Smith Ouma - ACRC

Legal empowerment in informal settlements: New open access book

Hannah — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 07:00:00 +0000

The International Development Research Centre, Canada, and the Grassroots Justice Network are excited to announce a new open access volume: Legal Empowerment in Informal Settlements: Grassroots Experiences in the Global South. One chapter is co-authored by ACRC’s Smith Ouma, highlighting the role of legal empowerment in establishing the Mukuru Special Planning Area in Nairobi.

By Adrian Di Giovanni and Luciana Bercovich

Residents of informal settlements encounter a complex array of human rights violations; from systemic discrimination by public officials, to threats to physical security from forced evictions or arbitrary arrests, to a lack of access to basic services, such as housing, water, sanitation and education.

In the face of those challenges, the book features ten powerful case studies, along with two introductory chapters, which show how people living in informal settlements across the global South are using grassroots, community-led justice strategies – known as legal empowerment – to defend their rights and secure more dignified living conditions. The case studies are written by members of the grassroots justice organisations who have supported the settlement communities for years and, in some cases, decades.

Legal Empowerment in Informal Settlements emerged out of a rich process of dialogue, peer learning and review, both online and in person. The chapters echo strong similarities in the challenges and strategies in places as far-flung as the Philippines, Argentina and South Africa. In every case, building community power to defend rights emerged as a central strategy for driving meaningful change.

These chapters speak of complexity, long-term strategies, small wins and tough setbacks. They tell stories of people who fall and rise again, and who don’t give up. More than anything, they offer hope for building systemic change by working with communities.

On a personal note, co-editor Luciana Bercovich notes:

“this project helped me reflect on my own experience. I began working in legal empowerment in 2003, supporting informal settlement communities in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At that time, it often felt like we were figuring things out on our own. In our talks with authors, I often imagined how much a space like this would have meant to a young Luciana starting her journey. I’m grateful to now be able to help create those spaces for others – to recognize, document, and learn from the work of those on the frontlines.”

The following section is an edited extract from the introduction:

The distinctive features of legal empowerment in informal settlements

Legal empowerment is a relatively new and flexible concept that continues to evolve and be redefined with breakthroughs in its implementation in practice. The language of legal empowerment first appeared towards the start of the 21st century to capture “the use of legal services and related development activities to increase disadvantaged populations’ control over their lives”.

Central to legal empowerment are efforts to support “the poor and excluded” to lead the “process of systemic change through which [they] become able to use the law, the legal system, and legal services to protect and advance their rights and interests as citizens and economic actors” (Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor & United Nations Development Programme).

Beyond the resolution of an individual or set of disputes, legal empowerment’s use of the law and legal strategies ultimately seeks to shift the power imbalances that drive the denial of the rights of affected groups and the larger injustices they face in society. Over time, a range of definitions has emerged which casts legal empowerment’s goals and methods in broader or narrower terms. The tighter definitions tend to emphasize supporting the agency and capacity of individuals to claim rights on a more case-by-case level, reflecting legal empowerment’s community legal aid roots.

A broader conception of legal empowerment is oriented towards systemic change, and links efforts to addressing structural injustices, socio-economic barriers and shifting power dynamics. Based on experiences across the chapters in this book, we adopt a broader conception of legal empowerment. This conception entails a less circumscribed set of activities, but nonetheless delineates a distinctive boundary between legal empowerment and the complementary social and political efforts to tackle structural problems – again, rooted in power imbalances – like poverty and urban segregation.

Similarly, this conception embraces what Margaret Satterthwaite terms “critical legal empowerment” which emphasizes “community-based efforts to engage the legal system in strategies to shift power downward” and how those efforts use human rights “as a means [to] fundamentally alter unjust systems”.

Addressing human rights violations

There are several common elements distinctive to legal empowerment in informal settlement contexts. The first element, already alluded to, is legal empowerment’s immediate targeting of collective and structural issues, notably the array of human rights violations suffered by informal settlement residents. The challenge at the structural level is to promote stronger social and urban integration, to improve residents’ quality of life and to overcome the visible markers that drive current narratives of stigmatisation and prevent residents from exercising their citizenship and participating in society.

For instance, public policy responses aimed at providing access to services such as sanitation, electricity or water usually encompass all or part of a settlement by their nature and are not as effectively addressed through individual claims. From a practical standpoint, a basic insight guiding several of the case study efforts is that “achieving justice and legal solutions requires multidisciplinary research (lawyers, urban planners, finance specialists, and community organizers) and a mix of legal and nonlegal interventions”. Conversely, the experiences in some of the chapters point to the limits of legal strategies and thus serve as a caution against relying too heavily on litigation or legal remedies, for instance.

The emphasis on collective struggles in informal settlements also shares strong affinities to community lawyering, which sees the need to move beyond atomised, depoliticised or overly individualistic approaches to legal support as essential to achieving systemic change. Communities are at the centre of these approaches: they are best positioned to understand the realities and injustices they face, and should therefore take the lead in any legal action and in defining their own political objectives.

A difference with traditional legal advocacy is that community lawyering mainly prioritises helping to build the capacity, leadership and power of communities more broadly, as opposed to achieving results or legal victories.

Access to public institutions and justice

A main set of challenges in pursuing structural change in informal settlements relates to how residents access public institutions, including justice institutions. Residents tend to live physically close to local governments, state agencies and services providers’ offices, yet nonetheless feel a symbolic distance or barrier. On one level, this distance arises because of the institutional complexity in urban settings. Municipal or local governments have gained an ever-larger set of roles and responsibilities in past decades. At the same time, a range of powers and responsibilities tend to be spread across multiple layers of overlapping or competing provincial or state jurisdictions, institutions and related regulatory frameworks.

Policy approaches to urban poverty and planning have in some cases resulted in contradictory legal frameworks. For example, constitutional or international regulatory frameworks might oblige the state to guarantee the human rights of settlement residents, on the one hand, yet criminal and administrative legal frameworks frequently treat settlements and many of their residents’ activities as illegal, on the other. This tension between applicable legal frameworks is particularly clear in eviction and relocation processes.

As a result, the pathway to seeking accountability is elusive and requires coordinating efforts across a complex network of institutional powers and capacities. Even when the legal protections are clear, a few of the chapters capture how stubbornly entrenched discriminatory and anti-poor government practices can be – with governments seemingly impervious to the illegality of their own practices. Additionally, sweeping changes in policy approaches are common, particularly with changes in government, which can hinder the long-term coherence needed for structural change – and wipe out hard-fought victories, as seen in more than one chapter.

Collective mobilisation

From a tactical standpoint, in the face of this symbolic distance, legal empowerment efforts take advantage of the physical closeness between residents and public officials and institutions in urban contexts and combine an arguably broader and more flexible range of strategies. One set of strategies could be described in terms of political or social advocacy, with communities and residents mobilising collective action and using their physical presence to exert pressure at institutions’ offices and front doors through demonstrations and sit-ins, for example. Similarly, in advocating for change, groups recognise the need for larger coalitions, that is, “strength in numbers” strategies, to achieve a larger and effective voice by and on behalf of informal settlement residents (such as by linking with the media, non-governmental organisations, independent public institutions and other pressure groups).

To illustrate, the team from Nairobi (Chapter 5) describes a petition drive followed by a public demonstration by thousands of women from Mukuru, who marched to the Ministry of Health to demand improved sanitation in the settlement. Physical closeness is also used as a tool to raise societal awareness of the disparities in living conditions of informal settlement residents vis-a-vis residents of the “formal” city, with whom they often live side by side.

> Read the full introductory chapter (open access)

> Read the full book – including chapters on gender equity, active citizenship and legal strategies in the informal settlements of Rio, Accra, Delhi, the Philippines, South Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh and elsewhere

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ACRC at the 2024 Development Studies Association Conference

Hannah — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 07:00:00 +0000

By Chris Jordan

With our publication rate hotting up over the last couple of months, it was perhaps unsurprising that ACRC researchers had much to say at the annual Development Studies Association (DSA) Conference at SOAS last week.

ACRC convened two well-attended panel sessions. First, Patience Adzande, Smith Ouma and Sam Hickey hosted a fascinating panel focused on investigating the politics of social (in)justice in African Cities.

The session kicked off with a summary of the youth and capability development domain research. Olha Homonchuk highlighted that young people in African cities are often seen as either the victims or the perpetrators of urban problems – but rarely as the solution. In many ways, the experience of young people within African cities seems to reflect the broader ACRC findings in microcosm. Issues of safety and security, limited educational access, difficulties in accessing stable employment and the resulting mental health crisis were key issues picked up across ACRC, but emerge particularly strongly within the youth research.

