is widening; institutional fragmentation is increasing, fostering competition or duplication of roles across national and county government levels; and there is a proliferation of informal service providers, who offer costly and often hazardous services, especially in informal urban settlements. These have resulted in glaring gaps in service delivery and, subsequently, overreliance on private sector and developmental agencies in meeting basic needs for Nairobi’s residents.

Identifying priority complex problems to catalyse urban reform

Further to analysing Nairobi’s political systems, ACRC engaged in domain analysis, to explore city programming and policy frameworks in four of ACRC’s eight thematic areas: health, wellbeing and nutrition (HWN), housing, structural transformation, and safety and security. Research from these urban development domains yielded a total of ten priority complex problems (PCPs), identified as areas having clear potential to catalyse urban reforms in the city.

Based on insights from politically informed systems analysis and emerging evidence, stakeholders across multiple sectors engaged in Nairobi proposed a number of actionable pathways as entry points for initiating small pockets of urban reforms in the city.

Safety and security

For safety and security, the PCP focused on addressing the safety concerns of children in increasingly volatile areas. Stakeholders proposed broadening the PCP to encompass protection, reclaiming, rehabilitation and recreation of public spaces to make child-friendly playground and recreational spaces. This would include the rehabilitation of riparian land and renovation of social halls, amongst other avenues that are part of ongoing efforts with traction in the county government priorities.

Stakeholders also reiterated the need to champion ongoing efforts on street lighting by the Mobility and Works Department. Provision of street lighting in the city has the potential for multiplier effects in several frontiers of addressing security in the city.

Proposed interventions for this domain would make modest contributions to poverty reduction, improved living conditions, concerted efforts to address climate change, and increasing life chances for city residents from disadvantaged communities.

Presentation on the proposed implementation plan for a school feeding programme in Nairobi.

Housing

For housing, evidence from ACRC will directly inform formulation of the Nairobi City metropolitan housing policy and updating the national housing policy that is currently under review. Stakeholders proposed the establishment of a housing research lab as part of a long-term solution to addressing the needs of renters in the housing sector, while promoting sustainable housing models that would meet occupational needs, safety standards and climate adaption thresholds for residents. The housing interventions are geared at improving the living conditions of city dwellers.

Structural transformation

Structural transformation, on the other hand, focused on how to embrace informality, especially when it comes to unregistered service providers (cartels). Formulation of an enabling trade policy and collaborations with the county’s hawker strategy committee as an informal reform coalition were cited as possible strategic pathways to address this challenge.

Curating and disseminating evidence to accelerate reforms

Overall, evidence and proposed interventions from ACRC were key in the county climate change plan, particularly the multisectoral county climate action plan that looked to coalesce efforts from various sectors through interventions that mitigate, build resilience and foster adaption for climate change.

The county research department proposed to curate evidence from ACRC in its digital library, for future reference and collaborations. To harness the power of communities, there is need for the ACRC research uptake team to increase avenues of dissemination of evidence from ACRC research and to raise awareness of local communities about ongoing government projects, so that they can push for reforms and demand accountability from the county government. Even as ACRC cities await a decision on progression to the action research phase, a number of interventions proposed from ACRC research are being implemented in Nairobi, with potential for accelerating reform in the city.

Download the report below for a more in-depth summary of the discussions and outcomes from the workshop.

Photo credits: Know Your City TV

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

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

On the day, the uptake workshop was opened by the Honourable Mayor Mr Banda, who reflected on some of the challenges that Lilongwe faces and the City Council’s eagerness to find innovative ways to help the city adopt solutions. The Mayor also noted the strategic timing of the workshop, being one week prior to the City Council’s Lilongwe City Summit – an open discussion between the Mayor, City Council members and residents about their key challenges and potential opportunities to work together to find solutions.

To understand the emerging research findings, it is important to understand the Lilongwe context. Lilongwe is a rapid urbanising city with an annual growth rate of 4.3%. Unlike other African capital cities, 76% of Lilongwe’s residents live in informal settlements, meaning that development and urban reform needs to acknowledge and work within this prevalent informality.

In addition, the Lilongwe City Council struggles with siloed operations, disputed mandates, limited devolution of responsibility and authority from the national government and political interference, among other challenges. This complicates the governance, financing and regulatory management within the city.

The four PCPs – and respective proposed change pathways – discussed at the workshop are:

• Failure of city authorities to provide adequate basic services, therefore reinforcing poverty and social exclusion, especially in informal settlements. Researchers propose to address these challenges by investing in physical infrastructure, organising participatory community structures, expanding livelihood opportunities and building partnerships between communities and duty bearers.
• Lack of capital and general business support to enable the growth of microenterprises that have significant growth potential. Researchers propose strengthening existing alternative sources of finances such as Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA), strengthening the VSLA’s partnerships with Savings and Credit Co-Operative Societies, and providing tailored investment readiness and capacity building for microenterprises.
• Shortage of quality housing, especially for residents with limited income, in part due to the high cost of building materials and challenges with land tenure. Researchers propose increasing the availability of affordable rental housing, starting with education and support for technical training about the production of sustainable building materials, leading to reduced housing construction costs, increased supply of rental housing and reduced rental prices.
• City residents are not eating nutritious diets, despite having knowledge of nutritious foods. Researchers propose improving harmonisation across policy guidelines and tracking implementation of policies, which will strengthen the provision of information around nutrition issues.

