By Gundula Löffler and Tom Hart

Urban public finance is critical to the functioning of a city, playing a major role in shaping how cities can meet their urban planning, infrastructure and service delivery responsibilities. Investment in urban infrastructure and local services is essential for more prosperous, inclusive and sustainable cities. The amount and effectiveness of urban infrastructure spending affects local economic development, the connectivity of the city and the quality of housing. The quality and availability of local services such as education, health and policing are essential to broader health and wellbeing.

Yet in many cities these services are underfunded, underprovided and not responsive to local needs. A key factor frequently underlying these issues is how they are financed – a function which may be shared, contested or neglected by city and national governments. The state of a city’s finances and the way they are managed can shed light on how urban governance and, more broadly, the political settlement play out at national–city, city and city–neighbourhood levels. The balance between city and national government spending in these areas provides insight into which public officials are ultimately responsible for providing certain public goods and services, who is included in decisionmaking, and what the prospects for reform look like. For this reason, ACRC has identified urban public finance as a crosscutting theme that is of key relevance to its research domains.

A broad view of urban public finance

The urban public finance system is concerned with revenues and expenditure under the control of the public sector. Taxing and spending are two of the main policy instruments that governments have for producing change. The urban public finance system helps determine the overall level of resources a city has available, and how they are allocated to different policy areas. Tax and spending policies also affect a city’s economy and can either boost or hinder urban economic growth.

Practically, this means understanding both the budget of the main urban authority (or authorities, where the urban area spans multiple subnational governments), and also direct urban spending by the national government and development partners. This is particularly important for large-scale infrastructure, where national government usually retains responsibility.

Three key issues underpin the fiscal situation of a city: what goods and services the city is responsible for delivering to its citizens; the city’s revenue sources to pay for these goods and services; and allocation decisions – how and by whom expenditures are being decided upon.

Who delivers what in urban service delivery?

The service delivery responsibilities of cities are usually set out in the national legal framework. Whether these responsibilities are fully devolved, delegated with substantial central policy control, or remain centralised, determines who is ultimately responsible for delivering the service and indicates how much scope local governments have in shaping its implementation. Extensive decentralisation reforms in Africa, and around the world, have expanded the roles and responsibilities for public service delivery of local governments, including cities, over the past few decades. This has also increased their fiscal needs.

Service delivery may be mandatory or voluntary. Cities usually have a legal requirement to provide mandatory functions, with central government expected to provide funding sources. In practice, this funding is often lacking, leading cities to have so-called “unfunded mandates”. A city or local government may also choose voluntarily to perform a function, in response to a specific need or demand of its citizens.

Many service delivery functions are shared between local and central governments. In health service delivery, for example, local governments might be responsible for operating local health centres, including hiring and managing staff, while the central government might procure and distribute medicines for those health centres. Problems can arise, with unclear assignment of responsibilities between different levels of government, or weak coordination between levels of government, resulting in poor service delivery outcomes.

Revenue sources

In many African countries, central government levies the major taxes, such as trade tariffs, VAT and personal and corporate income taxes. So, although cities may be the engines of economic growth, they do not share in this growth through tax yields.  As a result, most cities in Africa heavily rely on central government grants as their main source of revenue. These often come with restrictions on how the funds can be spent, thus limiting the city’s budgetary autonomy. Although some grants are allocated according to clear and transparent policies, others are more ad hoc and discretionary, posing a challenge for planning and budgeting.

Many city governments are therefore keen to increase their own source revenue, raised most commonly through taxes, fees or charges on the value of land and/or property, as well as on local economic activities. However, cities often struggle with setting up effective local tax systems, partly because many local revenue sources tend to be heavily politicised. Urban elites may block efficient collection of high value property taxes, for example, and there may be conflict between sectors or neighbourhoods in the city over distribution of scarce resources.

Access to finance

The enormous need for infrastructure investment in African cities calls for a range of different financing models. To date, however, market-based debt financing for African cities, through municipal bonds or the private banking system, remains almost unheard of outside of South Africa. This is due to technical as well as political reasons. Cities on the continent often have credit ratings below investment grade, or struggle to develop bankable projects, making them unattractive to private financiers. But even when the technical requirements are met, central governments may be reluctant to allow cities to borrow, for fear of having to bail them out in case of default, or because they seek to block increased financial autonomy of opposition-held cities.

Municipal development funds or other financial intermediaries provide an alternative means of accessing infrastructure finance. These offer concessional loans to local governments, often paired with technical assistance for project development. They are becoming increasingly available, but to date there are only a few African experiences with this type of approach, and they need to be established by national or regional agencies. For city governments themselves, the priority should be to establish a reasonably functioning public financial management (PFM) system and a stable operating surplus that can be used for debt servicing, to allow them to take advantage of such financing modalities once they are available.

Who gets what, when, how?

A key issue for urban public finance is where and how decisions are taken about allocating resources for service delivery expenditures and infrastructure investment. In principle, resources are allocated through the budget process. This process is influenced by both formal and informal processes, such as whether it is primarily driven by technicians, or by the mayor, or whether it is subject to fierce political debate and influence in the city’s legislative council; as well as what role higher-level governments play in shaping and approving the city budget.

Increasingly, cities use participatory planning and budgeting to identify the needs and preferences of constituents and empower local communities to take part in the local political process. These can vary in the extent to which they are genuinely inclusive and participatory, and in the willingness of local governments to fully commit to their implementation. Stakeholders and interest groups may also influence budget allocations from outside the formal processes – overtly, through demonstrations, or covertly, through lobbying. It is thus important to be aware that actual practices can deviate substantively from what the formally outlined processes are.

Together, analysis of these factors – responsibilities, revenues and the budget process – can reveal much about why a city’s budget looks the way it does, what level of financial autonomy a city government has, and what the political status of a city is. This complex mix of factors that shape a city’s public finance plays out across all city policy responsibilities. It is critical to incorporate this understanding when planning for a sustainable, prosperous and inclusive urban future.

Header photo credit: Frank van den Bergh / Getty Images (via Canva Pro). City view over the skyline of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

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

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

By David Dodman, Meggan Spires and Kate Strachan

In sub-Saharan Africa, around 60% of the urban population resides in informal settlements. It is these areas that have experienced the most rapid growth in urban vulnerability to climate change in recent years – facing higher exposure to climate risks, while having a lower capacity to adapt.

