Measuring Multiple Deprivation at the small area in South Africa
Who owns the city? Expert seminar
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Cities in Africa
Who takes care of basic public goods for a city to be tolerable and safe? With David Booth, Director Africa Power and Politics Programme, Overseas Development Institute
Stories from African cities focus on overpopulation, ugliness, pollution, poverty, violence, chaotic traffic, noise, slums, filth. Despite the unevenness of these stereotypes it is also true and obvious that there is a general and quite generic failure of governing agents to accommodate the growth of cities, and more in particular a failure to accommodate growth in ways that are profitable to all citizens rather than to the affluent. The provision of services in cities in Africa is outrageously exclusionary. In Europe, we tend to assume that democratic city government will take care of this, but there are many reasons for supposing that the immediate problems of African cities are unlikely to be solved by that route. So...
Who takes care of basic public goods for a city to be tolerable and safe?
What are the needs of poor citizens of African cities, how do/can we know, and who (should) provide for these needs? What can they do themselves?
What is and should be the role of city governments in providing for infrastructures of various kinds, and/or for reducing inequalities in such provisions?
And, what is and should be the role of other actors, like donors and foreign investors?
These questions are central to the discussion with David Booth, Director of the Africa Power and Politics Programme (APPP), Researcher at the ‘Overseas Development Institute’ (London).
And with several fellow citizens who have lived in and frequently visited cities like Kampala, Nairobi, Harare and Maputo.
Further reading
Huge rise in city dwellers - a cause for concern? (video)
Mega-city Nairobi: who cares about pollution?
African cities are turning into nightmares
Africa's citis to triple in size
Traffic jams link Cairo to satellite cities
The best ideas are born in African cities