We then drilled down into the youth experience in Kampala. Patricia Katto explored the startling disconnect between formal opportunities for youth representation and the day-to-day realities for most young people in the city. While in theory there are ringfenced positions for young people within formal city governance structures, in practice they are not sufficient to counteract the pervasive sense of marginalisation that most of the city’s young people feel.

Sam Hickey presents emerging ACRC research exploring the politics of informal settlements

Patricia Katto shares findings from youth and capability development research in Kampala

Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai and Sam Hickey gave an overview of our emerging work exploring the politics of informal settlements. Their analysis looks at the linkages between national political settlements and everyday politics experienced by communities. They highlighted the different experiences of informal settlements populated by indigenous communities and more recent squatters, as well as the clear link between rising land values and elite interest in particular settlements. They also propose that the idea of “forbearance”, developed within the Latin American context, may provide a more useful political lens than the traditional idea of clientelism, which tends to be used within the African context.

Our second session, convened by Daniela Beltrame and Diana Mitlin, looked at community knowledge in academic research: in pursuit of epistemic justice. The importance of community knowledge has been a key facet of our research so far (particularly around informal settlements), and will be led by Beth Chitekwe-Biti as research director during the implementation phase of work.

A wide variety of presenters (from beyond ACRC) highlighted the very real benefits for both themselves as researchers and for individuals working around community knowledge processes – while acknowledging the constant tensions, contradictions and practical issues that had to be navigated along the way. Compensation for community members’ time, institutional barriers and the role of intermediaries within communities were themes throughout.

As Diana Mitlin summarised, recognising the messiness at the interface between community and academic knowledge processes is essential for researchers who reject the premise that knowledge can neatly fit into predefined categories.

The ACRC experiences around community knowledge were presented by Daniela Beltrame and Smith Ouma. Smith highlighted the fact that for all organised communities, the generation of knowledge is inseparable from action. Compensation, commodification and individualisation of gains were also issues emphasised across the community members who worked as part of the ACRC city research teams. The value of community members’ time, networks and knowledge was reflected in the challenge that “we are not gonna do your donkey work”.

The gatekeeping role of intermediary NGOs, particularly around access and accountability, was another issue to be navigated. Daniela Beltrame, who is currently undertaking her own PhD based on participatory action research, also discussed the positive ways in which research was being seen as a legitimate career option for some community members: “knowledge is a paying business, and it can be a career”.

Daniela Beltrame explores emerging findings around community knowledge

Smith Ouma highlights the link between knowledge and action in organised communities

To keep up to date with all of ACRC’s forthcoming publications, as well as ongoing conversations around community knowledge on our blog and podcast, please sign up for regular e-newsletters.

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Do flood evictions in Nairobi’s informal settlements violate the law?

Hannah — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 07:00:00 +0000

By Smith Ouma, postdoctoral research fellow at the Global Development Institute (GDI)

Recent floods in Kenya have left at least 270 people dead, displaced more than 200,000 and destroyed property, infrastructure and livelihoods across the country. In Nairobi, hundreds of people in informal settlements were left homeless and thousands were displaced. And now, the government has been evicting people from flood-prone areas.

Smith Ouma is a legal expert with a focus on urban governance. His research has covered land and tenure rights in Nairobi’s informal settlements. Moina Spooner, from The Conversation Africa, asked Smith to share his thoughts on the government’s response to the flooding in Nairobi’s informal settlements and how it can be improved.

Why are Nairobi’s informal settlements vulnerable to flooding?

Nairobi’s informal settlements sprang up in the colonial period. Colonial authorities used various laws and public health concerns as a way to remove Africans from areas considered commercially attractive. They were pushed into marginal areas of the city that were prone to hazards like flooding.

This continued after Kenya gained independence. Planning tools (like city master plans) were used to force low-income groups to relocate to the city’s peripheries.

Today, informal settlements cover only 5% of Nairobi’s total residential land area, but they are inhabited by at least half of the city’s population. Because they offer cheap living options, people end up crammed into this small space with minimal basic infrastructure and services.

Informal settlements continue to be vulnerable to hazards like floods because development plans haven’t considered their residents’ needs. The vast majority of informal settlements residents are left to cope in whatever way they can, often against established standards. For instance, residents will use whatever cheap material they can find to build their homes or improve infrastructure, like roads and sanitation facilities.

To make matters worse, as I’ve found in my previous research, there’s been a decline in city institutions. This has weakened the city’s ability to enforce rules and work with residents in low-income neighbourhoods towards creating effective solutions.

For instance, the County Assembly, the primary legislative institution at the county level, has been sidelined. This has created room for unaccountable institutions. The Nairobi Metropolitan Service, for example, was established as part of the president’s office rather than as an independent office in the county government system.

What did the government do to support those affected by flooding?

The government has used forceful evictions in low-income neighbourhoods. President William Ruto ordered the evacuation of all homes along the nation’s waterways.

In the immediate aftermath of the floods, residents of informal settlements and community groups banded together to support each other. Community health workers helped affected households with essential services and medicines. Food and other essential items were distributed by social movements, using donations.

But, rather than acknowledging, applauding, and supporting these efforts – which are the government’s constitutionally mandated duties – the administration came out with reactionary policies and proclamations.

Despite the constitutional guarantee of the right to adequate housing and numerous court judgments reaffirming citizens’ rights against forceful evictions, the government has resorted to heavy-handed tactics.

There are concerns that the new affordable housing programme – aimed at constructing 250,000 affordable housing units per year – might serve as a cover for evicting people from their land. This would create space for investors to build houses for an exclusive market.

Are these forced and arbitrary evictions legal?

No. Based on applicable laws and the constitution, in my view Kenya is violating local laws and other international treaties in carrying out these forced evictions.

First, the state, through the National Land Commission, failed to provide adequate notice to residents (three months as stipulated in the Land Act), which renders the evictions arbitrary.

Second, under the Kenyan constitution, the state has a duty to ensure all Kenyans have a right to adequate housing.

The loss of lives and property as a result of the state’s actions is a violation of residents’ right to life and property. Indeed, the Supreme Court has ruled that landless individuals who establish housing on public land have a protectable right to housing on the same land. This includes public land that is along riparian reserves. Any evictions that are to be carried out by the state must respect these rights and procedural requirements.

Third, Kenya is a signatory to various international treaties and conventions which say that any evictions carried out by the state must be in accordance with the United Nations Guidelines on Evictions. States must take all appropriate means to promote the right to adequate housing and prior to carrying out any evictions, explore – in consultation with the affected persons – all feasible alternatives with the view of avoiding or minimising the need to use force.

Also, as determined by a high court case in 2013, the state was to develop appropriate legal frameworks for evictions. The Kenyan government failed to do this, leading to a 2018 ruling by the Supreme Court affirming that in the absence of such guidelines, the UN Guidelines on evictions would be applicable as soft law.

How should the government have prepared and reacted instead?

The government has invoked its duty to protect lives as justification for the ongoing evictions in low-income settlements. This is a duty that existed even before the onset of the heavy rains. The government received early warnings of possible heavy rains and floods from the meteorological department but did very little to act on these warnings.

The government is also aware of the current national housing deficit of more than 8,888,626 units. This contributes to the expansion of informal settlements.

Armed with this knowledge, the ongoing catastrophe could have been avoided, or at least mitigated.

The state should have mobilised a coalition of actors to develop and implement protective measures for the residents.

Through the work I’ve done in various informal settlements in Kenya, such as Mukuru, I’ve seen how there are already long-standing initiatives by social movements and community groups which could have helped. These could be tapped into to identify risks and build community capabilities to respond to the flooding challenge.

These communities could also help with planning to prevent this situation from happening again. For instance, they’re already undertaking restoration activities along the rivers.

Additionally, in places like Mukuru, residents are actively seeking community-driven solutions to the land and housing challenges that are at the root of informal settlement development. These residents are the climate, environmental and universal housing champions who the government ought to have been working with even before the floods started.

Instead of forcibly evicting communities that have already experienced great hardship, if the government has no alternative option for them, policymakers should tap into their knowledge.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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New research: Driving systemic change in Africa’s informal settlements

Hannah — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 07:00:00 +0000

ACRC has published new research into the challenges facing informal settlement residents in seven African cities: Accra, Ghana; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Harare, Zimbabwe; Kampala, Uganda; Lilongwe, Malawi; and Mogadishu, Somalia.

Informal settlements are home to over half of Africa’s urban population and have emerged as an important site for urban reform across the continent.

Although there are some shared experiences across informal settlements in African cities – such as insecure tenure and limited access to basic services – there are marked differences too. Context is therefore crucial when it comes to understanding the lived realities of residents. Insights into the political dynamics and systems underpinning informal settlements are similarly critical to developing effective and inclusive interventions to address challenges faced by residents.