Despite having the lowest emissions (and hence having contributed least to global warming), Africa faces systemic risks that threaten to undo development gains and exacerbate extreme poverty. This is accentuated by the lack of risk-reducing infrastructure, the high proportion of people depending on natural resources for livelihoods, poor public health, and low levels of formal education. Climate change is projected to put anywhere between eight and 80 million people at risk of hunger by the middle of this century, with sub-Saharan Africa set to be one of the most severely affected regions.

But climate change is not a future problem; it is already affecting African cities, impacting households, businesses, infrastructure and supply chains. It will undoubtedly present one of the most significant risks to Africa’s sustainable development objectives over the next decade. 

The latest IPCC report highlights the significance of extreme climate events, including heatwaves and intense rainfall for cities, with particular health risks from heat stress for low-income urban residents. The effects of higher temperatures are especially severe for people living in dense urban settlements lacking nearby green/blue space and with uninsulated housing, or for those working in physically active (and frequently informal) occupations; more intense flooding affects those living in sites adjacent to watercourses and in poorly constructed buildings. Other effects of climate change, including on water availability and food security, will also disproportionately affect those who already face struggles to meet their basic needs. Responses to climate change therefore need to be developed with an explicit pro-poor focus.

In African cities, climate risk is a consequence of both exposure to climate-related hazards, and vulnerability of residents and urban systems. Vulnerability is driven by high levels of poverty, limited municipal and national resources to invest in risk reduction activities, and inadequate, out-of-date and poorly maintained infrastructure. Climate impacts in one place can create risks to locations far away – for example, drought or extreme rainfall that affects agricultural productivity can have widespread impacts on food security. Prolonged droughts can result in water scarcity in cities and can disrupt hydroelectric generation.

A range of factors shape the risk profiles of African cities, including their physical form, social structures, economic pathways and governance systems. The nature of spatial expansion, city demographic profiles, and the prevalence of informal economies and settlements are particularly important. Governance systems in African cities are often centralised and complex, with separate competence domains often in different city administrative departments, for example, urban planning, water management, energy, housing, and health – and even sometimes at different levels of government. This often results in overlaps or gaps (for example, planning for informality) in mandates, resulting in less governance efficiency within resource-constrained environments. All this increases the vulnerabilities of cities.

Adaptation and mitigation

For cities in Africa, adaptation to climate change and its effects will require immediate action to respond to particular threats, as well as longer-term planning. This will require coordinated action by a range of urban stakeholders, including low-income and other marginalised groups. Mitigation to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is also necessary. Emissions need to be cut from construction of new homes, energy that residents consume, waste they produce and transport they use.

Many African cities are still in the early stages of their development, and have the opportunity to develop in ways that are cleaner and greener. This will benefit their residents, with more liveable cities, and improve their international competitiveness, as climate-resilient development and the connected skills and technologies are sought after globally. So African cities are at a crossroad – they can choose clean, efficient, productive paths or become locked into exclusionary, sprawling and polluting models.

Climate change impacts, and adaptation and mitigation responses, will have major implications across ACRC’s range of urban development domains, which we outline below.

Structural transformation

Global and national decarbonisation efforts have the potential to create new economic opportunities in African cities. Development to improve labour productivity needs to utilise low carbon technologies, including for transport, and energy provision needs to come increasingly from renewable sources. However, a just transition is needed, to ensure that the benefits are available to low-income and vulnerable urban residents.

Neighbourhood and district economic development

The informal economy is the backbone of most African cities. Low-income urban residents, whose work is often physically intense and/or outdoors, are most likely to be affected by climate change, and also lack capital to adapt their livelihoods. Flooding and extreme heat negatively impact the health and wellbeing of informal sector workers. They must be provided with opportunities and safety nets that take account of increasing environmental uncertainty.

Land and connectivity

The distribution of climate risk in African cities will be uneven. Low-lying coastal zones and areas along rivers will potentially become more susceptible to flooding, and settlements on steep slopes more vulnerable to landslides following intense precipitation. Climate change has the potential to undermine connectivity within and between cities through disruption to infrastructure, including roads and railways. Land use planning and zoning will be critical for managing risk.

Housing

Secure, safe and affordable housing is core to individual and community climate change resilience. Housing location and construction methods (materials, ventilation, aspect) are key in determining exposure to climate hazards. To address African cities’ housing deficit, new approaches need to be affordable to the lowest-income households. Innovative housing design – solar shading, cross-ventilation, reflective finishes and decentralised solutions – can substantially reduce energy consumption.

Informal settlements

Responses to climate change have uneven implications, with potential negative consequences of mitigation and adaptation projects for low-income and other marginalised groups. Political marginalisation of the residents of informal settlements is associated with low prioritisation of their needs in planning and investment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build resilience, including through upgrading water and sanitation systems.

Health, wellbeing and nutrition

Climate change impacts, together with increasing population densities, in close proximity to animal species, are expected to increase the emergence of communicable and non-communicable diseases. Other local health security implications include mental health challenges faced by residents forced to migrate due to climate change, disruptions to food supply, and lack of access to health and wellbeing services. Effective solutions are likely to be found by addressing the broader urban environment, rather than focusing solely on the healthcare system.

Safety and security

As the effects of climate change displace large numbers of people, this can increase the likelihood and intensity of conflict and violence. If African cities become uninhabitable, mass migration may contribute to radicalisation and trigger inter-communal violence, as tensions arise between hosts and displaced people over access to resources, livelihoods and services.

Youth and capability development

The WHO estimates that the youth will suffer more than 80% of the illnesses, injuries and deaths attributable to climate change. The consequences of climate-related disasters – food insecurity, loss of livelihoods, rising air pollution, vector-borne diseases and malnutrition – can have a markedly detrimental impact on a child’s early development. Conflict over dwindling resources can affect children’s ability to grow up in safe, secure and healthy environments.

