Across sub-Saharan Africa, informal settlement regularization has become a central response to insecure tenure, rapid peri-urban growth, and weak land governance. Yet existing scholarship and policy frameworks continue to assess regularization largely through technical and administrative indicators such as titling, cadastral mapping, planning compliance, investment and land market formalization, while paying limited attention to how these interventions reshape everyday relations between citizens, authority, and urban space. Drawing on Land Governance Theory and qualitative evidence from eight peri-urban settlements in Mbarali District, Tanzania, under the Land Tenure Improvement Project (LTIP), this study examines how regularization reshapes relations between communities, authority, and urban space. Data were generated through in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, field observations, and document review. The findings show that regularization extended far beyond land titling. It operated as a process of everyday state formation through which legitimacy, visibility, inclusion, exclusion, and urban belonging were continuously negotiated. While regularization strengthened tenure confidence and encouraged investment in housing and infrastructure, it also intensified bureaucratic dependency, land commodification, social differentiation, and struggles over authority and recognition. Experiences of formalization remained uneven and were shaped by gender relations, class position, political networks, generational inequalities, and residents’ ability to navigate bureaucratic systems. The study further demonstrates that regularization simultaneously expanded state visibility while exposing the unevenness of institutional accountability in peri-urban governance. The study argues that informal settlement regularization should be understood as a deeply political and socially transformative process embedded within broader struggles over citizenship, power, and urban futures in rapidly urbanizing African contexts.
This article explores the economic dimension of street renaming in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Existing literature has focused on the cultural and political dimensions of street renaming, paying little attention to the economic dimension of name changes in fiscally constrained contexts. The study is grounded on the theoretical frameworks from critical toponymy, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Sen’s capability approach. The study utilizes a comparative qualitative document analysis, focusing on Zimbabwe, South Africa, Canada and the United States of America in order to interrogate the economic dimension of street renaming in diverse contexts. The study reveals significant opportunity costs associated with street renaming in financially constrained contexts where citizens are faced with severe capability deprivations. In conclusion, the article proposes a pragmatic framework which seeks to balance symbolic transformation and capability expansion, arguing that the primacy of basic needs satisfaction should be prioritised in resource constrained and crisis-stricken contexts in urban areas.
Neighbourhood Sustainability Assessment (NSA) tools like LEED-ND and BREEAM Communities assume stable governance and formal infrastructure—conditions rarely met in Global South cities. This paper moves beyond critique to propose a Healing-First Analytical Framework that re-sequences urban assessment, placing socio-ecological repair as a prerequisite for sustainability. While previous empirical work applied adapted NSA criteria to evaluate unplanned settlements (Tambal, 2025), this study addresses a theoretical gap: the absence of an analytical model that reimagines assessment’s purpose. Through a diagnostic case study of Burri al-Sharif, an unplanned neighbourhood in Khartoum, - the analysis demonstrates how foundational deficits—insecure tenure, flood vulnerability, inadequate sanitation, fractured governance—render standard benchmarks ethically problematic. Engaging Southern urbanism, decolonial theory, and infrastructure studies, this study conceptualises “healing” as active socio-ecological repair. The framework operationalises restorative justice through two analytical phases: a Healing Phase addressing critical deficits, followed by a Sustainability Phase where conventional sustainability optimisation becomes viable. By reframing assessment as repair rather than performance verification, the paper offers a context-sensitive pathway for urban planning in vulnerable landscapes, contributing a methodological intervention to debates on urban justice in the Global South.
Literature suggests that women are increasingly constituting a large share of international migrants. However, women have remained invisible, excluded from contributing their own share of migratory insights. This study investigates the migration experiences of African women in Durban, South Africa, examining the intricate and multiple realities of their lives. It examines in particular the motivations for their migration as well as the socio-economic challenges they encounter. The study is guided by intersectionality as a theoretical framework, examining how gender, nationality, documentation status, and class jointly shape the experiences of migrant women in urban Durban. Using in-depth interviews with 20 women, the study reveals the systemic hurdles they face and the strategies they adopt to survive in their host country. Migrant women in Durban have to deal with economic exclusion, social marginalization, and restricted access to critical services, yet they refuse to allow these difficulties to define who they are. The narratives of the women paint a powerful picture of resilience amid hardship. These findings highlight the urgent need for focused initiatives that acknowledge the contributions of migrant women and support their integration into urban settings.