In this paper, Smith Ouma, Daniela Cocco Beltrame, Diana Mitlin and Beth Chitekwe-Biti highlight key findings from ACRC’s domain studies in seven African cities, seeking to expand knowledge around (often contested) efforts to improve living conditions in informal settlements.

While commonalities are identified across the seven focus cities, our research avoids problematic generalisations and attempts to engage with how informality is experienced in specific contexts. City researchers’ engagements with low-income communities, government officials and other stakeholders within cities were central to informing the city studies.

Conducted in collaboration with city-based domain teams and researchers, these help to illuminate how underlying forms of power and politics shape systems of governance – casting light on informal settlements as loci of power, at the same time as being highly influenced by power dynamics at the city and national levels.

Key findings

The category of land on which informal settlements are located matters to development opportunities and outcomes.
We identify four settlement typologies: informal settlements on traditional/peri-urban land; formal settlements that have outgrown their intended capacity; settlements on land that has been irregularly occupied; and state-established “temporary” settlements, without formal status.
Governance in informal settlements is multilayered, with various actors exercising power through either competing or collaborative practices.
Political neglect exists where elites and decisionmakers do not feel incentivised to take action to address systems failures.
Extensive policy and programming efforts to support upgrading and regularisation exist already – with positive outcomes in at least some neighbourhoods.

Findings from the domain research highlight informal settlements as a key frontier for addressing vulnerability and inequality in African cities. The studies reveal a shift in how problems in informal settlements are understood – and how interventions to tackle them are formulated – with residents being recognised for their critical role within programme design, advocacy and implementation.

Read the full report

Read the research summary

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ACRC at the 2024 DSA Conference: Call for papers

Hannah — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 07:00:00 +0000

ACRC is convening two panels at this year’s Development Studies Association conference, focusing on community knowledge in academic research and the politics of social justice in African cities.

Themed around “social justice and development in a polarising world”, the conference will explore three core strands: rights and representation, redistribution and restoration, and reproduction and production. It will be held from 26-28 June at SOAS, University of London, taking a hybrid format.

The call for papers is now open, with prospective presenters invited to submit proposals ahead of the deadline on Tuesday 23 January.

Details of the panels ACRC is convening and how to submit a proposal are outlined below.

Community knowledge in academic research: In pursuit of epistemic justice

This panel will concentrate on collaborative research and knowledge co-production seeking epistemic justice. The organisers welcome submissions in various media, exploring emancipatory research practices that meaningfully engage low-income and marginalised communities.

Organisers: Daniela Cocco Beltrame, Beth Chitekwe-Biti (Slum Dwellers International), Smith Ouma and Diana Mitlin (Global Development Institute, The University of Manchester)

Find out more | Submit proposal

If you have any queries prior to abstract submission, please contact Daniela Cocco Beltrame or Smith Ouma.

Investigating the politics of social (in)justice in African cities

African cities offer numerous opportunities, but they are also key sites of social injustice. This panel will explore the nature of this problem, with a focus on how residents are navigating the dominant structures and processes of politics and power that drive social (in)justice in African cities.

Prospective presenters are invited to submit a paper proposal – including title, author names and emails, short abstract (<300 characters) and long abstract (<250 words).

Organisers: Patience Adzande, Smith Ouma and Sam Hickey (Global Development Institute, The University of Manchester)

Find out more | Submit proposal

If you have any queries prior to abstract submission, please contact Patience Adzande.

Key dates

23 January – deadline for proposal submissions
6 February – decision communicated on proposals
15 March – conference registration opens (early bird discounts close 26 April)
26-28 June – conference

More details about the general call for papers can be found on the conference website.

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Politics and informality in Kampala: A conversation with Peter Kasaija

Hannah — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 07:00:00 +0000

“Informal settlements in Kampala, and in other cities elsewhere across Africa, they are not homogenous, they’re very heterogeneous. The kinds of pressures they face – social, environmental, political, economic pressures – they’re very different.”

More than half of people living in African cities reside in informal settlements. Such settlements often share similar challenges – including inadequate access to basic services and infrastructure, and insecure tenure. But when it comes to understanding the political dynamics of urban informality, the differences cannot be ignored.

In this episode, ACRC’s Kampala informal settlements domain lead Peter Kasaija joins Smith Ouma for a conversation around how politics shapes access to basic services in Kampala’s informal settlements. They discuss deficiencies in city systems, the multiple players operating in these spaces and the “invisible hand” of powerful local actors in granting access to basic services. They also talk about the often-overlooked political savviness of informal settlement residents in using political support to protect themselves against eviction. And they reflect on the evolution of informal settlements in the city, and why some might disappear in the near future.

Peter Kasaija is a researcher at the Urban Action Lab at Makerere University and leads ACRC’s informal settlements domain research in Kampala.

Smith Ouma is a Leverhulme Research Fellow at The University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute and part of ACRC’s informal settlements domain team.

Transcript

The full podcast transcript is available below.

Read now

Smith Ouma Welcome to the African Cities podcast. My name is Smith Ouma. I’m a research fellow with the African Cities Research Consortium. With me today is Peter Kasaija, with whom we’ve been collaborating in informal settlements-related research in Kampala. Peter is a researcher with the Urban Action Lab Geography Department, Makerere University in Uganda. Welcome, Peter. It’s good to see you.

Peter Kasaija Thank you very much. Smith.

Smith Ouma So for starters, Peter, could you paint a picture for us of what a journey from Entebbe International Airport – which is Uganda’s main airport – to the heart of Kampala, will look like for someone that’s visiting Kampala for the first time.

Peter Kasaija Yes, that’s a very interesting question. I think for anyone who’s been to Uganda before and has travelled from Entebbe into Kampala, it’s quite an eye-opening experience. I mean, starting from Entebbe airport and then, of course, you have to drive through more or less what I would call a high-value or very affluent neighbourhood. This affluent neighbourhood initially started out as a colonial administration point before the colonial administration shifted the administrative capital from Entebbe to Kampala. So the typical experience is that first you leave the airport, you drive through this affluent neighbourhood, where laid-out roads, high-income neighbourhoods, large bungalows and these very large quarter-acre properties, leafy suburb, your typical high-end, affluent neighbourhood really. And then of course, as you leave Entebbe, the picture or the scenery changes. Until recently, access to Entebbe Airport or that peninsula where Entebbe Airport is actually located, the one route to Kampala was essentially your typical drive along a road that was markedly characterised by mostly haphazard commercial developments, linear developments along the road. These were mostly composed of informal developments – supermarkets, shops, small activities, kiosks, again, I would say, the typical layout of your linear town or linear developments in an African city. And then, five or six years ago, interestingly, what happened was that an alternative route was opened up – the so-called Entebbe Expressway. So the experiences when it comes to using either one of the two roads are very different. As I said, the first road, the old road, was your typical linear, informal kind of road, where you drive through these little shops, little kiosks, supermarkets, a messy kind of set up, always prone to having to be caught up in traffic jams along the way and all kinds of disruptions in your movement. But you got to see a little bit of the flavour of the city. The informality itself was like you got a flavour of it going through the old road. But now with the new road, the Expressway, things are very different, because this is an exclusive route. Of course, with the opening of that road, it has triggered again high-income, affluent neighbourhoods along this particular road. But you’re not going to see the same character of the linear, haphazard, informal developments that you’ll find along the old Entebbe road. So what you see here is a well curated, laid out roadway that is very exclusive because it is also tolled – you have to pay a tax to actually use it. So you have these two contrasting experiences of leaving Entebbe, travelling to Kampala, where you can choose to take the more exclusive route. This nice breezy Expressway with all these high-end tiled red tiles villas along it, with very little in terms of the informality that you would expect to see in an African city. You’re essentially driving through a highly sanitised environment, which does not really give an indication of what the real flavour, or the real character, of the city is. So it’s very deceptive as you use that alternative route, the more exclusive route, very different from the old route, which actually went through these little informal developments, linear developments that led you to Kampala. And it’s only when you actually go off that exclusive road, the Expressway, you realise that oh, there’s a very different image of Kampala from what I’ve actually seen along the Expressway. I think that can give you just a bit of those two contrasting experiences, depending on the road that you take when you’re travelling from Entebbe to Kampala.

Smith Ouma Very interesting that the road that you take exposes you to certain realities, but certain realities are also obscured, depending on what road you choose to gain entry to this very important African capital.

Peter Kasaija It definitely gives you the two faces of the capital – one, which is the exclusive minority and then one which is the majority. But of course, this is something which is not any different from any other city in Africa. Indeed. But that’s Kampala for you – Kampala Entebbe to Kampala, or Kampala to Entebbe.