Header photo credit: Moiz Husein / Getty Images (via Canva Pro). Flooding in the Jangwani area of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

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

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

Tell us a bit about your background…

I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, where I studied architecture at The University of Lagos. This raised my curiosity about the urban environment, motivating me to undertake a master’s degree in urban planning at The University of Manchester and subsequently a PhD in urban planning and international development at Cardiff University. I was particularly keen to study urban planning in the United Kingdom as the planning systems in Nigeria and many other African countries have British origins.

After my PhD, I returned to the University of Lagos as a lecturer and in 2018, I took a position as a postdoctoral researcher at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town. A key lesson I have learnt over the years and which I am passionate to communicate through my work is the vital importance of understanding, learning from and adapting to the realities on the ground when thinking about African cities – rather than having an overreliance on foreign perspectives.

How would you explain your research to a friend or family member?

My research fundamentally seeks to understand how and why the majority of African urban residents are largely excluded from available economic opportunities, whilst only a small section benefit. This situation can be seen in the high levels of inequality and fragmentation evident in many African cities. More specifically, my research explores the experiences of the numerous residents of informal settlements and those working in the informal economy, such as street traders, waste-pickers, small-scale tailors, hairdressers and roadside mechanical services – who are a dominant feature of many African cities – and examining their largely negative experiences and non-inclusion in urban and economic plans. My work seeks to understand the challenges they face and propose ways in which their work can be better appreciated, included and scaled up to make a valuable contribution to the local economy – whilst continuing to provide important employment and livelihood opportunities to a large share of the urban population.

What does your role within ACRC entail?

As part of ACRC, I belong to the neighbourhood and district economic development domain, where I have the opportunity to contribute to research on household microenterprises (HMEs). These are informal businesses employing the entrepreneur either alone, or together with members of their household, and for which the home often plays an important role in the enterprise’s activities. Some key objectives of the domain include examining how HMEs’ productivity and profitability can be increased, how they can become more economically viable as businesses, and how they can build resilience to climate change and environmental disaster.

I am also conducting my own research on urban displacements cutting across evictions from informal settlements and markets in Lagos, Nigeria. Specifically, I am investigating the factors that underlie such displacements and their effects on low-income residents who are often the most affected – including how they cope in the aftermath of such evictions, and how they can better organise to communicate to authorities the challenges that displacements pose to their lives and livelihoods.

“What particularly excites me about this research fellowship is the focus of ACRC to inform better decisionmaking by urban policymakers and reformers in Africa, based on an understanding of the political economy of individual cities and partnership with local actors on the ground.”

What are you finding most interesting about your work with ACRC so far? What are you most excited about?

What I have found most interesting so far is the opportunity to engage with various prominent scholars on African urban development as well as interact directly with specialists based across a variety of African cities, who provide first hand updates on happenings across diverse contexts. What particularly excites me about this research fellowship is the focus of ACRC to inform better decisionmaking by urban policymakers and reformers in Africa, based on an understanding of the political economy of individual cities and partnership with local actors on the ground. This is because political and economic factors play a major role in urban decisionmaking, especially in Africa, yet they are often inadequately considered and local actors are vital to understanding important contextual peculiarities that can hinder change. Therefore, I find this combined focus of ACRC particularly exciting.

In fewer than five words, what one issue do you think needs to be prioritised to improve urban development in African cities?

Better inclusion of disadvantaged communities.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

I enjoy spending time with family and friends, listening to music and engaging in sports.

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

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

Tell us a bit about your background…

My name is Patience Adzande and I was born and raised in Nigeria. I obtained a PhD in urban and regional planning from the Benue State University, Makurdi, Nigeria in 2017. During my PhD study, I received the Dissertation Research Fellowship (2013) and the Dissertation Completion Fellowship Award (2014) from the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa programme. In 2017, I also received the SSRC’s African Peacebuilding Network grant to conduct research on farmer-herder conflicts in Central Nigeria.

Before joining ACRC, I was a lecturer at the Benue State University. My research interest in crime and the built environment was motivated by the works of Jane Jacobs and Oscar Newman. However, my decision to focus on broader issues of human security became imperative with increasing conflict and violence in rural and urban areas of Nigeria. Currently, my research focuses on the influence of the built environment on crime patterns; residents’ experiences of safety and (in)security in cities; informal policing in cities; the role of conflict/violence in re-configuring urban spaces and shaping lived experiences in cities; the lived experiences of internally displaced people (IDPs) in non-camp situations; and farmer-herder conflicts in Nigeria.

How would you explain your research to a friend or family member?

My research focuses on the spatial dynamics of crime and violence in cities from an urban planning perspective and at contestations over natural resources in rural areas of Nigeria; looking at:

• How different kinds of spaces influence the occurrence or clustering of crime, and enhance perceptions of safety;
• Why certain urban spaces are safer than others;
• How urban spaces are re-configured by conflicts or violence and how the lives of city residents are (re)shaped by violence – in terms of residential location choices, decisions on intra-urban mobility and perceptions of the “other”;
• Rural insecurity in Central Nigeria, with particular emphasis on farmer-herder conflicts and its attendant consequences;
• The lived experiences of urban displaced persons – particularly focusing on their ability (agency) to navigate their new environments.

I focus on human security because safety and security are central to the attainment of liveable and inclusive cities. With the forecasts suggesting that Africa is fast becoming an urban continent, it has become necessary to intensify research on safety and security, to contribute to the development of policies and planning interventions that will make African cities safe for all.

What does your role within ACRC entail?

As a postdoctoral fellow attached to ACRC’s safety and security domain, I’ll work with the domain leads, city leads and other team members to sharpen the focus of the domain’s research in the selected cities, also ensuring that the workplans and themes are synchronised and aligned. I’ll also liaise with and provide support to the city research leads and projects, and contribute knowledge based on my past experiences of conducting research on human security issues. I will also be contributing to the academic aspect of the research by conducting literature reviews on relevant research themes and writing academic articles, blog posts and reports – and possibly featuring in podcasts to support uptake and dissemination of our work.

“I’m happy to be a part of a team committed to contributing to policy formulation, through generating evidence-based knowledge on African cities.”

What are you finding most interesting about your work with ACRC so far? What are you most excited about?