Air pollution is an environmental and public health problem in secondary cities; yet residents’ awareness and knowledge of it are rarely empirically assessed. This study assesses Winneba residents' awareness and knowledge of urban air pollution. Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) and Sensory Perception Theory (SPT) were adopted in a phenomenological study involving 20 participants through interviews and field observations. Following COREQ principles and the Braun and Clarke approach, a manual inductive thematic analysis was employed. The findings reveal that residents exhibit strong awareness of air pollution through sensory cues (odour, smoke, and dust). Open burning, dumpsite odour, fish smoking, and dust were the main sources of pollution, determined by location and occupation. Experiential, intergenerational, and formal knowledge shaped residents’ air pollution knowledge in the study context. Beyond the findings, this study proposes sensory environmental literacy (SEL) as a new conceptual model that illustrates how, through repeated sensory experiences interpreted through LEK, residents become aware of environmental risk even without scientific understanding or sophisticated air quality monitoring. Sensory perception provides a base for generating environmental knowledge, which is lacking due to the lack of official monitoring systems. Expanding environmental literacy scholarship, this research contributes to the idea of perceiving the environment not only through formal networks but also through complementary processes of relating sensory perceptions and LEK as sources for building environmental consciousness among residents of less resource-rich, secondary urban cities. Community-based environmental education, participatory governance, and local sanitation infrastructure are needed to supportsustainable urban air quality.
Prolonged internal displacement in Nigeria’s Plateau State underscores persistent failures in governance, security architecture, and structural responses to human vulnerability. By analysing political and security interventions, this paper interrogates institutional responses to protracted displacement using a qualitative phenomenological approach. Data were gathered through key informant interviews (KIIs), in-depth interviews (IDIs), and focus group discussions (FGDs) with internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Barkin-Ladi, Bassa, and Riyom Local Government Areas (LGAs). Drawing on political ecology frameworks, the findings reveal that state actions are predominantly reactive, fragmented, politicised, and lacking in accountability, thereby ignoring the socio-political drivers of displacement and the lived realities of affected communities. This study argues that sustainable peace requires proactive governance, security sector reforms, and strict enforcement of justice. These insights contribute to broader academic debates surrounding governance, security, and human mobility within sub-Saharan Africa.
In regularised settlements, informal practices continue to shape everyday decision-making, leading to a paradox of institutions that have hitherto been unexplored. Focusing on two regularised settlements in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, this study explored how the interaction between formal and informal institutions produces an institutional paradox. Using critical institutionalism, together with a mixed-methods approach that included in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, field observations, photographic and document analysis, the findings indicate that informal norms prevail because of accessible, responsive, and trusted local authorities. Formal authority is constrained by bureaucracy, resource limitations, and declining public trust. Thus, informal institutions compete, complete, and dominate formal institutions. A paradox emerges where formal rules are on paper, but in practice, decisions are shaped by socially legitimate informal norms rather than by formal rules. Despite the benefits of informal institutions, they undermine formal rules and contribute to disorderly land development. There is a need to integrate informal norms with formal rules and to enhance formal enforcement and oversight to address paradoxical institutional and spatial outcomes.
Access to affordable housing remains a pressing global challenge. In South Africa, social housing is a strategic policy instrument designed to provide affordable rental housing and restructure apartheid-era spatial inequalities. Its delivery, however, is shaped by a complex institutional framework. This study examines the systemic barriers that Social Housing Landlords face in navigating the Consolidated Capital Grant process. Drawing on conceptual frameworks of spatial justice and institutional capability, the article investigates the operational constraints that hinder South Africa’s Social Housing Programme’s transformative intent. An exploratory qualitative research design was employed, using semi-structured interviews with ten participants (five emerging Social Housing Landlords and five sector experts). Data were analysed thematically to identify common institutional and procedural constraints. Findings reveal that protracted administrative delays, sequential approval processes, and circular dependencies between grant and debt financing create significant implementation bottlenecks. Municipal capacity constraints and an ‘open-door’ policy that disperses scarce resources further undermine project viability. These barriers are analysed as symptoms of deeper systemic misalignments between decommodification goals and market-driven delivery systems, compounded by deficits in Social Housing Landlords’ operational capabilities. The study concludes that a more streamlined, accountable, and collaborative institutional ecosystem is required. This necessitates a strategic shift from quantitative outputs to building institutional resilience, supported by parallel approval mechanisms, structured capacity-building pathways, and formalised partnerships to enhance the sector’s long-term impact and its contribution to spatial justice.
