Periodic Reporting for period 4 - MAU (Making Africa Urban: The transcalar politics of large-scale urban development)
Reporting period: 2024-03-01 to 2025-08-31
Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project
African cities are being strongly impacted by the coincident rise of different powerful globalising processes and global actors. This includes, international developmental commitments to address infrastructural needs and humanitarian concerns in African cities through significant and large-scale, often city-wide programmes; an impressive growth in sovereign investments (e.g. from China) associated with diplomatic and economic goals across the continent; and private sector-led investments in urban developments and infrastructure motivated by expectations of profitable returns, especially in a relatively low-growth global economic context. We are calling these “developmental, sovereign and private” circuits, shaping African cities.
All of these circuits bring powerful actors, dominant ideas and huge financial investment into situations of often poorly resourced local governments, and national governments with distinctive agendas, often to do with promoting national level growth and direct or indirect political or personal benefit. Some major issues arise, most significantly, what are the impacts of these investments on cities; and (how) can urban residents benefit from this huge inflow of investment? And since in any given urban context, these circuits overlap, with private sector contractors and foreign state-owned enterprises often delivering developmental projects, and market-led developments attracting significant sovereign investors, there is a question as to whether a major developmental push linked to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, to deliver urban infrastructure across Africa, might be undermined by private and sovereign interests seeking to profit from delivering, constructing or designing large-scale urban interventions. Might these powerful transnational actors divert developmental investments from meeting local needs?
Why is it important for society?
By 2050, official UN projections suggest, more urban dwellers will live in Africa than in Europe. Although the data are not uncontested, urban populations are growing rapidly through both high underlying population growth rates and complex migration patterns. Managing urban growth is a significant challenge, for weakly resourced states, especially poorly capacitated local governments but more generally the future of cities is central to the agendas of economic growth, climate change and ending poverty. In response, the successful mobilization of an urban agenda in international development policy, notably through bringing an urban focus to multilateral and official development aid organizations, has led to significant scaling up of investment in improving urban governance and infrastructure. Most recently, the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Habitat III process have consolidated and strengthened policy-driven analyses of urbanization and instituted a new orthodoxy of urban development and governance. Many different international organizations are working to activate this approach in poorer cities around the world. The international policy drivers of urbanization across Africa have therefore been significantly intensified.
At the same time as this humanitarian impulse is shaping development interventions across urban Africa, powerful private and sovereign circuits of urban investment are also increasingly involved in making Africa’s urban future, and being directly invited to contributed to addressing the urban development challenges of the continent.
The question which this project addresses is whether there are ways of harnessing the new international interest in urban development for wider public benefit. This draws attention to the political settlements or governance arrangements in particular urban contexts which shape and direct the nature of investments and also any possible benefits from that. And it directs attention to the potential for securing better outcomes and wider public value from the profit and wider implications for urban economies of the creation of new urban spaces.
The overall research objectives are:
To understand and assess the formation and impacts of large scale urban development in cities in Africa in relation to transcalar governance processes, value flows and territorial outcomes.
To analyse and compare three transnational circuits of urban investment (developmental, sovereign and private) through detailed analysis of nine cases of large-scale urban developments and interventions in three cities in Africa (Accra, Dar es Salaam, Lilongwe).
In relation to these cases, the project therefore seeks to establish:
1. What kinds of urban territories are being created through large-scale urban developments?
2. How are these developments being shaped by different circuits of knowledge, actors, practices and financial flows in sovereign, private and developmental projects?
3. What kinds of governance relations emerge in the interactions amongst transnational actors and locally distinctive politics in large-scale urban developments? How are they assembled in transcalar networks of governance? How do these shape the nature and form of the development?
4. How are developments financed, and how is the financial and use value produced distributed across different actors? What are the geographies of financing and value distribution?