What I’m finding most interesting in my work with ACRC so far is gaining new knowledge – especially using political settlements as an analytical framework for critical urban development issues, observing the research that the other postdoctoral fellows are conducting, and learning more about (and looking forward to visiting) other African cities covered by ACRC. I’m happy to be a part of a team committed to contributing to policy formulation, through generating evidence-based knowledge on African cities.

The opportunity that ACRC has provided for me to meet and work with scholars that I would ordinarily only read about in the literature is something I’m excited about – particularly having the chance to work with Paula Meth, who will serve as my mentor during the period of the fellowship. Working with ACRC also affords me the opportunity to actualise my dream of expanding the scope of my research beyond Nigeria to other African cities.

In fewer than five words, what one issue do you think needs to be prioritised to improve urban development in African cities?

Safety and security.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

I enjoy watching movies and spending quality time with friends and family.

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

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

By Rachel Tolhurst, Cecilia Tacoli and Paul Currie

Health, nutrition and wellbeing challenges faced by people living in African cities are considerable, but adverse outcomes are often masked in national and regional data and misrepresented in policy debates by the so-called “urban advantage”. The Covid-19 crisis has highlighted many specific health vulnerabilities in cities and their importance for national and global health security. The pandemic has also shown that advances in food and nutrition security in urban centres are fragile, but essential for resilience. The health, wellbeing and nutrition domain intends to address the question of how all citizens can access what they require to live safe and prosperous lives.

Addressing the challenges of health and wellbeing

Health, nutrition and wellbeing feature strongly in the SDGs. Targets for health and nutrition are clearly defined; wellbeing is recognised as important, but its multidimensional nature has meant it is less well defined, pursued and assessed in policy, planning and programming. Access to affordable, quality health services and nutritious food is essential for wellbeing.

Equally important is access to basic infrastructure and services, especially in dense urban residential neighbourhoods. There are strong linkages between poor access to clean water and sanitation, malnutrition and vulnerability to communicable diseases, such as malaria and TB, as well as non-communicable diseases (NCDs), due to household and neighbourhood air pollution (linked to energy sources) and to energy-dense and nutrient-poor diets. Lack of access to affordable, quality basic services is a critical underlying determinant that includes primary healthcare (including maternal, neonatal healthcare and nutritional monitoring and care for mothers and children; and NCD management), childcare and education. City-specific emerging health problems with both local and global dimensions include zoonoses and climate-change-induced transformations in disease patterns such as malaria.

Locally developed, often informal systems that address the challenges of nutrition and healthcare are often misunderstood by traditional research and policy approaches. This domain will work with residents and community organisations in low-income settlements to articulate the specific barriers and entry-points to long-term structural change for improved wellbeing.

Scope and methodology

Given the multiple and broad conceptualisations of health, wellbeing and nutrition, the domain team has scoped the research around the uptake of healthy diets in African cities. This will serve as the entry-point for city-level research to explore wellbeing, and as the link for comparative analysis across cities. We will frame a wider discussion on health, nutrition and wellbeing around it. 

Scientific literature and documentation on food and health misses more than it captures – traditional research still focuses mainly on a top-down approach to health and wellbeing, and bottom-up perspectives are missing. It is important to engage and listen to lived experience of residents and community mobilisers about how wellbeing manifests (or is undermined) in each city. We will adopt an emergent research methodology, which will engage with, and seek complementarities between, both traditional and scientific knowledge.

The central question for this domain research is:

How can cities contribute to a sustainable, integrated, multisectoral system enabling the uptake of healthy diets?

To explore this issue, in each city, we plan to:

1. Map and explore the functioning of the key systems that contribute/constrain access to and uptake of healthy diets for key population groups (for example, food, health, urban planning, possibly education, water and sanitation).
2. Explore the political economy dimensions of constraints and enablers, including relationship to political settlements.
3. Identify potential emerging solutions.

Cities of focus

The cities explored in this domain are Freetown, Sierra Leone; Lilongwe, Malawi; and Nairobi, Kenya. Each presents a different governance context, and together they offer lessons from West, East and Southern Africa.

In Freetown, this study will build upon work already undertaken by the research consortium, ARISE (Accountability and Responsiveness in Informal Settlements for Equity), in Freetown. Special attention will be paid to food sovereignty and the complexities of producing, purchasing, selling and consuming food in Freetown, moving away from profit-driven and food aid patterns, to building resilient “community-owned” networks.

In Lilongwe, this study will focus on the sociopolitical and socioeconomic factors affecting access to nutrition and primary healthcare services, on malnutrition among residents, particularly youth and elders, and the efficacy of city-adopted initiatives to prevent undernutrition among children. The study will also focus on assessing power imbalances between services providers and their users, and on how gender equality, protection, participation and empowerment for nutrition are being promoted. It will look at how the city has managed nutrition during the Covid-19 emergency, with potential lessons for systems resilience and transformation, as well as how to create enabling environments for nutrition. Finally, it will explore how nutrition interventions are monitored, evaluated and researched.

In Nairobi, the study will investigate:

1. Spatial patterns of ill health and nutrition in Nairobi city, in terms of NCDs related to poor diets, as well as poor water and sanitation, waste disposal and energy systems.
2. Access to primary healthcare services and nutritious diets in Nairobi city, in terms of public and private healthcare services provision; and formal and informal food provisioning facilities.
3. The processes and policies that influence the spatial patterns of ill health and nutrition; access to affordable, quality healthcare services, and to adequate, affordable healthy diets for wellbeing.
4. Key lessons for integrated measures and interventions that can can inform policy and practice of health and nutrition services.

City of systems and political settlements analysis

A political settlements approach for health, wellbeing and nutrition must acknowledge and engage with two arenas of governance: the interpersonal relationships that shape systems behaviours and outcomes, and which, in African cities, often result in emergent and informal systems that support individuals, households and communities; and the written laws, policies and rules associated with government mandate, which may overlook or diminish the value provided by the bottom-up, informal governance systems.

A systems approach also makes explicit the system hierarchies and interdependencies. Various actors operate at different scales but influence each other:

• At the household level, health and nutrition are care/reproduction responsibilities, hence heavily gendered. Understanding the challenges and strategies of low-income households is the basis to understanding the impact on this group of the domain’s actors.
• At the neighbourhood level, a range of formal/informal enterprises, civil society and non-governmental organisations and government (national and municipal) agencies shape access to health and nutrition; here, local initiatives and power relations and patronage are of particular interest.
• At the city level, city planners and other municipal technical specialists play important roles. Political leaders may show interest in this domain for rent (income and accumulation) but also for legitimacy and electoral gain.