Informal settlements are central to sustainable urban futures, yet their diverse resilience pathways remain underexplored. This gap enables typology-blind policies that misdiagnose challenges and undermine community capacities. This paper develops and validates the Typology-Sensitive Framework for Socio-Technical Adaptation to address this. Applying this framework through a community-based mixed-methods approach in two distinct settlements in Kumasi, Ghana—Aboabo (residential) and Suame Magazine (industrial)—our analysis reveals how residents mobilise unique forms of agency and ingenuity. Findings show that Suame Magazine’s resilience is deeply embedded in its production-centric, occupational identity, characterised by artisanal networks and structured mutual aid. In contrast, Aboabo’s resilience hinges on a reproduction-centric logic, leveraging informal community and religious bonds to address residential needs, often through partnerships for technological upgrades. Our findings challenge monolithic portrayals of urban informality and underscore the perils of typology-blind policies. The research also examines the significant socio-technical challenges in deploying Public Participation Geographic Information Systems in resource-constrained settings, offering critical methodological insights.
What is needed to establish urban agriculture (UA) as a viable strategy for sustainable food production, economic development and poverty relief? Cities can feed themselves with fruit and vegetables provided we allocate 30
Local economic development (LED) is widely promoted as a strategy for revitalising local economies, yet limited empirical attention has been paid to how citizen participation operates across different levels of LED implementation and its implications for sustainability. This study addresses this gap using a qualitative design based on in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with local government officials, Assembly Members, LED beneficiaries, and implementing actors in Ghana. Data were thematically analysed through systematic coding and interpretation. Findings show distinct implementation logics across assemblies: locally initiated LED in AMA, externally supported initiatives in AdMA, and MSME oriented interventions in SODA. Across these contexts, citizen participation contributed to endogenous resource identification, employment generation, and enhanced sustainability of community projects. The study demonstrates that participation is not merely procedural but structurally embedded in how LED is conceived and executed, shaping both outcomes and continuity. It advances understanding of participatory LED by linking implementation levels to sustainable community development outcomes.
Urban agriculture plays a critical role in food provisioning and everyday survival in rapidly urbanising cities of sub-Saharan Africa. Yet the social and ethical conditions under which this food is produced remain insufficiently examined. This study investigates how gendered labour relations, decision-making, and access to resources shape urban vegetable production in post-conflict Freetown, Sierra Leone. Drawing on household surveys and semi-structured interviews with urban farming households, the study examines who performs agricultural labour, who exercises authority over production and income, and how responsibilities and benefits are distributed within households. The findings show that women contribute the majority of labour and time to vegetable production and bear primary responsibility for food preparation and household nutrition. However, this responsibility is not matched by secure access to land, credit, or institutional support. Instead, women’s labour sustains household food security under highly informal and precarious conditions, often involving children’s participation and heightened vulnerability. We argue that urban vegetable farming constitutes a paradoxical site of both survival and inequality. While it provides essential food and income, it simultaneously reproduces a persistent “responsibility–authority gap” in which women shoulder the moral and material burden of food provisioning without commensurate control or recognition. By foregrounding gendered power relations and care labour within urban food systems, this study contributes to debates on food justice, ethics, and the human values embedded in everyday agricultural practices in African cities.
This article analyses how governance deficiencies shape the development of informal settlements in Mozambique, with a particular focus on informal self-construction of housing and basic infrastructure in contexts where the state’s presence is simultaneously limited and complicit. The study aims to analyse how residents effectively take on governance functions by producing housing and collectively organising basic services that would ordinarily fall under public authority mandates. The analysis focuses on the metropolitan area of Maputo, Mozambique, drawing on two neighbourhoods—Chamissava and Malhangalene—as case studies that represent, respectively, expanding peripheral areas and consolidated inner-city contexts. Through these cases, the study identifies systemic deficiencies in urban planning, construction oversight, and policy implementation, thereby revealing the limited effectiveness of existing housing strategies in responding to rapid urban change. Based on fieldwork conducted under challenging socio-political conditions and developed in collaboration with municipal officials, technical staff, and residents, the study highlights the everyday interactions between informal housing practices and weak governance arrangements. The findings show how communities strategically adapt to institutional shortcomings—and, at times, leverage political moments—to address pressing housing needs. In doing so, the article underscores the need for improved institutional coordination and more context-sensitive regulatory approaches to address the persistence of informal urban development in Maputo and similar urban contexts.
