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A Gordian Knot of Challenges:
Africa’s Large Cities under Pressure
by J-P Thompson

Introduction

On August 10, 2010 a fire swept through the Kennedy Road shack settlement in Durban, South Africa. It left thousands of poor people homeless. The previous fire to sweep through the Kennedy Road shack settlement claimed four lives. The Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shack Dwellers) Movement reported on this latest incident:

If electricity, water and adequate housing were provided in the Kennedy Road shack settlement these recurring shack fires could have been prevented… When the state refuses to provide the poor with electricity and then violently disconnects us from electricity when we connect ourselves it is sentencing us to burn… The poor in Durban have been abandoned to fire, left to burn, because we do not count in this city.1

This glimpse into the reality facing shack dwellers in Durban is mirrored across the continent. More than 3,000 shack fires occur in South Africa alone, killing around 100 people a year.2 Overall, UN Habitat estimates that all manner of urban environmental problems kill an estimated one million Africans each year3 and disrupt the lives of millions more. Alongside urban environmental problems, African cities face a multitude of challenges:

* Housing , which is grossly inadequate;
* Living conditions , which divide cities into haves and have-nots, many of whom lack clean water and electricity;
* Employment , which sees formal economic sectors waning and being replaced by informal sectors;
* Governance , which requires major improvements in central and local governments;
* Environment , which encompasses huge pollution and degradation problems in developing cities; and
* Food security , which necessitates finding new ways to feed the large numbers of people moving from the countryside to the cities.

Over the next five months At Issue Ezine will examine the urban stories of Kinshasa, Nairobi, Lagos, Cape Town and Johannesburg. This editorial, after exploring urban growth rates, will examine some of the issues that are increasing the pressure on urban centres. It will also introduce potential antidotes for African cities that might abate an otherwise grim future.

Urban growth rates: historical and demographic overview

European colonialism maintained stringent regulations that governed native populations’ access to urban land. Africans did not have a “right to the city” and those who worked in cities were largely viewed as temporary residents in the service of colonial administrators. Africans were forced to live in desperate conditions on the edge of cities. Apartheid is the most extreme example of urban disenfranchisement through the State criminalizing urban migration and brutally displacing a million Africans from urban centres. Almost everywhere, the 1960s brought national independence movements and the accompanying civil turmoil. This triggered exponential urban growth. For example, after seven years of colonial warfare in Algeria, the population of Algiers tripled between 1962 and 1964 as the “bidonvilles” or shantytowns absorbed the displaced rural populations. In other places, like the DRC, independence brought leaders like Mobutu who kept control centralized and who imposed virulent economic and taxation policies on the rural population forcing them to give up their agricultural livelihoods and migrate to urban centres to seek jobs. As for South Africa, Rian Malan poignantly captures the disintegration of apartheid laws in relation to Cape Town which saw its black population triple between 1982 and 1992:4

“[T]he hated pass laws were scrapped, it was as if a distant dam had broken, allowing a mass of desperate and hopeful humanity to come flooding over the mountains and spread out across the Cape Flats. They came at a rate of eighty, ninety families a day… Within two years, the sand dunes had vanished under an enormous sea of shacks and shanties.”5

These examples illustrate the urban growth seen after independence which eventually slowed to become a steady flow of rural to urban migration. In addition, massive population displacements were driven by sporadic events like armed conflicts, economic shocks and natural disasters. Over time, this migration would result in most countries witnessing an urban growth that was double the natural population growth rate. The extent of the urban growth can be witnessed in examples of urban population changes in African countries between 1950 and 2001.

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Despite this growth, Africa currently remains the least urbanized region in the world. But for how long? In the early 1990s, two-thirds of Africans still lived in rural areas. In 2007, cities across the continent accounted for 38.7% of the total population or 373.4 million urban dwellers. It is expected that by around 2030, Africa will have entered its “urban age,” when half of the total population will be urban dwellers (759.4 million). And by 2050, it is projected that just under two-thirds of Africans will live in urban areas (1.2 billion). In brief, despite a slowing growth rate, within the time-span of approximately 60 years there will have been almost a total reversal of the rural-urban balance.7 Major cities will account for a third of the urban growth rates across Africa. Moreover, it is the “second-tier” cities, with populations of less than 500,000 that will account for two-thirds of all urban growth rates.8