Priority complex problems and their possible solutions are typically cross-sectoral and cross-systemic. The city of systems approach makes explicit the need to connect health, wellbeing and nutrition to a broad set of structural causal elements in the city that result in good or poor wellbeing outcomes. It requires that we consider intersection points for the different systems and ask: are these systems collapsing or reconfiguring? If they are reconfiguring, we might be able to find the links and simple intervention points to drive transformation.

Health systems and food systems overlap with labour markets, informality, housing, water and sanitation, land access, and so on, offering many routes for investigation. Our research will not focus on short-term wins or low-hanging fruit but, rather, take a structural perspective that aims to identify the long-term pathways for change.

Header photo credit: Serg73 / Canva Pro. A market stall in Khartoum, Sudan.

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

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

Tell us a bit about your background…

I did my undergraduate and postgraduate studies in sociology and development studies at Addis Ababa University (AAU), and I also have an MSc in urban management and development from the Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS). I then worked as an academic project coordinator and a lecturer at Ethiopian public universities, before deciding to pursue my education further, and was awarded a PhD in planning and environmental management from The University of Manchester. Since finishing my PhD, I have been working at The University of Manchester in different capacities – previously as a course unit lecturer, GCRF visiting postdoctoral fellow and most recently as a research associate in the African Cities Research Consortium. 

How would you explain your research to a friend or family member?

My research focuses on critically understanding the political processes shaping urban development. Conventional urban planning is presented as an apolitical and technical process, used to efficiently organise modern cities. Yet in practice, it prioritises the interests of political and business elites, while marginalising the majority urban poor, especially in the global South. But these marginalised groups are not passive victims of the process; they strategise to survive and expand their opportunities. So, my research broadly focuses on understanding the political and economic forces that adversely affect urban poor communities and how they respond to their exclusion. I also want my research to contribute to the efforts of these groups in challenging their marginalisation. For example, my GCRF-funded postdoctoral research – influenced by Slum Dwellers International – facilitated women-led, saving-based social organisation and participatory research in one of Addis Ababa’s inner-city settlements.

What does your role within ACRC entail?

Within ACRC, I have a dual responsibility. First, I am responsible for supporting the research on crosscutting themes (finance, gender and climate change) and other broad aspects of ACRC work. Second, I am also working on my own research project, which compares and contrasts how informal settlement residents mobilise and strategise to improve their housing and living conditions in Harare and Addis Ababa. The study aims to capture how social organisations of informal settlement residents capitalise on the political opportunities and minimise threats from their respective governments, in their effort to improve their housing and living conditions.

“My research broadly focuses on understanding the political and economic forces that adversely affect urban poor communities and how they respond to their exclusion. I also want my research to contribute to the efforts of these groups in challenging their marginalisation.”

What are you finding most interesting about your work with ACRC so far? What are you most excited about?

The most exciting thing about my fellowship at ACRC is the opportunity of collaborating with accomplished and emerging researchers in their field. For an early career researcher, such as myself, ACRC provides an ideal platform for learning, building networks and expanding my research scope. Working within such a transdisciplinary research environment allows me to expand my analytical lens and adopt a comparative research approach, while the mentorship scheme within my fellowship will help me shape my academic career strategically. Last but not least, working alongside young and enthusiastic ACRC fellows is great for building collegiality and we all help to motivate each other.

In a few words, what one issue do you think needs to be prioritised to improve urban development in African cities?

Planning with, not against, disadvantaged communities.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

I enjoy walking/hiking, reading books and socialising with friends, along with watching movies, TV shows and documentaries in my spare time.

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

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

Tell us a bit about your background…

My background is in law. I lectured and practised law in Kenya prior to undertaking my PhD, which I recently completed at Cardiff University. My research is transdisciplinary, focusing on rights-based approaches to development, particularly integrating participation in urban governance. I am also interested in understanding how land in the city can be unlocked to provide for the needs of the city’s inhabitants, especially the most vulnerable and marginalised groups.

How would you explain your research to a friend or family member?

I examine the institutions and actors that play key roles in shaping the outlook of our cities. My research identifies the instances where, and the reasons why, these actors come together to explore solutions to urban challenges, and the interventions they devise to tackle the identified challenges. I am particularly keen on exploring the visions for change these actors project – are they inclusive of the inhabitants of marginalised urban neighbourhoods? And what do they mean for access to land and basic services in informal settlements?

What does your role within ACRC entail?

At ACRC, I support the work of the informal settlements domain. The domain seeks to understand the political economy and politics of informal settlement development. We aim to understand the growth trajectories of informal settlements in African cities and to examine the drivers of their growth. We also explore the ways in which organised communities seek to address the needs of informal settlements at the city scale. I will also work on my individual project, which examines the urban governance interventions that have been rolled out in Nairobi in the periods between 1980-2022.

“It is interesting to see how ACRC is building strong, horizontal collaborations with a diverse range of research partners and how the process makes a conscious effort to centre the voices of marginalised urban communities.”

What are you finding most interesting about your work with ACRC so far? What are you most excited about?

ACRC brings together expertise from various institutions and African countries. It is interesting to see how ACRC is building strong, horizontal collaborations with a diverse range of research partners and how the process makes a conscious effort to centre the voices of marginalised urban communities. I am also excited to work with and learn from an incredible team of urbanists who are working together to tackle complex problems in Africa’s rapidly urbanising cities.

In fewer than five words, what one issue do you think needs to be prioritised to improve urban development in African cities?

Democratising urban governance.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

When the weather is good, you will find me going for a walk, a run in the park, or spending time outdoors with friends. I love watching insightful documentaries and reading a good book.

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

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

By Daniela Beltrame and Smith Ouma

Acknowledging tensions in knowledge co-production

Collaborations between academia and grassroots organisations are not without tensions and power imbalances. For urban low-income communities, engaging with academics may mean enduring disqualification of their knowledge. The current hegemonic order dictates that academic knowledge be the primary reference for expertise, rigour or accuracy. Academic institutions, particularly Western institutions, wield immense power to conceive what Musila refers to as “normative credibility”. This means there is a strong likelihood that some knowledge systems will remain subjugated.