This paper shows the value of local languages for grasping urban spaces in countries like Benin. It introduces tòxò hùn nùkún, a concept in the Mahi/Fon language meaning “a city with open eyes”, to challenge the perception that Africa is only now becoming urbanised. Based on this descriptive metaphor, the paper reveals existing traces of local urban conceptualization that predate current development discourse. The paper’s argument has been drawn from conversations about Africa’s rapid urbanisation, African urban studies, secondary cities and literatures using terms and concepts in the languages of developing countries to theorise space without over-relying on Western social sciences. This research is based on a 12-month ethnography conducted in the Republic of Benin. It draws from semi-structured interviews with over 70 residents and actors of Rue de l’Espoir, in Tchinagbégbo district, Abomey-Calavi. Without having the aim of being universally applicable, taking language seriously points out that analysing places like Calavi with their wealth of linguistic diversity and history provides the possibility for the emergence and popularisation of locally grounded spatial concepts, challenging dominant urban theory. I show that although there has been confusion on the spatial nature of Calavi from Beninese and Africanist social scientists, Abomey-Calavi has always been urban; however, what has been described as urban has changed over time.
This study unpacks how city governments in Africa view the socio-economic contexts and uses of footbridges. In many African cities, pedestrian footbridges perform social and economic functions beyond their intended roles. City authorities treat these socio-economic functions of footbridges with hostility. To enter the emerging debate on the “unapproved” uses of pedestrian footbridges, this paper explores the dynamic production, co-production and re-production of social and economic spaces around pedestrian footbridges. Using two pedestrian footbridges in Kumasi, Ghana, as case studies, the study adopted multiple qualitative data collection methods; including pedestrian counts and interviews, institutional consultations, interviews of traders and hawkers around the footbridges and focus group discussions of other local stakeholders. The study reveals multiple “unintended” uses of the footbridges. Aside the safety for pedestrians, footbridges produced open market spaces, passenger “pick-up” and “drop-off” points, and hawking activities, which shape their uses and relevance. A case for re-designing footbridges to be socio-economically relevant is made.
This article sheds light on the often-invisible labour of informal waste reclaimers and the visible city spaces they occupy in South Africa. Using Deleuzoguattarian assemblage theory and Colin McFarlane’s, 2011 article on assemblages and critical urbanism as framework, we consider how various spaces for sourcing, sorting, and storing recyclable materials affect waste reclaimers’ lives and livelihoods. This is done by referring to original data from 1259 waste reclaimer surveys conducted in 25 South African towns and cities in 2023. By examining the rhizomatic dynamics between waste reclaimers, collected recyclable materials, and the spaces they occupy and work in, the article discusses how spatial constraints and opportunities shape waste reclaimers’ ability to act. It also delves into the broader implications of waste reclamation in the context of urban development and social inequality, underscoring the need for recognition of this essential work. This article provides a nuanced understanding of waste reclaimers movement in space, which is vital in reframing the public’s perception of their contribution, which in turn enhances their visibility and holds the potential to positively impact their livelihoods.
Carthorse operators known as carties are an everyday phenomenon on the streets of Cape Town, South Africa. For many men (and women) from the Cape Flats, collecting scrap metal with a carthorse can be challenging because it is often associated with criminal activities. A carthorse plays a critical role in determining when, where and how scrap metal can be collected. Working with carthorses makes carties visible, bringing them into the purview of the public, state and non-state actors. As a result, they are often ‘watched’ and subjected to daily surveillance. The impact of state and non-state surveillance is well discussed in the urban informality literature, however, more research is needed on how surveillance is shaped. This paper explores how everyday surveillance in the informal economy is shaped. It draws on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews, and participant observation with carthorse operators, community improvement districts, and non-governmental organizations. Drawing on the ‘surveillant assemblage’ concept, the paper shows that carthorse surveillance is dynamic and emerges through the convergence of humans, animals, and ‘things’ to regulate carthorse operators. The paper argues that considering the convergent nature of carthorse surveillance is important because surveillance is not only pervasive and has consequences, it is also interconnected and distributive across humans, non-humans and ‘things’. The paper highlights that carthorse surveillance is complex and located within a larger assemblage of urban landscapes, technologies, animals, objects, practices, and rules that cut across the state and non-state divide. The study provides insights into broader debates of how urban governance and regulation towards the informal economy is shaped in the city.