These PCPs and change pathways were discussed in small groups of stakeholders and researchers, following a “speed café” format to help balance power dynamics. Over the course of the workshop, every stakeholder had an opportunity to contribute to each of the four PCPs and their respective change pathways, resulting in lively and informative conversations. These exchanges helped deepen and validate the emerging research and were effective in gathering support for the research uptake and ultimately implementation.

Key takeaways from the foundation stage research to be taken forward into the next phase of the programme include:

• Integrating informal approaches into formal development processes
• Building and strengthening active citizenship and collective action across stakeholder groups
• Striving for clear mandates and effective decentralisation, and in the absence of this, accounting for these inefficiencies when designing implementation interventions
• Leveraging and learning from the existing interventions with stakeholders on the ground

Photo credits: Know Your City TV Malawi

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

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

By Clare Degenhardt, Chris Jordan and Hannah van Rooyen

African cities are dealing with a range of interlocking, dynamic and seemingly intractable challenges – from managing rapid expansion, addressing rising demand for overstretched services and dealing with unpredictable climate events, to trying to ensure decent jobs for their youthful populations.

It’s within this context that the African Cities Research Consortium is operating. Through research that builds evidence and supports coalitions of urban reformers, we aim to show how complex problems in African cities can be solved collectively. We hope these efforts will also be useful to reformers and development organisations beyond our focus cities.

Ultimately, we want to foster the development of prosperous, inclusive cities with enhanced services and more equitable local governance. We want to help improve the living conditions and life chances for all urban residents, especially disadvantaged communities.

In each of our focus cities, we have been undertaking research to deeply understand the city systems, political settlements and urban development domains – and the interplay between them. One of the main aims of this research is to identify the “priority complex problems” within a city, which we can then address in the implementation phase of the project.

But what is a “priority complex problem” in the first place?

We understand priority complex problems (PCPs) as:

A process that is preventing the achievement of poverty reduction and/or economic development and/or exacerbating the climate emergency. Specifically, processes that are related to the political economy and associated political relations, and system failures, particularly those related to the lack of system integration.

We are particularly interested in complex problems that are stopping a city from achieving its potential. Our integrated systems approach is also designed to address political constraints to reform.

As our foundation phase research in many cities concludes, we are actively identifying potential PCPs, with the help of community members, local authorities and other reformers. Along with our focus on political and systemic reform, we are looking for PCPs and approaches to addressing them that:

• Reflect needs across urban Africa
• Are substantive in scale
• Offer solutions that would enable significant improvements to citizen wellbeing and/or pro-poor economic growth
• Are significant to national and local government, civil society organisations and other stakeholders
• Are approaches of interest to epistemic communities, politically feasible and have buy-in from local actors
• Are potential pioneer reforms – that trigger further reform efforts
• Are realisable within the ACRC programme in the short (three years) and medium (six years) term

Approaches to addressing PCPs will form the basis for ACRC’s subsequent action-research-oriented interventions. Ultimately, we are interested in projects that are related to political, political economy or systemic challenges and that have reform implications – rather than projects whose objective is solely technical or social.

Building a portfolio of PCP interventions

We are currently consolidating individual problems identified by researchers, and potential approaches to addressing them. After identifying a range of salient issues, we’ll undertake further feasibility scoping to examine precisely what the ACRC team could do to help tackle them in different cities.

Scoping will examine what has been tried previously and why these attempts have failed. Understanding which solutions key stakeholders and reformers favour – and why – is essential to this process. A clear understanding of the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities to scale the chosen solution is also key.

Through this process, we will build a portfolio of different interventions – focused around different domains, and at different scales – in an effort to catalyse research-informed reforms that will effectively tackle the problems we identify. Where they’re successful, we hope these efforts will also be useful to reformers and development organisations beyond our focus cities.

As this process develops, we’ll share more details on what’s happening where – and how efforts to address PCPs are progressing. Do check back on the blog, and sign up for e-news updates so you can follow the story.

Header photo credit: Know Your City TV. ACRC workshop to identify PCPs in Nairobi.

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

Researchers from ACRC’s structural transformation and health, wellbeing and nutrition domain teams in Nairobi engaged key city stakeholders in a full-day workshop, to facilitate the co-production of knowledge, discuss and validate emerging research findings, and drive forward progress on priority complex problems (PCPs).

The stakeholders provided valuable insights around framing emerging PCPs within prevailing county and national government priorities, in order to gain political buy-in. The meeting was also instrumental in identifying crucial opportunities for collaboration, where evidence from ACRC research can be applied to rationalise for change in policy, programme and practice within related areas in the city.

This recap video from Know Your City TV – SDI’s youth collective – provides a summary of the day’s discussions, with insights from Rosebella Apollo, ACRC’s research uptake officer; Susan Kimani from the Nairobi City County’s youth affairs department; and Veronica Mwangi, an ACRC researcher from the health, wellbeing and nutrition domain.

Photo and video credits: Quassim Javis Kasandi, Nicera Wanjiru and Isaack Wambua (Know Your City TV); Martina Odhiambo (PASGR)

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

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