In 1950 only two cities (Alexandria and Cairo) had populations of more than one million inhabitants. By 2005, there were 43 cities with at least a million people and an additional sixteen cities are expected to reach this benchmark by 2015. Lagos is a prime example of a megacity that has experienced meteoric urban expansion. In 1950, Lagos had 300,000 inhabitants; in 2004 it had a population of 13.4 million. This means it is now over 40 times its original size.9 In addition, local estimates report that the city welcomes 6,000 newcomers a day.10 In fact, Lagos goes beyond the traditional definition of a city. It is an agglomeration that is at the heart of an urban corridor across West Africa connecting with neighbouring towns and cities like drops of mercury. The OECD reports that “by 2020, this network of 300 cities larger than 100,000 will have a population comparable to the US east coast, with five cities of over one million… and a total of more than 60 million inhabitants along a strip of land 600 kilometers long, running east to west between Benin City and Accra.”11

The Lagos megapolis is one of three “urban development corridors” in Africa. The other two are the North Delta Region of Egypt (the urban network including Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and Suez) and the Gauteng Urban Region of South Africa (Johannesburg, Tshwane/ Pretoria and Emfule/ Vereeniging). In these cases, the symbiotic melding of urban areas and regional peripheries is creating a landscape that is neither rural nor urban but a hybrid version of both, “wherein a dense web of transactions ties large urban cores to their surrounding regions.”12 In the case of Lagos, “it probably will also be the biggest single footprint of urban poverty on earth.”13

Poverty and urban growth

Historically, urbanization had been determined by the onset of industrialization and subsequent socioeconomic transformation. This is not true of Africa. African urbanization is a process driven by poverty. First there is the poverty that drives people from rural areas to the city. Migration from rural areas is propelled by a number of economic, political, social and security-related reasons. For instance, agricultural policies of post-colonial governments and international institutions have placed excessive demands on farmers by forcing them to sell their crops at below-market-value or imposing higher taxes. Natural disasters, like droughts and famines, as well as man-made wars, can also uproot entire communities who are forced leave their land. Add to this mix of factors the notion that governments are seen to be spending more on public services in cities on health, education and infrastructure improvements. It is unsurprising that cities seem to offer a promise of a better life and a route out of impoverishment for rural families. In the end, however, the urban promise holds true only for the political and economic elites. Upgrades occurring in cities generally do not benefit incoming migrants who are left struggling on the periphery with few prospects for economic integration. Therefore, the breadth and depth of poverty within the cities is fuelled by the growing number of people living there and the lack of adequate urban planning to absorb this growth.

It is unsurprising that cities seem to offer a promise of a better life and a route out of impoverishment for rural families. In the end, however, the urban promise holds true only for the political and economic elites.

Although 55% of the continent’s GDP originates in cities, 43% of urban residents live below the poverty line. This figure reaches 50% in some regions such as West and Central Africa.14 With the predicted future growth of African cities in mind, these figures will worsen given the extent of urban poverty. Urban poverty is not driven by a linear set of issues but rather a complex, inter-related set of factors and pressures that originate both from the micro-level (e.g., local factors like access to safe drinking water) and the macro-level (e.g., broader spheres of influence like government policies). This a miserable Gordian knot for many millions of urban Africans. There are three broad strands that make up this knot.

Housing pressures

Urban poverty is most visible when dealing with the issue of housing. The term “slums” conjures up images that proliferate in today’s media of unsafe shanty towns built out of wood, corrugated iron, mud bricks and plastic sheets. UN-Habitat estimates that in 2000, on average, about 70% of all African urban dwellers lived in slum housing. Available data revealed that in eight countries, 90% of urban residents lived in slum housing (Ethiopia, Central African Republic, Niger, Chad, Togo, Guinea, Mozambique and Madagascar).15 Table 2 identifies Africa’s largest slums and the number of people who reside there.

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The concept that “housing is a verb” signifies the constantly shifting nature of the issues slum residents have to face and balance continually. In other words, “the urban poor have to solve a complex equation as they try to optimize housing cost, tenure security, quality of shelter, journey to work, and sometimes, personal safety.”17

The crux of the housing problem is the issue of land rights. The dawn of independence in many countries triggered a population rush to claim their “right to the city.” However, this did not necessarily translate into a right to the land. Many post-colonial elites kept the same zonal restrictions and segregation policies of their colonial masters, separating the emerging African professional classes from the poorer masses. For example, in Luanda, Angola, the political elites and the wealthy inherited the Portuguese-built “asphalt city,” whereas the edge of the city housed the poor in settlements called “musseques.” These settlements would become massively over-crowded with thousands of refugees during the ensuing civil war. However, these settlements are viewed as temporary by residents who cannot prevent the government from “tidying up the city” by carrying out forced removals of communities and destroying thousands of homes. SOS Habitat estimates that at least 6,000 families lost their homes between 2000 and 2007 and received minimal compensation at best.18