Smith Ouma Thank you. So it looks like informality is still a defining feature of Kampala as a city. Also, being a researcher in the informal settlements domain, what do you think around what are the important systems within these areas that are considered to be invisible, yet they’re still there? What systems are important to the functioning of informal settlements within Kampala?

Peter Kasaija Based on our research and experience accumulated over several years as a researcher, I think the most important systems that are really critical, when it comes to informal settlements or the informal side of Kampala, are the basic services. When you talk about solid waste management, water provision, sanitation, when you talk about drainage, these for me are the most critical, because they evidently shape the character of informal settlements and the experiences of people who live in these informal settlements. The quality of these services, the issues around accessibility, issues around the nature of coverage, the extent of the coverage, issues around the governance of these systems, all of these, when you bring them together, they ultimately are the most important ones that shape not just the functionality, but how people experience or how they live the informal life as we know it in a city like Kampala.

Smith Ouma Yeah. And you also understand that when it comes to these issues that you mentioned, questions around access, questions around the governance of these different systems, that politics, especially within a capital city context like Kampala, plays a very important role. So what are these political dynamics that you’ve identified at either an informal settlement context, a city context that is Kampala, or at a national context, that influence how the inhabitants, particularly urban informal settlements, access basic services?

Peter Kasaija I think it eventually goes down to those key elements I’ve pointed out regarding these systems – the issue of access. Who determines who has access to a particular service? Who determines the coverage of a particular service? Who is going to determine, for example, the quality of service? Who is going to determine the governance arrangements, the structures that mediate how these particular services are operated, how they function, how they are sustained, or how they are maintained on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis? So evidently it comes down to who are these key actors behind these particular systems? And the kinds of decisions that they make on a day-to-day basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, will determine, for example, how the residents or stakeholders in these informal settlements negotiate, how they bargain for, when it comes to accessing these particular services or issues that will affect the level of coverage or the quality of these services. Is it high quality kind of services or is it low quality kind of services? And I think it is those politics that will evidently shape access to basic services in the informal sector or the informal settlement domain in Kampala. And of course, these individuals are represented by a variety of what I would call institutions. We have the formal institutions, the city government. We’re following the standard dual system of governance, so the technocrats, the political leaders or the political officials, these are very important players. But outside the state, the city government, you also have the NGOs. NGOs are very important players. While they might want to present themselves as being neutral, unfortunately, they are not. Perhaps the words that come into play here are probably being either overtly neutral or covertly neutral or intentionally neutral or unintentionally political. So you have the city government, the state, one of the major state-based actors. You have the NGOs, but another one of the state actors, we have organisations like National Waters and Sewage Corporation, we have regulatory organisations like the National Environmental Management Authority. We have other important state actors like the ministerial bodies, although those ones have a more residual kind of influence, not as much as National Waters and Sewage Corporation or KCCA or the NGOs, for that matter. And then, beyond those, the recognisable ones or the visible ones, we also have the CBOs, which are also playing important roles in filling important deficits or critical deficits. You also have cartels as well, who are important players. These are individuals who have created power bases in informal sectors using their significant resources, power and influence to influence systems. We have the private service providers when it comes to water, sanitation, waste management. These are also important players. We also have cultural institutions. The Buganda government, I think, is playing an important role, being a major landowner in the city and where many of these informal settlements are, the religious institutions, the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church of Uganda, the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council, that’s for the Muslims. All these are major stakeholders because they own a lot of land, in some cases where most of these informal settlements are located. So the invisible hand of different actors is very much involved in shaping the politics around access to basic services, as depicted.

Smith Ouma And it’s very interesting that you’ve identified some of these actors at different levels. And, as you say, they operate at different levels within the city and different scales. And I’m particularly interested, for instance, let’s pick an example, waste collection within informal settlements: who would you say are the main actors responsible for these kind of service provision? First, does it exist? To what extent does it exist? Who are the main actors when it comes to provision of solid waste management services in Kampala?

Peter Kasaija Kampala is an interesting case, where we now have a scenario of several important players, with the recent introduction of a franchise working arrangement, where KCCA have contracted private waste collectors to undertake waste collection.

Smith Ouma And for the purposes of clarity to our listeners, KCCA is?

Peter Kasaija The Kampala Capital City Authority.

Smith Ouma Oh, great. Thank you.

Peter Kasaija Yeah. So the Kampala Capital City Authority contracted private companies, firms to undertake waste collection on their behalf across the city. But the fact that in informal settlements, because under this franchise arrangement, the private collectors are meant to do the collection for a fee, but most of the residents in informal settlements cannot afford these fees. So eventually what was negotiated was that the private collectors would collect solid waste in areas, for example, like the markets, affluent neighbourhoods – these are considered to be entities who can pay for the service. And for the informal settlements, KCCA took it upon themselves to actually collect the waste in the informal settlements for free, considering the fact that most of the residents in these informal settlements cannot afford paying for these services. However, because of the fact that there’s a lot of politics embedded in these processes, you will find that that service is very uneven in informal settlements, depending on, for example, the nature of leadership in these informal settlements. Informal settlements where you have highly charismatic local leaders – we call them local council chairpersons with their committees – those were highly charismatic, very powerful, very vocal, are able to ensure that you have more or less regular, more consistent solid waste management services being offered, while in other cases, where leaders are not as vocal and not as charismatic, or belong, for example, to the opposition, for them, it’s relatively harder to actually secure more consistent services or provision of these very important waste management facilities like the garbage skips and the like. So that has created that uneven landscape, where while the Kampala Capital City Authority has taken it upon itself to provide the services in the informal settlements, it is very uneven. You’ll find places where solid waste management is relatively very consistent and in other areas, where is very inconsistent, because of largely the politics and of course other factors – not just the politics, but politics plays a very important role in shaping the quality of services and the evenness of services, waste management services, in informal settlements.

Smith Ouma Urban politics, also, you bring out the idea of the issue around political affiliation. Does that also play out at a settlement level, settlements affiliated to certain political orientations or aligned with certain political parties receive preferential treatment? Is that true?

Peter Kasaija Yes, to a certain extent. We are not saying that it is the major factor, but those affiliations play important roles in terms of negotiation, power and influence of, say, local leaders to pressurise the city government to provide the services. But then you also have other factors coming in – where I talked about the charisma, how vocal an LC1 chairperson is or a local leader is, how much power and influence they have, because in some cases, these are the outliers. You might find opposition-leaning or -aligned local leaders, but because of the fact that they have shoehorned the skills of negotiation and bargaining, they are still able to secure these services, unlike maybe other areas where they do have leaders who are NRM-leaning, but they are very weak. So the character of the leaders is also a very important factor that comes into play, in addition to their political alignment also playing a role to a certain extent.

Smith Ouma So power and influence of local leaders also have a bearing when it comes to access and provision to services. And does this also feature when it comes to political competition? So do we see political actors competing to enable access to these services to their electorate within their constituencies or within the local area that they come from? And does this influence the distribution of basic services within the settlements? So competition between local politicians, does this have any bearing around allocation or distribution of basic services?

Peter Kasaija Yes, definitely. There is competition and it has a bearing on the allocation of the provision of services, but only to a certain extent. Because what we have found is that inasmuch as you have these political affiliations at the local level, at the settlement level, there seems to have emerged a tendency of these leaders to be able to negotiate and bargain without having to create a situation of deleterious competition. One is aware that I am aligned to the NRM and he knows his colleague is aligned to, say, the National Unity Platform, one of the newest opposition parties, led by Bobi Wine, also known as Robert Kyagulanyi. But what has happened, if I can go back to the point I was trying to make, is that they have been very savvy. To find a middle ground amongst themselves, to negotiate and bargain, to ensure that whatever competition would have emerged or contestation between them because of their political affiliation, it is not very visible. There tends to be a consensus on them trying to achieve the so-called public interest. For example, when we talk about solid waste management, you’ll find that there’s always agreement amongst themselves, these local leaders, the powerful nodes around which power and influence rotate in these informal settlements, to negotiate these differences, to transcend these differences and ensure that services are provided without having that stalemate or gridlock of political party affiliations, determining whether services actually are provided or not. And that is the unique thing we’ve found about informal settlements in Kampala, and that’s condition where the local leaders or these important players are able to strike some kind of common ground consensus that we are working in the public interest, we put aside our political differences, we all know which affiliations we belong to, but we try to put aside these differences to ensure that services are provided. And that’s like a progressive way in which power, or productive power we are seeing in these informal settlements, because I think it comes from the fact that we are all in this together: we either sink as a community or we swim as a community. So we have to strike that common ground to ensure that we all meet our common objectives, common needs of survival.

