Book review: The Urban Question in Africa: Uneven Geographies of Transition

Padraig R Carmody, James T Murphy, and Richard Grant, et al., The Urban Question in Africa: Uneven Geographies of Transition, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2024; 288 pp.: ISBN: 9781119833611, $94.95 (hbk); ISBN: 9781119833642, £22.99/US $32.00 (eBook); ISBN: 9781119833628, £22.99/$39.95 (pbk)

The African urban narrative has been framed and shaped by western-inspired ideologies. Despite recent devotion towards understanding urbanisation on the continent (Guma and Monstadt, 2021), the true meaning of the ‘urban’ in Africa’s development account, outcomes and pathways has received limited consideration in dominant urban studies as well as geography discourse and practice, which continue to privilege western modernised ideals of the urban in contrast to local community agency. The Urban Question in Africa is an imposing exertion by the authors, Carmody, Murphy, Grant and Owusu, to foreground the urban development narrative and bring together the interconnectedness of meta-trends both established (e.g. informality) and emerging (e.g. climate change) to demonstrate the uneven geographies in the continent’s urban transition.

Written by authors with a background in geography, who are either based or have extensive research construction in Africa, this book is an outstanding, comprehensive analysis of urban issues that addresses the void in Africa’s urbanisation dialogue. It presents the contested nature and forms of urban transitions providing new and deeper insights into the complications of significant topics, particularly climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, urban informality, new city development and geopolitical evolution. Using case studies of varying contexts and scales across urban Africa, the authors present a novel framework based on generative urban transitions within which cities as socio-technical systems influenced by production, consumption and infrastructure regimes are conceptualised. As the authors note in the introductory section, despite the ‘Africa Rising’ allegory (Carmody et al., 2020), urbanisation across the continent continues to occur without industrialisation contributing to elusive generative pathways such as social upgrading, new economic opportunities, and growth in formal employment (p. 3). At the same time, informality is mushrooming across the continent’s cities providing an important livelihood source for about 85% of residents (Choi et al., 2020). This book proves the criticality of understanding urban transitions in Africa, developing a new and significant milestone in Africa’s urban studies and geography research.

The Urban Question in Africa contains ten chapters that encompass a progressive understanding of the various drivers in the making of the urban. Considering the social, economic, cultural, environmental and research diversity across urban Africa, this book is a testament to the huge mission of the authors to bring together the many parts, geographies, experiences and understandings to warrant reliable eminence and academic rigour, and to assemble these into a comprehensible collection. And I argue that this task has been achieved. To begin, the authors offer a provocative opening section debating the urban transition in Africa, analysing both the ‘parasitic nature’ and the generative capacity of the African urban. The introduction challenges the prevailing hegemony of the western-inspired conceptualisation of the urban and argues for a new theorisation focussing on the south, particularly Africa. In Chapter 1, the authors expand on the argument in the introduction by developing the socio-technical systems approach as the theoretical framework for understanding the ‘urban’ in Africa premised on overlapping regimes of production, infrastructure and consumption.

In Chapter 2, the authors meaningfully show the relationship between urbanisation and industrialisation in Africa, demonstrating the continent’s manufacturing path dependencies (p. 38). Here, the disconnect between urbanisation and industrialisation in African cities is established and traced through colonial and post-colonial history, imprints and legacies. Expanding on the influences of industrialisation in Africa’s urbanisation discourse, Chapter 3 analyses the direct and indirect influences of the rise of China and other related economies in shaping the urban agenda in Africa through large-scale infrastructure projects, Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and housing developments linked to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This chapter shows the entanglements of urbanisation as a localised and globalised phenomenon through the exportation of China’s urban development ideas in investment and infrastructure construction (Zheng et al., 2023).

Drawing on ‘new city’ development and the ‘fantasy urbanism’ proposition (Watson, 2014), the authors in Chapter 4 examine efforts to reimagine and implement large-scale urban development projects, frequently described as ‘new cities’ in African cities (Korah, 2020). Using cases from Eko-Atlantic (Nigeria), Hope City (Ghana) and Konza Technopolis (Kenya), the authors demonstrate the neoliberal planning processes and theory underpinning such projects, as well as their outcomes. A major finding from this chapter is that these large-scale development projects do not necessarily address the problems of African cities (p. 88). Instead, they compound and contribute to introversion, regime fragmentation and splintering urbanism. This is an important insight as such projects are frequently touted as solutions to Africa’s urban development inadequacies. Given the limitations of a formalised agenda via new city development to address the continent’s urban development challenges, Chapter 5 focusses on urban informality. Here, the authors focus on the informal economy’s creation and the fragmentation of production, consumption and infrastructure systems. Analysis of various aspects of the informal economy including emerging nodes (e.g. e-waste management) and attempts towards formalisation of the informal economy and the challenges thereof is presented. The case of Agbogbloshie in Ghana’s capital Accra is used to provide insights into both the potential of urban informality and innovative approaches (e.g. makerspace innovation) towards improving the efficiency and potency of the sector (p. 98). This is an important phase of the debate on urban informality. Until recently, when scholars (e.g. Finn and Cobbinah, 2023) have argued for a rethink of state actors’ untoward actions and responses to informality, the sector has consistently been attacked, aberrated and neglected. The authors’ analysis of innovative ways of improving urban informality is a welcome argument towards altering entrenched perceptions in Africa.