This pattern of government abuse is replicated throughout the continent. The most widely reported recent example is, “Operation Murambatsvina” (Drive out the Filth) perpetrated by the Zanu-PF government in Zimbabwe in 2005. Among other devastating results, more than 500,000 people lost their housing across the country. Some urban centres lost as much as 60% of their housing stock. The government denounced these settlements as illegal, even though families had been living in these areas for decades.19 Operation Garika/Hlalani Kuhle (Live Well), a government program to re-build housing for the displaced population, has apparently been discontinued and was reported to have helped only Zanu-PF sympathizers and government civil servants.20

Another example of a government trampling over land rights is happening at the time of writing in Chad. More than 10,000 people are facing forced evictions from the neighbourhood of Ambatta in the capital city N’Djamena. The Deby government is supposedly planning on building social housing in the area, despite previous assurances to residents that the area was protected. No compensation will be offered to displaced residents, some of whom have lived and worked there for over 20 years.21

The crux of the housing problem is the issue of land rights … slum dwellers have no legal documentation … (or) security of tenure and are left to the mercy of governments who can pursue evictions with little fear of reprimand.”

Slum areas on the periphery of urban centres generally consist of informal settlements that have no clearly defined legal status. Therefore, the slum dwellers have no legal documentation to support their residency. This means residents do not have security of tenure and are left to the mercy of governments who can pursue evictions with little fear of reprimand because the poor do not possess the political clout to hold the government accountable.

Environmental pressures

Compounding the problems of impoverished housing and derisory land rights are the squalid conditions that are synonymous with the poverty of slum settlements. A lack of clean drinking water, inadequate sanitation facilities that help the spread of numerous diseases, along with overcrowding, the increased use of motorized transport and hazardous energy supplies, among other factors, all contribute to detrimental living conditions. These pose a constant threat to the lives of millions as well as causing natural environments to degenerate. As slum areas continue to expand in a haphazard fashion with little or no urban planning and as the population in these areas continues to grow, an ever-increasing demand on resources and services already stretched beyond capacity is created. Safe drinking water is a case in point.

At first, access to safe drinking water in recent years seemed to be improving. For example, UN-Habitat estimated that 26 out of 54 countries are on track for meeting the MDG drinking water supply target. Also, 245 million Africans gained access to improved drinking water between 1990 and 2006. However, because of population increases the number of people without access to improved drinking water actually increased from 280 million in 1990 to 341 million in 2006.22 In Uganda, for example, although the urban population without access to safe drinking water declined from 20% in 1990 to 13% in 2004, the number of urban households without a residential piped water supply increased from 76% to 93% in the same period. The lack of residential supply has been shown to be linked to increases in unplanned settlements in urban centres and the accompanying population growth.23 Two outcomes arise from this situation. Firstly, slum residents have to pay more for their water. Secondly, because the cost is prohibitive, more people have to rely on unsafe sources risking exposure to more water-borne diseases. In the slums in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, water costs three times more than it does in planned neighbourhoods. Additionally, this leads to a situation of profiteering where entrepreneurs can exploit municipal water sources and sell it on to slum residents at exorbitant costs. Many residents have little choice but to draw water from unsafe sources, resulting in frequent outbreaks of various diseases like cholera and dysentery.24

The other problem is the immediate danger to potable water posed by the pollution and waste products that can contaminate water sources. In this respect, it is not an exaggeration to say that many African cities are drowning in their own refuse. A lack of even the most basic sanitation facilities, like adequate pit latrines, is creating health crises for millions of people in urban centres. Sanitation deficits were inherited from colonial times, when the controlling empires ignored the need for infrastructural upgrades like drainage and sewage systems for the local populations. However, this situation of neglect has largely continued in the intervening years—so much so that according to the Mercer Index on Health and Sanitation, 16 out of 25 of the world’s dirtiest cities are African. The extent of the filth and refuse is inescapable and is creating a social and economic nightmare. For example, the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, ranks sixth on the list and “faces one of the worst sanitation problems on both the continent of Africa as well as in the world. The lack of adequate sanitation programs results in infant mortality, low life expectancy and the transmission of water-borne diseases.”25 No other continent is as well represented on this Index. Contributing to this are the inadequate and sometimes harmful policies of different levels of governments and institutions.

It is not an exaggeration to say that many African cities are drowning in their own refuse … according to the Mercer Index on Health and Sanitation, 16 out of 25 of the world’s dirtiest cities are African.”

Policy pressures

Cities are essentially economic vehicles. Cities possess the physical, financial and intellectual resources that can be used to spur and sustain economic growth and prosperity for a country. The levels of urban poverty witnessed in African cities indicate that this dynamic is largely missing. In fact, negative economic factors, like inflation, falling wages and price increases, have actually contributed to urban population growth. This is paradoxical, but in African cities physical, financial and intellectual resources are massively under-utilized or often criminally-utilized. In many respects, this situation can be attributed to policy failures at the national, municipal and institutional levels.