Smith Ouma This coming together between these politicians to enable service provision to the inhabitants, is it a feature that we can also see in the more affluent areas of the city? Or is it something that is unique to these informal settlements where you work?

Peter Kasaija I cannot say much about the other parts of the city outside the informal settlements, but the feeling is that politics is not very strong, doesn’t strongly play out so much in the affluent neighbourhoods, because there’s a sense that they tend to transcend their political differences, political ideologies. And for them it’s always about the services. So I can only speculate that the politics is probably not as intense or as visible as in the informal settlements, where people, local leaders, important individuals, clearly stand out, identify as an NRM-leaning person – nRM is the the incumbent government, the current government – or an NUP-leaning person, which is the opposition. So while we see it as being the politics, being very visible, playing out on a daily basis in the informal settlements, I’m not sure whether it actually plays out to the same level or the same scale outside the city because the needs are different, the issues are slightly different for the kinds of communities we are talking about. And I would think that the nature, the way that politics plays plays out, it’s probably not as intense as you would have it here, a little more visible, in the informal settlements.

Smith Ouma It’s less visible there. And oftentimes the inhabitants of informal settlements are viewed as these political pawns, who are moved around by local politicians who try to advance their interests. But is this necessarily the case in Kampala’s informal settlements, or do these inhabitants also assert their agency? Do they also play a role, do they also have some influence around how services are provided to them and who can access these services?

Peter Kasaija Very good question. And that’s one of the things we’ve been grappling with recently, until, of course, we had those very interesting findings. Often the perception is that poor people, informal settlement residents, are mere pawns in this broad political game of jockeying for power, for influence, for the benefits that come along with power. But what we have seen from our research is that informal settlement residents are actually displaying a high level of agency. By being able to make certain choices, when you see the choices they make – for example, I’ll use the case of the two sites which we engaged in our research – when you look at the electoral patterns, the electoral patterns point to a picture of them leaning more and more towards the opposition. Because gradually, since 2016, 2011, the support for the NRM government in the presidential elections, the main presidential elections, has been gradually falling. And yet we are very much aware that they still have these pockets, where you have, for example, powerful individuals, like local leaders, still identifying with the NRM government, or even communities themselves identifying with the NRM government or as supporters of the NRM government. So that in itself has brought out a picture whereby we see informal settlement residents being able to display a certain savviness, in that they are not what you would refer to as these pliable communities: that word has been spoken, this is how you should vote, this is what you should do. Not necessarily. They will make choices based on certain logics, certain levels of intelligence, based on their own community knowledge, local knowledge that defies the assumptions that they are simply pawns in a wider or broader political game. And it is those old perceptions that have given us these stereotypical perspectives of informal settlement residents as being these pliable, neutral, non-political individuals or elements. But the research says otherwise, that they are very political, they are not as neutral as we think, and they are making choices which, at a specific moment in time, choices are based on certain needs, certain interests, and not necessarily because they’ve been compelled to make these particular choices. So there is definitely agency we are seeing in these informal settlements.

Smith Ouma Okay, great, great. That, in a way, is very fascinating because oftentimes on a site, there’s always that view, that perception, but your engagement, and also just looking at politics around informal settlements and how inhabitants position themselves, in a way gives a different picture – that they know how to navigate local politics and they understand how to advance their interests with this understanding of how the political arrangements are within the settlement and also on the city level.

Peter Kasaija Yes, if I can use, for example, a very vivid case of one of the settlements that we researched, where the settlement is located in a wetland. And so their most immediate threat is eviction by the city authority, because they are essentially located in the wetland illegally. Their possession of that settlement, their living in that settlement is under the framing of illegality. The city council, the Kampala Capital City Authority sees that or views that as an illegality. The same thing with National Environment Management Authority, because clearly the settlement has gone beyond the beacons that have been set as a boundary. Now, to their credit, they have been savvy enough to realise that “we are under illegality. Our occupation of this wetland is considered to be illegal. But how do we protect ourselves against eviction?” And that is where they are smart enough to use the cover of the NRM, or as supporters of NRM, so that they can avoid being a victim, because that in itself makes them untouchable. Because at the entrance of the settlement, and LC1 chairperson’s office, which is meant to be neutral, has been painted the colours of the NRM government, so that is a signal, that is symbolic that we are supporters of the NRM government, we are untouchable, we cannot be removed. And it has worked. The city government cannot touch them. National Environment Management Authority has not tried or attempted to evict them, out of the fear that there will be repercussions if they evict these supporters of the NRM government. And that shows you just how savvy they are in being able to understand the political dynamics, the political winds, and to navigate and negotiate them accordingly, in their own interests, in their benefit. And yet you realise that, as I highlighted before, the support for the NRM government itself has been dropping, has been falling. And yet they’re here masquerading as NRM supporters. So that shows you that delicate balance they’ve being able to strike or that line that they’ve been able to … that position they’ve been able to put themselves in, to be able to meet their own interests when navigating a very difficult urban environment, in terms of regulation, in terms of the politics itself that they live in on a day-to-day basis.

Smith Ouma Very, very, very fascinating. And that’s a very interesting example that you give there. And just to finalise our question around how you see the domain, informal settlements, changing in the next five years, in terms of how inhabitants in Kampala’s informal settlements will be able to access basic services? Do you see any pertinent changes in the next five years, sitting where you are?

Peter Kasaija They’re definitely going to be changes. And one of the most obvious changes is that some informal settlements will disappear because we’ve been talking about a typology of informal settlements. Informal settlements in Kampala, and in other cities elsewhere across Africa, they are not homogenous, they’re very heterogeneous. The kinds of pressures they face – social, environmental, political, economic pressures – they’re very different. So what we are likely to see is that informal settlements that are very close to the city centre will probably be overtaken by economic, political, economic interests, because for as long as they are located on high-value land, there’s no way that, in spite of their connections to the ruling government or support for the NRM, we can feasibly see these settlements still in these particular localities. So that is one of the sobering realities for some settlements that are very close to the CBD. Now, the big questions, or the significant questions, are for those informal settlements that are slightly away from the CBD, which might not necessarily face the same socioeconomic pressures, but for them it’s more about the political environmental pressures. We cannot say definitively how things will change or transform for these particular settlements in the future, because it could go either way; it could go the other way if we see a new government. Again, it very much depends on the ideology of the city government that comes in. If a new city government head comes in and this person deems that informal settlements should be removed from the city, that could also create a different dynamic. If we are seeing a different government that takes a similar stance to the kind of government we have, which is taking more of a go-slow approach, that is not radical when it comes to informal settlements, because they are borrowing a leaf from the previous city government which was a little more radical, was, I think, pushing out informal settlements out of the city, but they got a rebuke, a reprimand from the president and eventually the ED was forced to resign. So the new city government that has come in, it’s more of a non-barking dog. It’s a guard dog, but it’s not really doing much. It’s not really doing anything. It’s more of “let us keep the status quo”. So if we do have a similar government, we’ll probably have more informal settlements or expansion of the existing informal settlements. But the likely scenario would be that as they expand, there’ll be even a greater demand for more services to be expanded into these settlements, because they are making up more than 80% of the resident population in the city. So the future we are seeing is that if the settlements just outside of the city do expand and grow, as is expected, if they are not pushed out by the next city government and we retain the same ideology, we’re probably going to see a scenario where they’ll be forced to expand services, so that they can cover the demographic deluge that will be seen, because even as of now, they are contributing the greatest percentage of the resident population in the city. And the only way that the city can actually improve the welfare or create a certain image is by expanding services in these areas. And we are having a metropolitan region expanding, the affluent, the middle-income are moving out of the city. So, while we don’t expect that all these informal settlements in the city will expand exponentially, the fact that the population living in the city will more or less be mostly informal, there will be that pressure to expand services and provide them in those settlements. And that could also transform and also lead us to a different kind of character of informal settlements. Because the danger with the expansion of these services, and these informal settlements as they grow, is the aspect of gentrification, the attraction of commercial interests or capitalist interests, who come in and push them away. So those are some of the big questions we have still yet to really grapple with.

Smith Ouma Indeed. Thank you. And from what I hear from you, so the geographical location of the informal settlements, the politics, the political dynamics, both at the city and national level, and the inhabitants themselves, how they will respond to these dynamics, are important factors that we need to pay attention to, in trying to see how these settlements evolve.