All of these circuits bring powerful actors, dominant ideas and huge financial investment into situations of often poorly resourced local governments, and national governments with distinctive agendas, often to do with promoting national level growth and direct or indirect political or personal benefit. Some major issues arise, most significantly, what are the impacts of these investments on cities; and (how) can urban residents benefit from this huge inflow of investment? And since in any given urban context, these circuits overlap, with private sector contractors and foreign state-owned enterprises often delivering developmental projects, and market-led developments attracting significant sovereign investors, there is a question as to whether a major developmental push linked to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, to deliver urban infrastructure across Africa, might be undermined by private and sovereign interests seeking to profit from delivering, constructing or designing large-scale urban interventions. Might these powerful transnational actors divert developmental investments from meeting local needs?
Why is it important for society?
By 2050, official UN projections suggest, more urban dwellers will live in Africa than in Europe. Although the data are not uncontested, urban populations are growing rapidly through both high underlying population growth rates and complex migration patterns. Managing urban growth is a significant challenge, for weakly resourced states, especially poorly capacitated local governments but more generally the future of cities is central to the agendas of economic growth, climate change and ending poverty. In response, the successful mobilization of an urban agenda in international development policy, notably through bringing an urban focus to multilateral and official development aid organizations, has led to significant scaling up of investment in improving urban governance and infrastructure. Most recently, the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Habitat III process have consolidated and strengthened policy-driven analyses of urbanization and instituted a new orthodoxy of urban development and governance. Many different international organizations are working to activate this approach in poorer cities around the world. The international policy drivers of urbanization across Africa have therefore been significantly intensified.
At the same time as this humanitarian impulse is shaping development interventions across urban Africa, powerful private and sovereign circuits of urban investment are also increasingly involved in making Africa’s urban future, and being directly invited to contributed to addressing the urban development challenges of the continent.
The question which this project addresses is whether there are ways of harnessing the new international interest in urban development for wider public benefit. This draws attention to the political settlements or governance arrangements in particular urban contexts which shape and direct the nature of investments and also any possible benefits from that. And it directs attention to the potential for securing better outcomes and wider public value from the profit and wider implications for urban economies of the creation of new urban spaces.
The overall research objectives are:
To understand and assess the formation and impacts of large scale urban development in cities in Africa in relation to transcalar governance processes, value flows and territorial outcomes.
To analyse and compare three transnational circuits of urban investment (developmental, sovereign and private) through detailed analysis of nine cases of large-scale urban developments and interventions in three cities in Africa (Accra, Dar es Salaam, Lilongwe).
In relation to these cases, the project therefore seeks to establish:
1. What kinds of urban territories are being created through large-scale urban developments?
2. How are these developments being shaped by different circuits of knowledge, actors, practices and financial flows in sovereign, private and developmental projects?
3. What kinds of governance relations emerge in the interactions amongst transnational actors and locally distinctive politics in large-scale urban developments? How are they assembled in transcalar networks of governance? How do these shape the nature and form of the development?
4. How are developments financed, and how is the financial and use value produced distributed across different actors? What are the geographies of financing and value distribution?
Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far
The countries where research is being undertaken and researchers located were badly hit by covid: stringent travel restrictions, lockdowns and unpredictable variants (South Africa, Tanzania, Malawi, Ghana and United Kingdom). We reorganised our work so we could progress well under the circumstances designing a new online pilot research phase and more of the research team in the countries where research is being undertaken.
Through the pilot research, we have made substantial progress on the developmental circuit. We noted the role of the Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JICA) in urban masterplanning across all our three cases, and more generally in Africa. We therefore used this as a focus for both our background and pilot research on the three cities, and to open analysis of developmental circuits. More than 45 in-depth interviews of one hour or more were conducted online. This allowed us to locate our planned case study research in the longer history of each city, and to develop the wider frame of reference for selection of case studies. In the process, we identified tour nine cases of large scale development in the three cities and completed background work on those. This has led to a suite of published and forthcoming academic papers.
Our pilot research has started to reveal the complex relationships amongst different actors in urban development. We have noted how some powerful transnational actors can be strongly embedded in trajectories of local urban development, meaning that at times significant international investments are made which reflect long term growth paths and ambitions of local actors. Here, we particularly found that masterplanning, widely criticised by scholars of urban Africa, can play a valued role in defining these ambitions in spatial terms.