Systematic reflection and assessment are key to preventing or reverting this. ACRC’s research approach integrates these notions to build strong, horizontal collaborations with a diverse range of research partners. Among these partnerships, collaborating with Slum Dwellers International (SDI) means engaging a network of community-based organisations present in 32 countries and hundreds of cities and towns across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

We focus here on SDI’s affiliates in Zimbabwe (the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation and its support NGO, Dialogue on Shelter), and their work in Harare. Through understanding their approach to working with academic institutions, and particularly their knowledge generation strategies and collaboration process within ACRC, we hope to understand what drives their practice, and highlight potential avenues for the broader consortium.

A long history of collaboration

The Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation (the Federation), is a network of community savings groups created in the late 1990s, with membership now standing at 46,900 members. Dialogue on Shelter (Dialogue) is the Federation’s professional support organisation (PSO). Dialogue and the Federation have a lengthy history of partnerships with academia. They acknowledge that academic knowledge can be significant in defining problems and solutions.

According to George Masimba, director of programmes at Dialogue, “collaborations with academic institutions help strengthen our data collection processes, but more importantly, also legitimise data that is collected by communities”. Dialogue has, for instance, been working with the University of Zimbabwe in Harare and with other universities in Zimbabwe’s secondary cities. The collaborations are guided by the memorandums of understanding (MOU) between Dialogue and the universities and academics with whom they partner. Through these MOUs, they are able to collaboratively define the terms of engagement, as well as lay a foundation upon which to navigate power imbalances at play.

Academics have also increasingly acknowledged the relevance and power of grassroots organisations like the Zimbabwe Federation and Dialogue as legitimate epistemological arenas. Universities have opened up formal academic spaces where slum dwellers are engaging, as teachers and lecturers of their own lived experience. An example is the partnership between SDI affiliates and the Global Development Institute at The University of Manchester in which the affiliates co-deliver a Master’s class in citizen-led development. This course unit was co-developed with the SDI Alliance in Zimbabwe, bringing community leaders from South Africa, Kenya and Uganda to deliver teaching to students at The University of Manchester. For George Masimba, bringing universities into terrains they are not used to is “also a way of addressing the power asymmetry that normally comes with these collaborations”.

Rooted in the movement

This theory of practice is clearly grounded in the ritualised practices of the broader SDI movement. Hence, for George Masimba, Dialogue’s work “is informed by our affiliation with SDI”. The model presented by SDI includes a series of “practices for change” that the movement calls “rituals”. These rituals, which include data collection, sharing learning experiences and methodologies, and supporting each other through horizontal exchanges, are the basis upon which marginalised urban communities produce knowledge and shape their city.

Concerned with creating space for the voice, action and particularly leadership of those historically marginalised, they contest the hegemonic narrow conception that slum dwellers are unable to produce knowledge, organise or lead because of their condition. Moreover, SDI’s work challenges the notion that slums or shacks and their dwellers constitute a sort of problem, and that it is mainly the task of academics or professionals to somehow solve this problem.

As George Masimba puts it, “data collection is our way of empowering slum communities, in terms of enabling them to transform their communities through that data. So the data is collected and then used to organise communities and also to engage decisionmakers”.

The movement is intentional in creating alternative city-making epistemologies and practice, revealing the value of difference for the crafting of alternative urban futures.

There is a conscious effort for historically marginalised populations to take centre stage, rather than have their voices mediated by NGOs. In fact, the NGO that accompanies the work of each Federation is referred to as a “professional support organisation” (PSO), in constant reminder of its place. This presents a clear distinction with the assistance-based, paternalistic attitude that external NGOs generally reproduce, which hinders communities’ potential to define research questions, select priorities or allocate resources. 

Knowledge produced by (diverse) communities

The Federation produces knowledge on local conditions, based on data it has generated. Its members, supported by their PSO, decide what issues are relevant, what knowledge registers are credible, and what information from these registers is important to address the identified issues. Crucially, this ensures that locally generated evidence is used to define priority areas in need of action and the relevant interventions to address the identified priorities.

Within ACRC, Dialogue and the Federation are leading the Harare city team in the informal settlements domain. George Masimba describes their process:

“Our first step was to put together a team composed of both the professionals from the NGO side and communities from the Federation groups. Why? Because … communities have been conducting surveys in these settlements for many years, so we feel that they should … be part of the research team. We thought that was one way of ensuring that communities can influence the way in which we are going to be carrying out the work here in Harare … it would have been weird for us to exclude them if we are serious about the carrying out research process that seeks to transform these communities. So we set up a small team of about eight people … Then after that, we developed the preliminary research tools, informed by the ACRC concept note. We did a process together with these communities where, based on these themes, we developed questions that we thought would be useful as research questions under this domain.”

While slum dwellers themselves are the drivers of the agenda, it is key to understand that the role of the PSO is not without contradiction. For instance, George Masimba openly acknowledges the need for further reflection about power imbalances within the affiliate’s own teams:

“If we are serious about having an approach that is conscious of the power imbalances, no matter in what form they can come, I think we ought to reflect a bit more in terms of power issues within the teams themselves.”

This also means reckoning with the diversity of voices within the teams and acknowledging that the communities themselves are not necessarily homogeneous. Furthermore, disciplined self-reflection is key to ensure that certain voices, like that of the youth, are amplified rather than going unheard.

Towards “better” knowledge co-production

By decentring academic conventionalities and affirming their local epistemological registers, Dialogue on Shelter reminds us of the multiple modes of knowing and their status as credible knowledge producers. In spite of tensions, the epistemology and practices that emanate from the SDI processes present valuable alternative forms of knowledge co-production that “by far exceed the North Atlantic understanding of the world”.

These practices also reaffirm the idea that learning is bidirectional, which co-production endeavours must acknowledge.

Header photo credit: Hannah van Rooyen. ACRC workshop in Nairobi, Kenya.