Peter Kasaija Exactly. The conjunction of the local-level politics with city-level politics and national-level politics will play a very important role in shaping the character of these settlements in the next five, six, ten years to come. Because, as I explained a little more specifically, it will very much have a lot to do – how is the population growing? What are the needs? And if the population is growing, there are certain needs that have emerged. If we do expand social services, social service delivery into these neighbourhoods, what is going to be the unintended impact, in terms of gentrification, in terms of value capture and the change in terms of how these particular settlements are valued, for example, from a national political level? Because ultimately what we found out from our research is that the electoral benefits of informal settlements in the city are not really the priority for the NRM government. If the economic benefits outweigh the electoral benefits for the NRM government, it’s a no-brainer. They would definitely just go with the economic benefits because for them it’s about “how can we be able to accrue the economic benefits so that we can stay in power?” And money is very important beyond capturing the city as an NRM support base, because the reality is, it appears that it’s a gone case – they cannot be able to wrestle it back from the opposition. They’ve tried, with the recentralisation of the city government, but the last ten years has shown that very little has changed in terms of substantive political electoral support for the NRM. So it will mostly move to what outweighs the other. And for as long as the economic benefits outweigh the electoral benefits, we’ll probably see some of these informal settlements disappearing.

Smith Ouma Okay, great. Thank you so much, Peter. That’s very fascinating. And thank you for joining us and for sharing these very interesting insights around informal settlements in Kampala.

Peter Kasaija Thank you very much Smith. I was delighted to be able to share my experiences with you.

Smith Ouma Thank you. 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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Doing research with disadvantaged people: Navigating challenges and intricacies

Hannah — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 07:00:00 +0000

By Elizabeth Dessie, Smith Ouma, Patience Adzande, Nicola Banks, Ezana Haddis Weldeghebrael, Joshua Magero, Miriam Maina, Diana Mitlin and Ademola Omoegun

The nuances of working with marginalised individuals and communities are plentiful, with some parallels and many differences cutting across geographies and intersectional realities. This blog post draws on the authors’ experiences of researching disadvantaged people, the strategies devised to address challenges and questions raised through these encounters, and thoughts on how researchers can safeguard against generating and/or reinforcing vulnerabilities during fieldwork and moving forward.

Vulnerability, marginality and reflexivity in research

The complex nature of vulnerability, its diverse ideological constructions, and the gaze that it continues to attract from international development research and policymaking, provide strong grounds for examining harm in the context of research encounters. Research discourses remain haunted by intractable questions around how to recognise vulnerabilities and structure the research process in ways that do not create new vulnerabilities, or compound existing ones.

Silence around vulnerability can deepen marginality. It fails to provide conditions for a proper understanding among researchers of potentially harmful practices and how to respond to them within the research environment. Reflexivity is therefore a necessary precondition to any research exercise and can act to protect research participants from potential harm. This reflexive piece from ACRC’s postdoctoral fellows and researchers draws on our rich experiences and insights from fieldwork encounters across different domains and contexts.

Challenges identified in researching disadvantaged people in Africa

One key challenge raised through conducting research with and on underprivileged communities in African cities relates to the very nature of research itself. By engaging in the collection of data outside of our usual social, economic, classed and geographical remits – and as affiliates of a UK-based research institution that supports and validates our work – we manifest and embody inherently extractive practices and derive ethics from the unequal power dynamic that characterises the researcher–informant relationship. We acknowledge that the marketplace for knowledge is intrinsically imbued with power relations and the enactment of power by different social actors.

When dealing with vulnerable populations, imbalances will often persist in conditions for engagement, which is likely to affect the capacity of certain groups to participate in these processes. Walking this tightrope requires an acknowledgment that those being observed are able to reciprocate the gaze and challenge any flawed epistemological accounts and premises. It then requires a candid conversation with all stakeholders involved in the research process to set the terms of engagement and open channels for feedback.

Another challenge raised related to the problematic nature of remunerating study participants for taking part in our individual studies. Remunerating participants can undermine the voluntary nature of their participation, potentially deflecting their attention from critical deliberations on the issues at hand. It can make participant groups docile and malleable to the whims of the research convenors and can also lead to those more advantageously placed securing participant roles, with others missing out.

However, failure to provide some form of token to research participants is equally problematic, as it assumes that all participants have disposable time to lend to the research activities. It can in turn expand vulnerabilities. While remunerating participants was not an established practice for any of us, we agreed that providing refreshments was a natural part of certain data collection scenarios, such as focus group discussions (FGDs). In such settings, all forms of financial remuneration were deemed best avoided, to circumnavigate tricky territories of study participation becoming casual income-generating activities. The boundaries that we establish with informants can, however, become difficult to maintain when working with individuals who are particularly disenfranchised, including those who are food insecure – we may experience internal conflicts in delineating our roles as researchers and our primary human solidarity.

It is also the possible that some research undertakings may inadvertently contribute to the erasure of certain groups, by overly focusing on one group. This is especially relevant when we pay attention to the intersectional realities often presented within the research setting. Vulnerability occurs along a spectrum, meaning that individual characteristics and contextual factors may place a person at greater or lesser risk of harm. Depending on the methodological approaches that a researcher adopts, their work may draw in particular kinds of participants, while leaving out others who may not fit into the set parameters. This potentially generates a situation in which some vulnerabilities are overlooked, or other problematic hierarchies of vulnerability are created or reinforced. To avoid falling into this trap, researchers should critically interrogate the methodologies they adopt and the potential outcomes that these may generate. Going back to the study context may also be useful, to reengage with participants and others not originally engaged with in the first instance.

Patience Adzande conducts a focus group discussion in Maiduguri, Nigeria, as part of her fieldwork.

The difficulties of drawing the line between us and our informants also relate to the aftermath of data collection, through the resonance and impact of various life stories. Critical safeguarding issues arise here, particularly where the research undertaking is liable to potentially generate backlash for the research participants. The challenges posed by research – outside of our responsibility to “do no harm” – also concern our ability to deal with the nature of information shared with us and to process the stark differences defining our lives and those of our study subjects, as individuals and communities. While this may be more pronounced when working with people who are particularly disadvantaged economically, the weight of sitting through accounts of trauma related to war, displacement or gender-based violence is equally impactful.

It is therefore essential for researchers to recognise and declare their commitment to taking all necessary steps to prevent harm from resulting to their research participants. In addition, the potential impact of the research process on the researcher, especially during and after data collection, should be adequately considered. Researchers must give these issues adequate forethought before engaging in their research undertakings and make ethical decisions on how or whether to conduct their proposed research.

Navigating issues associated with researching disadvantaged people

While there are no definitive answers to the issues raised here – or to the many other questions left unaddressed – it is important to acknowledge their existence and engage with the persistent presence of discomfort that surrounds the data collection process. One way of navigating this discomfort is to approach research subjects as “human lives” and not just data, and to design methodologies around exchange rather than extraction. This may be instinctively done by conducting interviews and FGDs as reciprocal conversations, while maintaining boundaries and recognising the power configurations that shape our positionality in relation to informants and the knowledge and experiences they share.

Building on the need to integrate reciprocity into the process, another approach could be to engage in more participatory research. This would also require validation sessions with study participants through follow-up fieldwork. Sharing research findings with individuals and communities – in a language accessible to them – would allow them an insight into the research process beyond the interview and FGD setting. It would also enable them to observe how raw data is processed through sharing findings via presentations and publishable outputs.

Takeaway insights and lessons learnt

Regardless of the particular strategies we chose in navigating the intricacies of research with and on disadvantaged peoples, honesty and transparency are central in ensuring that our roles are clearly defined and that informants’ have realistic expectations of us. Through building authenticity into our interactions with informants, we may become better equipped at setting targets that acknowledge the lengthy journey to impact through publications. At the same time, we can challenge the normative nature of research as extraction, by critically reflecting on our relationship with our research participants and adopting more inclusive approaches to data collection.

This blog post is a joint output based on discussions that took place as part of a seminar the authors attended on 31 January 2023, at The University of Manchester, entitled “Doing research with and on disadvantaged peoples”.

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Reflections from the UTA-Do African Cities Workshop, Part 3: Reimagining the city

Hannah — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Undoing, remaking and reimagining the city

“What are you going to do about it?” This was the question located at the heart of the UTA-Do African Cities Workshop, held in Nairobi between 23 and 27 May at the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA).

Drawing on the sheng (Kiswahili-English slang) expression “UTA-Do” in its title, the week-long workshop set out to instigate a movement towards doing research on African cities differently. The mission of the workshop resonated strongly with the ACRC’s core principles, and was focused on mutual exchange, learning, and setting grounds for the creation of future theoretical advancement on African cities, through their embodied experience and existence.

This is the third and final blog in the series, looking at the idea of reimagining the city.

