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Infrastructural Challenges in Smaller African Cities: Digital Technologies and Water Infrastructure for Sustainable Towns?

Project description

A closer look at challenges faced by Nampula and Bissau cities

The world has been urbanising rapidly in recent decades. Today, more than half of the world population lives in urban areas. People in developing countries are drawn to cities for access to education and employment opportunities. The focus of this EU-funded project will be on the smaller cities in sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, the IcSAC project will examine water and digital infrastructures in Nampula, Mozambique, and Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. The findings will shed light on the infrastructural challenges, models and solutions emerging in smaller cities. It will also improve our understanding of the emerging social, political and material implications of the growing adoption of water infrastructure and digital technologies and on the modes of urbanity that are specific to smaller cities.

Objective

‘Infrastructural Challenges in Smaller African Cities...’ is an innovative research project into water and digital infrastructures in smaller cities in sub-Saharan Africa. It examines the growing adoption of digital technologies in water infrastructure, an emerging phenomenon across urban Africa that remains under-investigated. It focuses on the dynamic and vibrant context of smaller cities in sub-Saharan Africa, which are experiencing accelerated urban growth but continue to be neglected in urban and infrastructure academic research. Examining water and digital infrastructures in two smaller Lusophone cities in Africa – Nampula, Mozambique and Bissau, Guinea-Bissau – will establish new, in-depth understandings of the infrastructural challenges, models and solutions emerging in smaller cities. In this way, this research will contribute to broader theorisations of infrastructure and African cities by bringing into these debates the experiences of a diversity of cities. This project will also shed light on the emerging social, political and material implications of the growing adoption of digital water technologies, and on the modes of urbanity specific to smaller cities. It will produce findings relevant to policy debates and Sustainable Development Goals 6 and 11. The research will adopt an innovative mix of qualitative methods, including mobile methods and ‘water biographies’. Novel user engagement and dissemination strategies will facilitate the engagement of different academic and non-academic audiences. Supervision by a world expert with networks across the Francophone and Anglophone academic worlds (Professor Sylvy Jaglin at LATTS), the opportunity to work in the Francophone research context, and an institutional visit to a research centre in Portugal (the Centre for Social Studies in Coimbra) will maximise this project’s ambition to strengthen links and shape conversations on urban research across literatures and scholarly networks.

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2019

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITE GUSTAVE EIFFEL
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 196 707,84
Address
5 BOULEVARD DESCARTES CAMPUS DE MARNE-LA-VALLE
77454 MARNE-LA-VALLEE
France

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Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 196 707,84
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