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

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

By Michael Danquah, Rachel Gisselquist, Kunal Sen and Matthew Sharp

Structural transformation involves the movement of workers from low- and labour-intensive productivity sectors to high-productivity sectors. It has historically been associated with a shift from agrarian economies to more industrial economies based around urban areas, as seen in many Western nations as well as the Southeast Asian giants. It is thought to have been crucial to economic growth and poverty reduction, by creating jobs and improving labour productivity.

In many African countries, however, the prospect of a thriving manufacturing industry seems difficult to realise. Urbanisation has taken place without structural transformation and cities’ economic sectors are dominated by low-productivity, informal enterprises. Many of these informal enterprises are found in the services sector, mainly wholesale and retail trade, whilst a few enterprises are engaged in informal manufacturing. Large segments of the urban population work in the low-paid, informal wage economy, often self-employed. Disentangling the connections between cities and structural change will be essential for creating growth and reducing poverty.

Structural transformation has the potential to foster economic diversification and inclusive growth. For effective policymaking, it is important to understand the drivers of structural transformation at the city level. It is also critical to understand what other patterns of structural transformation – that is, leapfrog development (economic transition from agriculture to services, jumping the manufacturing stage) – might mean for the sustainable growth of African cities. 

City systems and elites

Certain key elements are significant for facilitating productivity growth and structural transformation in cities, and securing the benefits of agglomeration. These include essential city systems of urban planning, infrastructural service provision, state- and city-led productivity-enhancing policies and regulatory frameworks, and educational and technology accumulation strategies.

Adequate and efficient key city systems and infrastructure (such as transport, energy, telecommunications, water and waste management) would accelerate structural transformation. They could generate higher returns and lower entry costs in high public-capital-intensive sectors, as well as helping to increase the productivity of private inputs. They would also reduce operational and transaction costs.

Some national initiatives to facilitate structural transformation involve developing productivity-enhancing “smart cities” that use digital and telecommunication technologies and transportation corridors. Reforms to encourage enterprise investment are also another national initiative, often in response to donor pressure. Such moves are associated with a range of paradigmatic ideas, including the development of city economies and structural transformation, charter cities, “modernisation” and agglomeration economies.

Understanding the role of political leaders in the political economy of city economies and structural transformation is also key. Ruling elites, business elites and their associations, collectives of small and medium enterprises, financial institutions and state agencies play a significant role in the prioritisation and allocation of access to rent (based on identity or political affiliation). One of the issues we will consider is the autonomy of the business elite and/or its connections with those in political power.

Ruling elites need to be committed to investing in earning rents for firms, providing the public infrastructure required for firms to operate productively, and building productive forms of state–business relations. This can stand in tension with the incentives facing elites to extract rents from firms and household enterprises and to enter into collusive relationships, such as offering subsidies and contracts in return for political and personal financing. As an example of how political objectives can result in misplaced economic policies, some ruling elites use job creation for un/semi-skilled youth as a means to gain legitimacy, without paying attention to what is required to provide long-term employment.

Key ideas and research questions

We will be working in Accra, Harare and Nairobi. These cities have experienced high rates of urbanisation, coupled with high levels of informality – mainly low-productive, informal self-employment. Urbanisation has occurred but workers in these cities are still trapped in low-productive, labour-intensive activities.

Our approach will involve both quantitative and qualitative methods. Firm and population censuses and GIS methods will be employed for the quantitative analysis. The qualitative methodology will consist of 20-25 key informant interviews, conducted with key domain actors.

Key actors

We group key actors influential in the urban development space into three clusters: the private sector, the state (including politicians), and non-state actors.

Private sector

To map and identify the key private sector actors, we use the rents space tool (see below) from the “Deals and Development” conceptual framework. This takes a political settlements view of business–government relations, in order to analyse the rent space – that is, which individuals receive the returns on assets, and how.

According to this framework, in the private sector, the “magicians” and “workhorse” segments of the rents space would tend to dominate.  Key business associations, such as local chapters of small business associations, associations of business owners, and Rotary clubs are also relevant, for a perspective of group interests.

Rents space

The state

The state actors are bureaucrats, local politicians and state-/politically affiliated individuals or groups (mapped below). Bureaucrats and local politicians are more powerful and influential among this cluster.

Non-state agencies and actors

Non-state agencies and actors influential in the urban development space are civil societies, the media, and experts (see below). Civil societies and the media play a more significant role in this cluster.

Governance modalities

Following the initial mapping of the domain’s key actors, drawing on the literature, further analysis at the city level will be carried out. Detailed analysis of our findings aims to capture clearly how the domain is governed in each country at multiple levels. Analysis will also capture how governance modalities in African cities promote or hinder structural transformation and sustainable development. Generally, state actors would lead the formulation and implementation of policies, in consultation with the private sector, particularly business associations and non-state actors. Often the governance dynamics can themselves be binding constraints to structural transformation.

Understanding the connections between the city and the movement of workers from labour-intensive, low-productivity sectors to high-productivity sectors is vital for the city’s growth and sustainable development. The domain is expected to throw more light on the drivers of structural transformation at the city level, as well as its intersections with city political settlements. Priority complex problems will be identified in the domain for all three cities.

Header photo credit: STORYTELLER / Canva Pro. Aerial view of a street intersection in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

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

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

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

It has been an exciting month for the African Cities Research Consortium, as members from across the consortium met together in person for the first time in Nairobi. Running from 17 to 19 May, our workshop brought together more than 80 delegates – mostly research teams from our focus cities, along with those from The University of Manchester and other partner institutions.

Vibrant discussions were held over the three days of meetings, exploring a vast array of topics including ACRC’s conceptual framework, urban reform, community knowledge, capacity strengthening, research uptake, decolonisation and priority complex problems.

After more than 18 months of meeting and collaborating remotely, the workshop was the first time that many colleagues were meeting in person and provided a brilliant opportunity to share updates on progress, ideas for improvement, and ambitions for the next stages of work.

The key objectives of the workshop were to:

• Review and assess progress to date on city and domain studies, enabling experiences to be shared across cities, domains and cross-cutting themes (climate, finance and gender).
• Identify which processes are working well and what needs to be improved.
• Develop processes for cross-city and cross-domain analysis at the city level, along with cross-domain and thematic analysis at the programme level.
• Share information and ideas for the implementation phase.
• Review ACRC knowledge generation and knowledge use processes in terms of equitability and inclusivity, including issues related to decolonisation.
• Advance a culture of sharing and build knowledge around the contribution of others involved (including cities, domains and uptake) to facilitate engagement going forward.

