The Thorny Problem of African Cities: Global Insights for Rethinking Policy and Practice

Introduction: When Policy Meets the Non-Existent City

Urbanization in Africa is rewriting the global urban narrative. Sub-Saharan Africa's annual urban population growth rate exceeds 4%, far above the global average, yet this growth has not brought the expected structural transformation. Instead, the tension between rapid urbanization and weak institutional capacity has spawned a unique phenomenon: informality is not just a survival strategy but has become the core mechanism of urban operations. APRI's recent series of policy briefs, "Rethinking African Urban Policy and Practice," focuses on intractable problems in four sectors in Accra, Nairobi, and Kisumu, revealing a deep contradiction: policy design is based on an idealized urban model, while the real city operates on a completely different logic.

These intractable problems are not technical failures but symptoms of systemic governance failures. When policymakers view informality as a temporary anomaly to be eliminated, they fundamentally misunderstand the nature of African cities. The roots of this misunderstanding can be traced back to the spatial planning legacies of the colonial era and the persistent lack of state capacity after independence.

Four Cases, One Paradox

1. Accra's BRT: Conflict Between International Standards and Local Livelihoods

Accra, Ghana's capital, attempted to introduce a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system to alleviate congestion. This reform was packaged as a technical solution, but its implementation heavily relied on foreign aid models, neglecting the livelihood networks of local minibus (trotro) operators. Due to overlapping powers, tokenistic participation, and unsustainable financing, the BRT system not only failed to improve transport but also led to the degradation of existing quality bus services, ultimately causing operational collapse. Multiple restart attempts since 2005 have all failed. The core issue is that the policy tried to replace an already existing complex ecosystem with a standardized model, a system that involves the right to survival of tens of thousands of practitioners.

2. Informal Electricity in Nairobi's Mathare: A Cycle of Punishment and Mistrust

In Mathare, one of Nairobi's largest informal settlements, despite the availability of formal electricity, high costs, cumbersome paperwork, and punitive enforcement drive residents to choose informal connections. Participatory system mapping shows that informal electricity is embedded in community livelihoods, and enforcement actions that cut off power deepen residents' rejection of the formal system. Each crackdown reinforces the belief that the formal system is not designed for them. Informality thus becomes self-reinforcing, a form of adversarial adaptation.

3. Water Corruption in Kisumu: A Daily Tax Under Structural Neglect

In the informal settlements of Kisumu, Kenya, corruption in the water and sanitation sector manifests as bribery, bill tampering, and project delays. The national anti-corruption framework focuses on high-level corruption in institutions, while being almost powerless against petty corruption at the grassroots. Residents are forced to pay extra for every drop of water—this erodes not only their health but also their dignity. The root of corruption lies in long-term state neglect, not in the moral failings of the residents.

4. Mapping Nairobi: Fragmented Data and Governance Blind SpotsNairobi's informal settlements have been repeatedly mapped by different agencies using incompatible tools, resulting in fragmented and outdated data that cannot be used for substantive decision-making. A case study of Mathare shows that mapping itself may exacerbate risks—because historically, mapping has often preceded forced evictions. This issue highlights the disconnect between knowledge production and governance goals: when technological tools are detached from community participation and political context, they can instead become instruments of oppression.

Three Structural Findings

1. Policies Designed for a City That Does Not Exist

The four briefs collectively point to a conclusion: urban policy assumes a legible, serviceable, and compliant city, but this city does not exist. Accra's BRT was designed according to international standards rather than the logic of trotros; Nairobi's mapping tools expect clean, integrated data, yet most residents' status is temporary; Kisumu's anti-corruption framework targets ministers rather than meter readers. Every tool speaks of a place it seeks to govern but fundamentally does not know.

2. Informality as an Alternative Planning Regime

Informality is not an absence of planning, but an alternative planning regime that grows in the gap between what the formal system promises and what it delivers. Research shows that informal spaces are produced through incremental adaptation and design. Mathare's informal electricity is a structural, affordable response to exclusion; Kisumu's corruption is petty in form but structural in cause. Treating informality as "the other" is a legacy of colonial thinking—colonial urban planning once treated Africans as temporary laborers, creating racialized spatial inequality through zoning and land control. Post-independence states have continued the practice of treating the informal majority as a population to be cleared.

3. Governance as an Arena of Unequal Contestation

Urban governance is a negotiation between the formal state and the already self-organized informal city on an unequal basis. Accra's BRT contestation involves terminal revenue, route control, and the livelihoods of minibus drivers; Mathare's power cuts are collective punishment that intensifies antagonism; Kisumu's water corruption cannot be separated from the city's political history as a long-time opposition stronghold. What residents view as rational survival strategies are labeled illegal in official eyes—a cognitive gap that runs through all cases.

Strategic Shift: From Elimination to Integration

The commonality of these intractable problems calls for a fundamental policy rethinking. As the brief authors suggest, feasible pathways include:- Transportation: Accra's BRT requires integrated land use and transport planning, institutional reform, and sustainable financing, with clear responsibilities for each agency. The economic and social functions of the existing trotro system must be acknowledged and incorporated rather than replaced.

• Electricity: In Nairobi, gradual formalization and trust-building are more effective than punitive crackdowns. Lowering entry barriers, simplifying procedures, and community engagement can change residents' perceptions of the formal system.
• Water and Sanitation: Corruption governance in Kisumu requires targeted investment in low-income areas, enforceable rules, and interventions addressing everyday root causes. Punishing only low-level actors cannot solve the problem of pipelines not being built.
• Mapping: Nairobi should establish an integrated visualization platform linking residential growth, service gaps, and climate vulnerability, while ensuring mapping does not become a tool for eviction. Community participation and multi-stakeholder collaboration are key.

Global Insights: Reimagining Urban Governance

The plight of African cities is not an isolated phenomenon. From Latin America to South Asia, informality constitutes the backdrop of urbanization in the Global South. This reality challenges the assumptions of form and boundaries in Western urban theory. Africa's experience shows that urban governance must shift from a paradigm of "eliminating informality" to "coexisting and co-governing with it." This means policies are no longer top-down technical outputs but should become adaptive management of existing complex systems.

In the long term, climate vulnerability, technological penetration, and demographic pressures will further exacerbate these intractable problems. Urban resilience does not depend on achieving an idealized modern city, but on the ability to accommodate and guide informal dynamics. The future of African cities will be a crucial testing ground for defining 21st-century urban civilization.