Lagos, Nigeria is one of the cities growing at a rapid rate.
Michael Kraus/EyeEm/Shutterstock
All too often, urban reforms are led by technical and infrastructural change, rather than by engaging people.
A group of African woman walking on their way home in Zimbabwe. The informal sector has potential to harness small sustainability benefits.
Shutterstock
Informal economic activities in Norton, Zimbabwe play a part in environmental sustainability and contribute to the town’s financial sustainability.
Residents contend with the flooding after a downpour in Accra, Ghana.
Delali92/Shutterstock
The fast growth of the metropolis and the city’s political significance, to its large informal economy and the challenges residents face.
Braamfontein in central Johannesburg has benefited from the city’s urban renewal programme in recent times.
EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook
The city’s government wanted the wealthy and overwhelmingly white areas of the city to subsidise the development of the poor and overwhelmingly black areas.
Kitwe Food and Farmers’ Market, Zambia.
Samantha Reinders/African Centre for Cities
As the global South transitions to a predominantly urban future, food offers a way to understand the role of cities in future development.
Lagos must rethink its waste management policy.
Shutterstock
Lagos state must include the informal sector in its waste economy for inclusive development to happen.
Traffic flows past trees that have been felled to make way for a highway in Nairobi, Kenya on November 12, 2020.
Photo by LUIS TATO/AFP via Getty Images
Parts of Nairobi are already dealing with temperature increases and reduction in humidity. These conditions are associated with increases in mortality, especially in children and the elderly.
A man pulls a cart through the early morning smog in Nairobi.
TOBIN JONES/AFP via Getty Images
We found that air pollution levels in Nairobi increased by 182% over the study period, Kampala by 162% and Addis Ababa by 62%.
Lagos was affected positively and negatively by Nigeria’s emergence as a crude oil producer in the 1970s.
Shutterstock
The foundations of orderliness for any city are planning and management. Lagos had this in place in the early days.
An artist’s impression of the failed Modderfontein smart city in Johannesburg.
What a failed megacity project in Johannesburg says about similar ambitious ideas across the continent.
About 56% of Kenya’s urban population currently lives in a slum.
Shutterstock/John Wollwerth
The rental housing market in Nairobi’s informal settlements offers its tenant households a perverse market outcome of higher prices for lower quality products