By Elizabeth Dessie, Miriam Maina and Smith Ouma

Reimagining: The essence of UTA-Do

Across the breadth and depth of the workshop sessions, unique in their format as well as content, arguably the most powerful of these was a visit to the Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC). The visit included presentations and an overview of the movement’s history, covering events from the Centre’s creation to the police executions of local residents in response to supposed criminal activity in the Mathare settlement, with many unemployed youth becoming subjects of extra judiciary killings by state authorities.

Starting by documenting these crimes, the MSJC’s activity grew to incorporate various forms of resistance, including the Mathare Green Movement, which consisted of planting trees for victims of police crimes in the settlement, as well as a MSJC Kids Club, where children are mentored and schooled through fun activities designed to build their confidence and creativity. Other initiatives include the Matigari book club and Until Everyone is Free, a podcast series that uses the life and work of Kenyan freedom fighter, Pio Gama Pinto, to reflect on present realities and politics in Nairobi.

Equally inspiring and tuned to a similar tone of resistance, the Sound of Nairobi workshop session offered an alternative perspective to experiencing the city through the arts. Sound of Nairobi is an open access online archive, collection and portal of sounds from the city. The platform offers users an opportunity to upload their own sounds and listen to others in the portal, inviting them to consider how everyday audible experiences often go unnoticed, despite forming the essence of our city experiences. The portal draws people closer towards sounds that are often unheard, including silence as well as sound, considering how the city is shaped through sound and how different aspects of city life produce difference audible experiences. Ultimately, Sound of Nairobi functions as a living repository of urban sound, uplifting everyday experiences and voices through the arts in an alternative and inspiring way.

A visit to the Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC) was a particular highlight of the UTA-Do workshop.

Workshop participants were also treated to an evening pre-screening of Kamirithu, a film documentation and history of the Kamirithu Educational and Cultural Centre – an open-air theatre in Limuru that was established by workers and residents fromKamiruthu village. The Kamirithu theatre is best known as the site where Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s critical play, Ngaahika Ndenda (“I will marry when I want”), was written, directed and initially performed in 1977. The play was subsequently halted by the then government, the centre banned from holding gatherings and events, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o arrested and detained. Kamirithu is narrated by original cast members, and centres on the establishment of the centre, the production and subsequent banning of the play, and the ultimate destruction in 1982 of the facility by authorities at the time.

The cast members share reflections on their own lives, presenting multifaceted pathways through which they came to use drama and music to protest and highlight challenges in their village, relating to land, dispossession, industrial environmental pollution and oppressive work environments. Framed against the play, these life histories offer a rich and nuanced reflection, not just of Kamirithu and Limuru town, but of Kenya’s complex histories of land and dispossession that continue to date. In this way, Kamirithu provided UTA-Do participants a view of how history also provided forms of activism – through drama, music and creative arts – that could be connected to new social justice centres that were organising to contest similar issues.

Offering another alternative perspective on how to think of the city was a contribution by Carl Nightingale, associate professor of urban and world history at the Department of Transnational Studies at the University at Buffalo. Situating cities within the discussion on the Anthropocene, Carl joined the workshop in a hybrid session to present his book, Earthopolis. Carl covered the history of urbanisation of the world through perspectives on planetary urbanisation and discussed his ideas around realms of action, habitat, impact and consequence.

As the UTA-Do workshop drew to a close, with a celebratory dinner and party held in Nairobi and hosted by Sound of Nairobi, many of us shared our enthusiasm over the event itself, the inspiration we gained from the interactive sessions, lectures and talks, as well as our excitement about the potential of future collaborations and engagements with attendees near and far.

In the midst of exploring the challenges of doing as well as undoing, reimagining and unlearning, most of us found that in order to claim new perspectives and ways of thinking, old frameworks and narratives must be dismantled. Looking forward, this event set a precedent for future workshops that will undoubtedly be equally thought-provoking and inspiring in addressing the essence of UTA-Do.

UTA-Do | 2022 | Nairobi

The inaugural UTA-Do African Cities Workshop was hosted in Nairobi at the British Institute in Eastern Africa. UTA-Do 2022 was conceptualised and convened by Wangui Kimari, Prince Guma and Liza Rose Cirolia.

The 2022 programme was made possible by the generous support of the African Centre for Cities (University of Cape Town), the British Institute in Eastern Africa, the Mathare Social Justice Centre, the University of Basel, the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, under the project “Examining nature–society relations through urban infrastructure” (project number: P19-0286:1), and the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations, under the MAC programme.

For more information see:

For information on future UTA-Do events, please contact Wangui (kuikimari@gmail.com) or Liza (liza.cirolia@uct.ac.za).

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Reflections from the UTA-Do African Cities Workshop, Part 2: Remaking the city

Hannah — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 07:30:00 +0000

Undoing, remaking and reimagining the city

This is the second blog in the series, focusing on the theme of remaking the city from the margins.

By Elizabeth Dessie, Miriam Maina and Smith Ouma

Remaking the city from the margins

In addition to workshops and contributions focused on the materiality of development trajectories in African cities, the UTA-Do African Cities Workshop also included presentations that unpacked experiences of marginalisation – shedding light on subjective ways of reimagining the city, many of which remain peripheral within the field of urban studies.

Echoing some of the central theoretical considerations raised by Jethron Ayumbah on the various forms of UTA-Do, Sabatho Nyamsenda, a political scientist and lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam, presented research on local and community-driven approaches to resistance in Dar es Salaam. Sabatho presented his research on labour informality in Tanzania, relating this to economic theories and framing of informal workers as entrepreneurs. Echoing back to Hernando de Soto’s conceptualisations of dead capital, Sabatho presented how informal workers in the UWAMATA Bus Drivers Association, the women of Manzese, and BodaBoda taxi drivers throughout urban Tanzania challenged the insecure working conditions they experienced in the face of formalisation.

A shared discussion on queering the city was led by Keguro Macharia, an independent scholar from Nairobi, and Eddie Ombagi, postdoctoral fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand. They extended the conversation around marginalised urban experiences. This complementary exchange covered historical and contemporary questions of queer urban subjectivities, and the intersections of gender and sexuality in the African city.

Referencing the city of Nairobi, Keguro proposed imagining the city through an abolitionist framework, where city dwellers are not policed but, rather, are allowed to enjoy and own the city as theirs. He provoked attendees to explore a thought process through which the city was viewed less as a space or mode of production, and more as a place continually in the process of becoming for all its residents. Similarly, in his description of Nairobi as a shot of whisky, Eddie underscored the value of temporality in the making and re-making of the city. Through this lens, time, change and continuous transformation become central elements in understanding queer urban lives in a context of social progress and movement towards inclusion and equality.

A hybrid lecture delivered jointly by Willie J. Wright, assistant professor at the University of Florida, and Adam Bledsoe, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, resonated with notions of reimagining the city from the margins, specifically through the lens of Black geographies. Introducing the origins of Black geography as a theoretical discourse emerging out of Black studies, Willie and Adam described race as a social and economic indicator located at the heart of how cities are experienced in the USA as sites of structural inequality. By challenging mainstream perspectives that dominate the discipline of geography, they highlighted the universality of Black geography to the experiences of black people everywhere. They also emphasised how a focus on Black experiences of education, housing and labour in the city exposes spatial dimensions of injustice otherwise unaccounted for.

Keguro Macharia and Eddie Ombagi led a discussion on gender and sexuality in the African city.

Revisiting the themes of defiance and transgression, a hybrid lecture from Gautam Bhan offered an elaborate understanding of the relationship between knowledge and activism. Gautam’s reflections on his experiences in Delhi resonated well with insights earlier shared by Jethron on the possibilities of collective action and antagonistic urban formations. Drawing attention to instances when the political becomes technical, Gautam reminded participants that in our roles as urban scholars, we should treat research as a political process.

Gautam led participants through the Indian Institute for Human Settlements’ experiences with what he termed the “demystification of the technical”, surmising the role of the scholar-activist as: bridging the political and the technical; engaging in the long durée of knowledge production which offers new language to the marginalised; producing research in alternative non-academic platforms; producing public archives; and challenging our own locations as scholar-activists. His counsel was for participants to be always conscious of the risk of depoliticising processes that are intrinsically political. This, he argued, can be done by always knowing when one is being used to shut the politics out and by a refusal to legitimise processes that seek to displace the political.

Adrian Wilson and Mario Schmidt put a spotlight on Nairobi as a place for scientific and political experiments, while noting the ethical problems that emerge from this. They observed the increased intrusion of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) into the cityscape to correspond with the turn towards evidence-based development aid. Identifying Nairobi as a key locus for these experiments, Adrian and Mario pointed out that Nairobians participate in RCTs and behavioural experiments which benefit mostly western scholars and local elites, while subjecting participants to substantial risks. They reminded participants of the heated debate that emerged following the publication of a paper by four economists, which was based on an RCT involving the disconnection of water services for inhabitants of Kayole in Nairobi over non-payment of water bills. According to Adrian and Mario, although many of these studies are presented as unproblematic, they often raise serious ethical questions and have damaging outcomes for the subjects.