We have presented our research findings at a number of in person and online conferences e.g. At the Frontiers of the Urban (UCL, 10-12 November 2019; with a podcast and online video resulting); a project session, at the South African Cities Studies Conference on 3 September 2020; and at the 5th Conference of the Association of African Planning Schools on 18 November 2021.
Although significantly delayed due to Covid, engagement activities with stakeholders and collaborators will run through the entire project, and will shape planning, data collection and analysis. Our pilot research on a developmental circuit linked to Masterplanning has led to engagement opportunities with JICA.
Review and survey research on innovative comparative method and African urban politics has been undertaken, leading to a book chapter and a major monograph by the PI, in press with Wiley-Blackwell.
Through the pilot research, we have made substantial progress on the developmental circuit. We noted the role of the Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JICA) in urban masterplanning across all our three cases, and more generally in Africa. We therefore used this as a focus for both our background and pilot research on the three cities, and to open analysis of developmental circuits. More than 45 in-depth interviews of one hour or more were conducted online. This allowed us to locate our planned case study research in the longer history of each city, and to develop the wider frame of reference for selection of case studies. In the process, we identified tour nine cases of large scale development in the three cities and completed background work on those. This has led to a suite of published and forthcoming academic papers.
Our pilot research has started to reveal the complex relationships amongst different actors in urban development. We have noted how some powerful transnational actors can be strongly embedded in trajectories of local urban development, meaning that at times significant international investments are made which reflect long term growth paths and ambitions of local actors. Here, we particularly found that masterplanning, widely criticised by scholars of urban Africa, can play a valued role in defining these ambitions in spatial terms.
We have presented our research findings at a number of in person and online conferences e.g. At the Frontiers of the Urban (UCL, 10-12 November 2019; with a podcast and online video resulting); a project session, at the South African Cities Studies Conference on 3 September 2020; and at the 5th Conference of the Association of African Planning Schools on 18 November 2021.
Although significantly delayed due to Covid, engagement activities with stakeholders and collaborators will run through the entire project, and will shape planning, data collection and analysis. Our pilot research on a developmental circuit linked to Masterplanning has led to engagement opportunities with JICA.
Review and survey research on innovative comparative method and African urban politics has been undertaken, leading to a book chapter and a major monograph by the PI, in press with Wiley-Blackwell.
Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)
Progress beyond the state of the art:
1. A major revisionist paper on the history and role of urban masterplanning in Africa. Philip Harrison & Sylvia Croese (2022): The persistence and rise of master planning in urban Africa: transnational circuits and local ambitions, Planning Perspectives, DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2022.2053880. Masterplanning has been widely repudiated as a colonial inheritance and as not fit for purpose in rapidly developing and very poor urban contexts with high levels of informality. Our empirical research revealed that Masterplanning in Africa is largely a post-independence phenomenon, associated with ambitious nationalist urban development programmes. And it also revealed that current planners and local actors value highly urban masterplanning as a way to direct infrastructure and other urban developments, especially since these are initiated from a wide variety of sources. Co-ordination, and predicting future development, are valued aspects of physical and strategic masterplanning. An open access review paper to explore and substantiate these empirical findings through historical and secondary literature was prepared by Prof Phil Harrison (CI Dar) and Dr Sylvia Croese (Postdoc Dar) and is published open access in the leading Planning journal, Planning Perspectives. The longer, comparative empirical paper co-authored by the whole team and confirming the analysis presented in the Planning Perspectives paper is in progress, almost ready for submission to leading urban studies journal, Land Use Policy. This paper is innovated in both its comparative methodology and in substantiating the revisionist argument of the Planning Perspectives paper.
2. An additional innovative paper focusses closely on the Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JICA) role in Masterplanning, and how that has been engaged with at a local level in our three case study cities. Sylvia Croese and Yohei Miyauchi (accepted) The Transcalar Politics of Urban Master Planning: The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in Africa, Area Development Policy. This additionally confirms the positive reception of urban masterplanning, and initiates the theoretical analysis of the wide range of actors involved in urban development in Africa which is a key objective of the research. It is currently in press with the leading journal, Area, Development and Policy.