This study examines the social networks of informal recyclers in Fietas, Johannesburg, South Africa, and how these networks function as socio-spatial practices through which informal recyclers assert their Right to the City. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted across multiple Johannesburg suburbs, the study indicates that informal recycling provides livelihoods for marginalised populations and enables informal recyclers to negotiate access, visibility, and belonging in contested urban spaces. Guided by Lefebvre’s concept of the production of space, the article explores how everyday practices, such as movement along collection routes, use of vacant land for storage, and negotiations with residents, police, and municipal actors, constitute a form of urban praxis. Through dense social interdependencies, informal recyclers collectively navigate precarity, exclusion, and uneven governance while sustaining access to material resources essential for survival. The findings demonstrate that these networks are neither uniform nor harmonious. Instead, they are shaped by informal rules, power relations, and territorial contestations that structure access to waste and urban space. By foregrounding social networks as spatial practices, the article contributes to debates on informal labour and the Right to the City by showing how claims to urban space are produced through everyday interdependencies rather than formal inclusion. In line with Harvey’s understanding of the Right to the City, and as reflected in South African scholarship on informal recycling, the study highlights how informal recyclers collectively remake marginal urban spaces while navigating persistent structural inequalities.
Various forms of conflict and displacement are increasingly shaping urban Africa. Although many studies have focused on the causes and consequences of conflicts, little is known about the urban conflict resilience and re-integration of conflict induced displacements. Situated within the expanding literature on urban peace building, this article explores how people reintegrate and manage the uncertainties caused by conflicts in the urban Africa. Using a qualitative method, it comparatively studied three cities: Jigjiga in Ethiopia, Gulu in Uganda, and Jos in Nigeria. The results show that amidst the emerging urbanization of violence, various forms of social capital play a critical role in mitigating the uncertainty caused by violence and displacement. Religious capital, residence-based, clan and ethnic networks facilitated the integration of migrants, IDPs and refugees and supported them to reintegrate and reclaim lost properties and places faster. Women and youth led vigilantism efforts that served as informal governance mechanisms and community watchdogs have been part of the key tool for the governance of urban conflict. The study shows the growing urbanization of humanitarian and community-based association following the urbanizing conflicts. Although formal government institutions contribute, affected populations tend to place greater trust in their social networks during times of crisis to survive or reintegrate. But some of the existing social capital operated within homogenous groups, fostering bonding rather than bridging across religious and ethnic divides. This led to increased segregation and heightened mistrust among urban residents.
South Africa’s housing policy has long emphasised community participation and skills transfer in delivery as principles vital to addressing its housing shortage and affordability challenges. This rhetoric implies the empowerment of citizens as a solution and the notion that ‘participation leads to empowerment’ is the predominant discourse within South African policy. Yet its neoliberal influence to co-opt radical, insurgent resident practice is unremedied by state decision-makers. The 2008 Enhanced People’s Housing Process (EPHP) is a tool argued to offer local empowerment, potentially countering neoliberal policy. The EPHP is key to increased participation levels, enabling direct citizen involvement in housing by encouraging beneficiaries to participate in decision-making, public participation, and construction. The necessity for a deeper understanding of empowerment leads to analysing the EPHP’s principles in a spatial context, bringing forth the main research question of how the participatory aspirations of citizens fare against the EPHP. This paper adopts a qualitative research approach that critically analyses empowerment theory and the EPHP against the case study of Ruo Emoh – a medium-density housing development in Mitchells Plain, Cape Town that began as a savings scheme. This paper’s two arguments of participatory governance not guaranteeing citizen empowerment and citizen empowerment rhetoric not guaranteeing skills transfer in delivery can be attributed to the discretionary implementation of the EPHP disempowering its beneficiaries by empowering the market. This is evident in Ruo Emoh’s process, which resulted in minimal participation of the scheme in delivery, abstract skills learning, and minimal influence on their housing outcomes. This paper critically examines the limitations of the EPHP’s participatory governance model, exposes the disconnect between policy rhetoric and its practical implementation, sheds light on the detrimental impact of neoliberal policies, and challenges the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in housing policy. By exposing the limitations of the EPHP in Ruo Emoh, this paper emphasises the transformative potential of the social compact, where power lies within residents and marginalised communities, yet remains dormant due to policy not quantifying their active participation.