The authors in Chapter 6 use empirical dataset from Uber and Bolt drivers in Cape Town (South Africa) to explore the concept of the gig economy, its growth and challenges in African cities (p. 118). Their analysis of the hybridity of the gig economy in terms of the formal–informal interface provides credence to the importance of acknowledging the interdependence of the formal and informal sectors particularly in understanding how capital and labour are inter-constitutive. Extending this analysis further, the authors in Chapter 7 show the sheer scale of infrastructure and service provision inadequacies on the continent. African cities are marked by huge infrastructure and service gaps, and the authors explain the spatial splintering and fragmentation of access to infrastructure shaped by class, inequalities, injustices, and growth and distribution challenges.

Positioning African cities within the global urban development quagmire, the authors use Chapter 8 to first demonstrate the vulnerability of urban Africa to climate change and health concerns (e.g. the COVID-19 pandemic) within the framework of socio-technical regimes (p. 155), and second to illustrate the unique disposition of African cities that warrant careful attention and specific adaptation and resilience responses (p. 163), which reflect an emerging dialogue on African urban studies (e.g. Cobbinah and Finn, 2023).

In Chapters 9 and 10, the authors look into the future by analysing sustainable forms of urban development. While Chapter 9 offers insights into the green economy reflecting on the experience in African cities such as Cape Town through SEZ, and the broad informal sector, Chapter 10 lays the foundation for understanding the possibilities of generative urban transitions on the continent. Considering constraints, capabilities, governance and resilience, the authors analyse the enablers for urban residents and city authorities to address challenges to progressive urban transition, highlighting the centrality of socio-technical framework as an approach to systematic, comparative and situated analyses of African cities.

The book offers three conceptual and empirical lessons – meta-trends, socio-technical systems and regenerative capacity – that provide important insights for African cities and understanding Global South cities in general. First, meta-trends including climate change, health crises and global geopolitical evolution remain undesirable in African cities and have emerged to add another layer of burden to the continent’s urbanisation challenges. As global geopolitics expands across the continent, the expectation that it will address urban challenges has become a phantasmagoria of mystery. Second, the socio-technical systems approach is an important theoretical and applied framework developed by the authors to focus on gateway opportunities for informal entrepreneurship and innovation emphasising why geographic context counts. This framework provides a new space for a critical focus on interactions, networks, collaborations and collective arrangements pivotal to urban informality. Third, because regenerative urbanism mostly requires ‘place-based, context-specific solutions’ (p. 187), it is important to harness a more productive and pragmatic approach involving capabilities, governance and resilience strategies to address challenges facing African cities, while ensuring that constraints fuelled by power relations, structural and socio-economic inequality, material limitations, risks and vulnerabilities are managed and alleviated.

In conclusion, this is a terrific addition to the ongoing dialogue on African urbanisation, which will be hugely appreciated by urban studies and geography scholars and students alike. It is worth mentioning that this review only provides a snippet of what is contained in this book. I could not figure out a mainstream urban studies or geography issue in Africa that is not covered in this volume, and the socio-technical systems approach developed will no doubt grow in application. Overall, this book remains a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding and engaging with urbanisation and urban development in Africa.

References

Carmody P, Kragelund P, Reboredo R (2020) Africa’s Shadow Rise: China and the Mirage of African Economic Development. London: Zed. Crossref; Google Scholar

Choi J, Dutz MA, Usman Z (eds) (2020) The Future of Work in Africa: Harnessing the Potential of Digital Technologies for All. Africa Development Forum. Washington: World Bank Publications. Crossref; Google Scholar

Cobbinah PB, Finn BM (2023) Planning and climate change in African cities: Informal urbanisation and ‘just’ urban transformations. Journal of Planning Literature 38(3): 361–379. Crossref; Web of Science; Google Scholar

Finn BM, Cobbinah PB (2023) African urbanisation at the confluence of informality and climate change. Urban Studies 60(3): 405–424. Crossref; Web of Science; Google Scholar

Guma PK, Monstadt J (2021) Smart city making? The spread of ICT-driven plans and infrastructures in Nairobi. Urban Geography 42(3): 360–381. Crossref; Web of Science; Google Scholar

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Zheng WH, Bouzarovski S, Knuth S, et al. (2023) Interrogating China’s global urban presence. Geopolitics 28(1): 310–332. Crossref; Web of Science; Google Scholar

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