Summary
Highlights
Transforming African cities requires a growth management strategy that plots the transition to a low-carbon future with universal basic services. This strategy should guide infrastructure development, economic direction, and spatial planning through a special development framework. Land use management systems must be evidence-based, incorporating cadastral maps and data from the poor themselves. This comprehensive approach is essential for building institutions capable of truly transcending slum urbanism.
Edgar Pieterse introduces the lecture by outlining the goal: to explore whether 'slum urbanism' in Africa is an inevitable condition or if alternatives exist. He will define slum urbanism, explain its trends, and then discuss potential institutional implications for transcending this state.
Pieterse contrasts the first wave of urbanization in the Global North (1750-1950) with the current rapid and unprecedented urbanization in the Global South, particularly Africa. By 2030, the urban population in the Global South is expected to increase tenfold in just 80 years. This rapid growth presents massive challenges for governments, including meeting basic needs, economic development, and transitioning to a low-carbon economy, all by Africa's urban tipping point in the mid-2030s.
The global urban population is projected to more than double, with middle classes also doubling and slum populations tripling over the next 40 years. In Africa, 62% of urban dwellers currently live in slums, a higher proportion than in Latin America, the Caribbean, or Southeast Asia. This is compounded by informal employment, with over 60% of the labor force in vulnerable employment, indicating extreme deprivation and deficiencies in living conditions.
The speaker explains the 'slum urbanism logic': a majority informal economy leads to low household incomes, resulting in small tax bases for municipalities, and thus a shortage of public and private investment in urban infrastructure. This scarcity is worsened by skewed resource allocation due to dysfunctional politics, leading to demand outstripping supply. The consequence is more informal economic life and living, perpetuating slum urbanism. This is seen against a backdrop of long-term underinvestment in infrastructure.
Governments often accept 'turnkey' private investments that lead to undesirable outcomes like gated communities, shopping malls, and vanity projects, neglecting existing infrastructure backlogs. This results in urban sprawl, ecological degradation, increased socio-spatial inequality, and underinvestment in slum areas. This condition is termed 'extreme splintered urbanism,' where large-scale slum neglect coexists with elite, enclave urbanism.
If current trends continue, Africa faces an 'urban polycrisis' — an agglomeration of negative pressures. Water, energy, food, and land scarcity will reinforce each other. Economically, underemployment and unemployment will persist, and ecosystem services will degrade. This cumulative dynamic will lead to a very challenging urban crisis, especially as young people increasingly express democratic voice through protests against these conditions.
The African Center for Cities proposes thinking about cities as four interconnected operating systems: infrastructure, economy, spatial form, and governance. By applying normative aspirations like sustainable infrastructure, an inclusive economy, a just spatial form, and democratic governance, a systemic transformation can be achieved.
Sustainable infrastructure involves both local social investments (health, education, public spaces) and regional biophysical systems (energy, water, waste, mobility). Inclusive economies require fostering competitiveness in the formal sector alongside inclusive informal economies, social economies based on reciprocity, and a green economy that encompasses the space economy.
Achieving a just spatial form means rethinking land markets for greater inclusivity and promoting compact, mixed-use, and public-oriented urban development. The goal is to transition African cities from low services/low carbon intensity to high levels of service access while maintaining a low-carbon footprint to remain competitive globally. This requires prioritizing universal access to basic rights, public infrastructure, mobility, and ecosystem services, with shelter as a later investment, while leveraging the labor and social power of the poor to compensate for low tax bases.