Mukuru field visit

The week of meetings started with an optional field visit for consortium members to the informal settlement of Mukuru. We were separated into two groups and shown around Mukuru kwa Reuben and Viwandani by community members and organisers from Muungano wa Wanavijiji, the Kenyan federation of slum dwellers and an affiliate of Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI).

To help upgrade the settlement, Muungano has long been involved in a process of engaging both the communities and local authorities. This has led to significant progress in Mukuru, especially following its designation as a Special Planning Area (SPA). Over the last 18 months, clean water kiosks have been set up, water and sewerage piping networks extended and many roads improved.

While there have been many challenges and obstacles to overcome, the reform coalition between the community members, civil society organisations, local government, land and structure owners, researchers and national government has been crucial to driving progress.

And the hard work continues. With a vision to improve access to housing for residents in the settlement and deliver further training on community organising, we’re looking forward to seeing what Muungano achieves next.

Day 1 | ACRC overview, urban reform, domains + crosscutting themes

The first day of the workshop began with an overview of ACRC’s research approach and theory of change from Diana Mitlin, followed by a group session discussing the necessary and sufficient conditions for urban reform in African cities.

Next up, we had a round of “turbo talks” from our domain teams, providing the wider consortium with an overview of the issues being explored, updates on progress, overlaps with other domains and exciting findings so far.

Sam Hickey, Seth Schindler and Tim Kelsall then talked through our conceptual framework, with valuable insights provided by Joseph Macarthy, executive director of the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre, into the work being done in Freetown.

The group split into parallel sessions in the afternoon, discussing domains, city of systems, political settlements and uptake work across our focus cities.

And the final session of the day focused on our three crucial crosscutting themes – gender, finance and climate change – with presentations and smaller group discussions led by Rachel Tolhurst, Gundula Löffler and David Dodman.

Day 1 of our workshop in Nairobi kicks off with an icebreaker – consortium members placing themselves along continua of political economy vs urban systems, research vs programming, and more ↔️

All agreed that effectively communicating evidence is key to driving policy change 🗣 pic.twitter.com/p0WlKQJJvj

— African Cities Research Consortium (@AfricanCities_) May 17, 2022

Day 2 | Decolonisation, community knowledge + uptake

After an overview from Sam Hickey, our second day of meetings commenced with a session on decolonisation, led by Ola Uduku and Shuaib Lwasa. The group explored questions around decolonising research structures, overcoming unconscious bias and prioritising community and practitioner voices.

Next up, Beth Chitekwe-Biti moderated a panel on community knowledge, featuring Nancy Njoki, Dorice Moseti, Nicera Wanjiru, Joseph Muturi and Eva Muchiri from Muungano wa Wanavijiji. The team talked about their experiences of partnering with researchers, NGOs and government on data collection and the importance of community-generated interventions.

ACRC’s uptake director Martin Atela and communications manager Chris Jordan then led a session on research uptake, looking at its role in addressing priority complex problems, the key components of uptake, and next steps in the consortium’s uptake strategy.

Parallel sessions in the afternoon focused on bilateral linkages across domains – or domain “speed dating”, as it came to be known – and the lessons that set 2 cities can learn from set 1 cities. These were followed by open space discussions on capacity strengthening and publications strategy, operations and safeguarding.

The day ended with an update on Covid Collective work and findings, along with a meeting for informal settlements and political settlements leads to agree on an approach for wider discussion and action.

Day 2 of our consortium-wide meeting is underway here in Nairobi! 🙌

⁦@IIED⁩ ⁦@ODI_Global⁩ ⁦@GlobalDevInst⁩ ⁦@PASGR_⁩ ⁦@sdinet⁩ ⁦@UNUWIDER⁩ ⁦@ICLEIAfrica⁩ ⁦@LSTMnews⁩ ⁦@LivUniArch⁩ pic.twitter.com/EOZ0xn05in

— African Cities Research Consortium (@AfricanCities_) May 18, 2022

Day 3 | Priority complex problems, reflections + next steps

Our final day of workshops started with an introduction from Martin Atela, who looked back on the previous day’s discussions and ahead to the remaining few sessions. Diana Mitlin then took over to deliver an overview of priority complex problems (PCPs) – covering the identification process and next steps – and answering questions about the coordination across domain and city teams.

The dialogue around PCPs and the next phase of ACRC continued with group exercises and a “fishbowl” discussion, giving domain leads initially and then everyone else a chance to air thoughts, ideas and queries in an open forum.

Moving on to reflections on progress so far, Shuaib Lwasa invited the group to think about ACRC in terms of its impact on individual members and whether/how the three-day meeting had lived up to its purpose. The general consensus was that simply meeting in person had been invaluable for deepening understanding, and that holding the meeting in Nairobi had been critical to shifting the locus of expertise to Africa.

Wrap-up remarks from Sam Hickey and Diana Mitlin were then followed by an insightful presentation on the development of the Mukuru SPA from urban planner Peter Ngau and consultant Mary Mutinda – focusing on the planning, consultation and implementation process and highlighting the importance of community participation to influence change.

After two days filled with conversations about driving ACRC forward, our third and final day of meetings is underway!@PASGR_’s Martin Atela gets things moving with a run through of today’s activities, followed by a session on Priority Complex Problems from @DianaMitlin 🎯 pic.twitter.com/cYqTRIDmCg

— African Cities Research Consortium (@AfricanCities_) May 19, 2022

Despite a packed agenda and a huge amount to discuss, the levels of energy and investment only built as the days went on. We still have a lot to unpack from the workshop and a healthy amount of feedback to channel into our processes as we drive ACRC forward. But encompassing many of the thoughts, queries, challenges and ideas was a resounding question put forward by Muungano wa Wanavijiji: “What will ACRC’s legacy be?”

As we reflect on lessons learned and look ahead to our implementation phase, it’s a vital question to keep in mind.

Header photo credit: Chris Jordan

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

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