The Politics of Informal Settlements in Accra, Freetown, Harare, and Kampala

• In Event: New Perspectives on the Comparative Politics of Cities in the Global South

Abstract

Within the growing literature on the politics of Africa’s cities, there is relatively little work that tracks how political factors operate across multiple scales to shape development possibilities. Urban contexts are characterised by multiple, overlapping forms of politics and authority that operate (inter alia) at national, city and community levels. In this paper we trace how the prospects for development within informal settlements in four African capital cities (Accra, Freetown, Harare and Kampala), are shaped by the interaction of political factors and processes across different scales. Drawing on primary research we investigate the political factors that shape the everyday realities of survival and contestation within informal settlements in these cities, including with regards to market operations, land disputes, responses to disasters and social service deficits. In each case, we find that the capacity and commitment of local actors to navigate development challenges within informal settlements is profoundly influenced by national level politics and how this interacts with city-level politics and governance.

From a comparative perspective, the specific configurations of power within each national settlement – dispersed amongst competing factions in Ghana and Sierra Leone and more concentrated around semi-authoritarian leaderships in Uganda and Zimbabwe – directly shapes the local politics of development in each city’s informal settlements. In all cases the national political settlement disincentivises the provision of ‘development’ in the form of public goods as opposed to the more politically useful private and (sometimes) club goods, but this is significantly worse in contexts such as Freetown where the ruling party actively blocks investments in urban development to avoid the opposition party (which dominates the capital city) gaining credit. In contrast, the ruling parties in Uganda and Zimbabwe have sought to circumvent opposition-led city authorities and reach out directly to urban residents, drawing directly on longstanding political structures that penetrate and define local politics and which have helped ensure their political dominance over decades. The role of ethnicity in political mobilisation also differs significantly between each context, playing a much more important role within Accra and Freetown than in Harare or Kampala. We explore the implications that these differences have for theorising the politics of development in Africa’s cities and the prospects for progressive urban reform therein.

Authors

• Sam Hickey, University of Manchester

• Badru Bukenya, Makerere University, Kampala

• Jamie Hitchen, Independent