Writing the African city

With plenty of opportunities to engage with fellow participants during the workshop, a number of sessions were designed specifically to bolster the budding skillsets of early career researchers in the room. Academic and non-academic participants were encouraged, through interactive and practical sessions, to reflect on how we could write the African city from diverse and multiple positionalities. In an interactive lecture, Amollo Ambole, a design researcher and lecturer at the University of Nairobi, shared her career path and journey as inspiration for participants to identify their own milestones and aspirations and to develop their own mission statements. Through this exercise, we were encouraged to understand our own journeys, strengths, accomplishments and trajectories as positionalities from which we could frame and shape our work, and direct our objectives and ambitions forward.

This self-reflective session was complemented by a working group activity led by Wangui Kimari on the diversity of methods used in studying the city. The session began by encouraging us to consider our positionality and the power dynamics that characterise our research context and relations. Using this, Wangui underlined how theory and positionality shape the ways in which data is collected, the particularities in the data that we concentrate on, and the importance of triangulating methods as a way of validating our research. Participants were then asked to identify unique methodological tools and approaches to research, and groups identified a range of tools, including group video analysis, sketch analysis and participant diaries. Attention was also given to the value of participatory action research and street phenomenology – or walking interviews – in underlining the relational nature of place in urban spaces, alongside other methods generally deemed conventional. This links back to the importance of collecting data in a non-extractive way – a key point raised by Jethron in his keynote lecture at the start of the workshop, who noted that “Africa needs to be treated as a source of knowledge, not as a source of data”.

Peter Ngau, associate professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Nairobi, also contributed to this discussion on research methodologies. Sharing his experiences of being an urban practitioner and activist, he also acknowledged the importance of publishing as part of an academic’s career trajectory. Similarly, Mary Lawhon, senior lecturer in human geography at the University of Edinburgh, gave a lecture on navigating the intricacies of writing journal articles and getting published. Mary shared experiences on the challenges and rewards of academic writing and offered valuable tips on framing, and claiming, specific theoretical discussions when designing academic papers. Workshop participants were also offered an opportunity to apply for a number of grants offered by the generous funders who made the UTA-Do Workshop possible (listed below).

UTA-Do | 2022 | Nairobi

For more information see:

For information on future UTA-Do events, please contact Wangui (kuikimari@gmail.com) or Liza (liza.cirolia@uct.ac.za).

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Reflections from the UTA-Do African Cities Workshop, Part 1: Undoing the city

Hannah — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Undoing, remaking and reimagining the city

This is the first of a three-part blog series reflecting on our encounters and experiences during the workshop.

By Elizabeth Dessie, Miriam Maina and Smith Ouma

A different kind of space

The UTA-Do workshop offered space for a diverse range of urban thinkers and practitioners from Africa to meet, reflect and engage in dialogue and ideas from multiple positionalities and perspectives. There were at least 40 attendees from Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, the UK and the USA, of varying ages, personal and professional backgrounds, disciplines and careers. A key achievement for the workshop was in creating a space and a forum for these African urban theorists to meet, learn, exchange and draw from these personal frameworks to contribute and enrich the programme. As participants, we were gifted with an unprecedented opportunity to bring our ideas, work, energy and experiences into connection with fellow thinkers and doers from across the continent – in fun and stimulating engagements – to grow from this encounter, and to forge connections for future collaboration.

The UTA-Do programme was structured to blend formal and informal interactions to enable co-learning, dialogue, fun, exchange, and to stimulate as well as challenge theoretical and methodological processes – highlighting the importance of generating new ways of thinking about and doing research on the African city. The programme included exclusive keynote presentations, guest speaker lectures, interactive hybrid sessions, thought-provoking working group discussions, field visits, reflection sessions, lunch and dinner events around the city, and a closing night party with Sound of Nairobi DJs.

Zhengli Huang and Andrea Pollio during Zhengli’s lecture exploring the impact of Chinese infrastructural investment in African cities.

Undoing the African city

Beginning with a thought-provoking keynote presentation by Jethron Ayumbah Akallah, lecturer at the Department of History and Archaeology at Maseno University, the workshop situated the principles of UTA-Do within discussions on the right to the city, who owns the city and how the city is experienced and perceived. Describing the roots of the UTA-Do concept – set in city dwellers’ resistance to the challenges posed by everyday urban life – Jethron described the temporality of cityness in many African contexts, where home often resides outside of the city, in rural areas as places of origin and de facto belonging.

Jethron referenced the works of David Harvey and Jennifer Robinson, among others, raising questions around the ways that the phrase UTA-Do can manifest: when doing becomes undoing, or doing differently; as a form of protest or defiance; or as a surrender to unchanging conditions. With many challenges in the lives of marginalised urban groups relating to a lack of service provision, Jethron emphasised the need to acknowledge existing, informal provisions of water or transport as a form of UTA-Do – of making and re-making the city – despite being off the grid. Informality as a type of cityness, then, becomes essential to the UTA-Do mentality and its perseverance.

Building on these reflections and contemplations, Wangui Kimari – social justice activist, anthropologist and participatory action research coordinator for the Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC), and part of ACRC’s safety and security domain team in Nairobi – led the first interactive session of the workshop around conceptualisations of southern urbanism. This saw participants discussing the meaning behind southern urbanism in relation to the Eurocentric vision of urbanity – exploring the different ways of framing what the city is and how where we are situated theoretically shapes how we see African cities. A key takeaway was the need to “write from within UTA-Do contexts”, rather than writing about them.

A lecture led by Liza Rose Cirolia, senior researcher at the African Centre for Cities and part of ACRC’s land and connectivity domain, delved into the material fabric of the urban, exploring the fundamental importance of infrastructure in understanding the present, as well as the future, of the African city. Drawing on a variety of examples, and contextualising the narrative within the SDGs and Agenda 2063 framework of developmental objectives, Liza’s lecture took a deep dive into unravelling how “writing and narrating a moment from infrastructure” can contribute to challenging, from outside the box, ideas of a single, fixed network of thinking about African cities.

Building on this conversation, Zhengli Huang, postdoctorate researcher at Tongji University, Shanghai, further advanced the discussion on infrastructure as the development project of many African cities through the lens of large-scale Chinese interventions. Drawing on examples such as the Nairobi Expressway and the Addis Ababa light rail transit system, Zhengli’s lecture elaborated on the impact of Chinese infrastructural investment in Africa’s urban development, while also touching on how these initiatives contribute to increasing debts among many recipient nations.

The discussion around China’s role in the infrastructural development of Africa continued with presentations by Andrea Pollio, research fellow at the African Centre for Cities and Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning (DIST), Polytechnic of Turin, who also focused on the separate theme of the digital African city. Andrea presented his approach to viewing the city through a digital lens and shared some of the research challenges faced in researching a growing and increasingly digitalising African urbanity, including the visible–invisible nexus of data accessibility and reproduction.

Exploring the smart African city through the social implications of adopting ICT for basic service provision, Prince Guma, researcher in cities, infrastructures and technologies at the BIEA, shared his research into water infrastructures and technologies in Nairobi: a case study of Jisomee Mita (“read your meter”). This was a project designed to reconfigure water supply in the city by integrating low- to middle-income neighbourhoods in Nairobi, including Soweto-Kayole, into extended digitalised networks. Through his empirical findings, Prince highlighted how low-income communities mobilised in diverse ways to resist digitalised processes which had disempowering economic consequences. The research pointed to the nuances and complexities emerging from the rapid digitalisation of service provision in cities in Kenya and beyond.

UTA-Do | 2022 | Nairobi

For more information see:

For information on future UTA-Do events, please contact Wangui (kuikimari@gmail.com) or Liza (liza.cirolia@uct.ac.za).

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Smith Ouma - ACRC

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ACRC at the 2024 Development Studies Association Conference

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Reflections from the UTA-Do African Cities Workshop, Part 3: Reimagining the city

Undoing, remaking and reimagining the city

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UTA-Do | 2022 | Nairobi

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Reflections from the UTA-Do African Cities Workshop, Part 2: Remaking the city

Undoing, remaking and reimagining the city

Remaking the city from the margins

Writing the African city

UTA-Do | 2022 | Nairobi

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Reflections from the UTA-Do African Cities Workshop, Part 1: Undoing the city

Undoing, remaking and reimagining the city

A different kind of space

Undoing the African city

UTA-Do | 2022 | Nairobi

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