African Cities and the Development Conundrum

Carole Ammann is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Geography at the University of Bern and at the Institute of Sociology, University of Fribourg. She recently completed her dissertation—entitled Silent Politics. Gender, Imagination and the State in Kankan, Guinea—at the University of Basel. Carole Ammann is interested in questions of urbanity, secondary cities, transformations of the state, political participation, everyday life, and gender in West Africa and France.Till Förster is an anthropologist. He holds a PhD from the Freie Universität Berlin. Since 2001 he has been Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Till Förster has specialised in art, visual culture and political transformations in West and Central Africa. Since 1979, he has conducted field research in Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon. His recent publications focus on visual culture, social creativity and the postcolonial state, as well as on politics and governance in African cities.

• ForewordPrefaceList of IllustrationsAcronyms and AbbreviationsNotes on ContributorsPart 1: Introduction1 African Cities and the Development Conundrum Actors and Agency in the Urban Grey ZoneTill Förster and Carole Ammann2 The Politics of Governing African Urban SpacesEdgar PietersePart 2: Urban Governance3 Urban Governance in Africa: An OverviewWarren Smit4 Informal Governance: Comparative Perspectives on Co-optation, Control and Camouflage in Rwanda, Tanzania and UgandaClaudia Baez Camargo and Lucy Koechlin5 Why is Co-management of Parks Not Working in Johannesburg? The Difficult Reframing of State Mandates and Practices in the Post-apartheid EraClaire Bénit-GbaffouPart 3: Planning, Politics and the Urban Grey Zone6 Online Representation of Sustainable City Initiatives in Africa: How Inclusive?Ton Dietz7 Incremental Dependencies: Politics and Ethics of Claim-making at the Fringes of Windhoek, NamibiaLalli Metsola8 Towards an Integrative Approach to Spatial Transformation Addressing Contextual and Spatial Indifference in Design, Urban Planning and International Cooperation: A Case Study from Addis AbabaSascha Delz9 Accra’s Decongestion Policy: Another Face of Urban Clearance or Bulldozing Approach?Aba O. Crentsil and George OwusuPart 4: The Rural-Urban Continuum10 The Africa Problem of Global Urban Theory: Re-conceptualising Planetary UrbanisationGarth Myers11 Urban Identities and Belonging: Young Men’s Discourses about Pikine (Senegal)Sebastian Prothmann12 The City and Its Ways of Life: Local Influences on Middle-Income Milieus in NairobiFlorian Stoll13 Urbanisation and the Political Geographies of Violent Struggle for Power and Control: Mining Boomtowns in Eastern CongoKaren BüscherIndex