3. A major manuscript contribution on Comparative Urbanism. Robinson, J. 2022 (in print, published 2 June). Comparative Urbanism: Tactics for Global Urban Studies. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. This contribution reformats the methodological foundations for global urban studies, and establishes the basis for comparative research to play a strong role in theory building for African urban context.
Expected results until the end of the project:
We anticipate delivering major insights into the transnational governance relationships shaping large scale urban developments in African urban contexts. We see early evidence that the flows and nature of investments are shaped by both local and international actors, whose concerns are intertwined in often unpredictable ways - "international" actors might be motivated by their strong embedding in a local context; "local" actors might have powerful international ambitions. We envisage bringing forward an innovative analytical vocabulary to understand the complex spatial and political dynamics shaping African cities. By bringing a diversity of transnational and local actors into the frame we will expand global urban studies' insights on urban politics. Through our stakeholder networks we will seek to ensure these insights might be mobilised to enhance wider public benefit from urban development. The work will support numerous academic publications, website based resources, and practitioner focussed publications.
1. A major revisionist paper on the history and role of urban masterplanning in Africa. Philip Harrison & Sylvia Croese (2022): The persistence and rise of master planning in urban Africa: transnational circuits and local ambitions, Planning Perspectives, DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2022.2053880. Masterplanning has been widely repudiated as a colonial inheritance and as not fit for purpose in rapidly developing and very poor urban contexts with high levels of informality. Our empirical research revealed that Masterplanning in Africa is largely a post-independence phenomenon, associated with ambitious nationalist urban development programmes. And it also revealed that current planners and local actors value highly urban masterplanning as a way to direct infrastructure and other urban developments, especially since these are initiated from a wide variety of sources. Co-ordination, and predicting future development, are valued aspects of physical and strategic masterplanning. An open access review paper to explore and substantiate these empirical findings through historical and secondary literature was prepared by Prof Phil Harrison (CI Dar) and Dr Sylvia Croese (Postdoc Dar) and is published open access in the leading Planning journal, Planning Perspectives. The longer, comparative empirical paper co-authored by the whole team and confirming the analysis presented in the Planning Perspectives paper is in progress, almost ready for submission to leading urban studies journal, Land Use Policy. This paper is innovated in both its comparative methodology and in substantiating the revisionist argument of the Planning Perspectives paper.
2. An additional innovative paper focusses closely on the Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JICA) role in Masterplanning, and how that has been engaged with at a local level in our three case study cities. Sylvia Croese and Yohei Miyauchi (accepted) The Transcalar Politics of Urban Master Planning: The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in Africa, Area Development Policy. This additionally confirms the positive reception of urban masterplanning, and initiates the theoretical analysis of the wide range of actors involved in urban development in Africa which is a key objective of the research. It is currently in press with the leading journal, Area, Development and Policy.
3. A major manuscript contribution on Comparative Urbanism. Robinson, J. 2022 (in print, published 2 June). Comparative Urbanism: Tactics for Global Urban Studies. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. This contribution reformats the methodological foundations for global urban studies, and establishes the basis for comparative research to play a strong role in theory building for African urban context.
Expected results until the end of the project:
We anticipate delivering major insights into the transnational governance relationships shaping large scale urban developments in African urban contexts. We see early evidence that the flows and nature of investments are shaped by both local and international actors, whose concerns are intertwined in often unpredictable ways - "international" actors might be motivated by their strong embedding in a local context; "local" actors might have powerful international ambitions. We envisage bringing forward an innovative analytical vocabulary to understand the complex spatial and political dynamics shaping African cities. By bringing a diversity of transnational and local actors into the frame we will expand global urban studies' insights on urban politics. Through our stakeholder networks we will seek to ensure these insights might be mobilised to enhance wider public benefit from urban development. The work will support numerous academic publications, website based resources, and practitioner focussed publications.