African states have failed their cities. The laissez-faire approach to urban planning has ensured that slum settlements have expanded beyond control. With this, governments have no incentive to provide sufficient and adequate housing stock for their population. Furthermore, governments can ride roughshod over legitimate claims to land, such as egalitarian communal landownership, in preference of market forces that will generate profit. So, selling land to line the pockets of government officials will either turn ordinary landowners into renters or may force existing inhabitants to move to another poor settlement in the city which increases the density of population in that area and creates an additional strain on resources. In any number of countries—Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Egypt, to name a few—examples exist where the poor urban majority are held hostage by a minority of unscrupulous land-speculators that include the wealthy elite, tribal chiefs and politicians.26

All the while, municipal governments, often paralyzed by a state emphasis on centralized government, have failed to invest the necessary financial capital into upgrading basic essential services like piped water, sewage systems, refuse collection and electricity. As well, an inability to administer fair taxation policies indicates the combination of corruption, inefficiency and diminished capacity of municipal governments. For example, many municipalities are unable, or unwilling, to assess and collect property taxes, particularly from wealthy landowners. The urban rich are generally reluctant to pay their taxes because of the levels of corruption; they do not believe their money is put to good use. The tax evasion of the rich has even been described as “criminal” by some observers.27 Additionally, in places like Nairobi, Mombasa, and Dar es Salaam, state governments own huge tracts of land but do not pay municipal taxes.28 It is often the case that municipalities put emphasis on sales taxes and user fees, which places most of the burden on the poor and not on the rich. Tax revenues from employment are also well-below capacity, since 60% of urban employment is estimated to be in the informal sector.29

International institutions have failed African cities as well—not least, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund-imposed Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) in the 1980s and 1990s whose effects are still felt today. For example, the informal employment sector in cities continues to thrive in Africa, to the point where the UN has projected that this sector will have to absorb up to 90% of new workers in the short term.30 Formal job creation has virtually ceased in many countries.31 Formal job creation was not the only victim of these neo-liberal conditional loan agreements. These policies forced governments to reduce their spending on public programs and domestic policies. In other words, “Everywhere the IMF and World Bank… offered poor countries the same poisoned chalice of devaluation, privatization, removal of import controls and food subsidies, enforced cost-recovery in health and education, and ruthless downsizing of the public sector.”32 The focus of many SAPs was to redress perceived biases in national policies that favoured urban centres. For example, national bureaucracies in urban centres, although bloated, were helping to create a middle class. However, the civil service ranks were decimated by SAPs targeting public spending, and forced many in the emerging middle-classes back into poverty. The emerging industrial sector in African cities is another instance where SAPs caused considerable damage. Industries, such as manufacturing, were often assisted by governments through subsidies and import controls. These were largely eradicated by SAPs which put the emphasis on agricultural and commodities export, so that countries could pay for the interest on conditional loans.33 Undoubtedly, there were many significant problems with national policies before the onset of SAPs, but SAPs did not solve these problems and introduced a whole range of new ones. This included stunting economic growth in African cities, which created unparalleled levels of urban poverty.

Outlook and potential solutions

Ultimately, if African cities continue on their present trajectory with little recourse to large-scale solutions, their future is bleak. One Hobbesian scenario speaks of the dispossessed masses thrown into the arms of extremism by unending poverty, engaging in conflict against their government oppressors. In this world, urban spaces disintegrate into the battlefields of a war that pits the poor against the rich.34

If African cities continue on their present trajectory with little recourse to large-scale solutions, their future is bleak … the most urgent need is to upgrade essential services.”

So what can be done to cut the Gordian knot which has placed African cities in the bind of decay and poverty? Arguably, the most urgent need is to upgrade essential services, especially in slum areas, such as piped water, improved sanitation facilities and refuse collection. To achieve this, municipal authorities need to be empowered both politically and financially to embark on a massive program of improving these services. Encouragingly, municipalities are working together on these issues. For instance, the South African Cities Network is a partnership of nine municipalities whose scope of work includes promoting sustainable cities, economic growth and poverty reduction, urban renewal, good governance, integrated land management and service delivery, and city development strategies. In pushing their agendas with national governments, local authorities will find strength in numbers.

Beyond investing more power and money in municipalities, national governments need to address the issue of land rights. Most governments have been guilty of breaking promises to the poor, initiating forced evictions and demolishing settlements. This detrimental recurring pattern cannot hide urban poverty, let alone solve it. Slums are not the cause of urban poverty, but rather its most visible symptom. Furthermore, there is a strong case to be made that making land available to the urban poor will stimulate economic development in the cities through construction and entrepreneurial initiatives. To this end, social movements and NGOs have a role to play in unifying and mobilizing poor urban residents to communicate with governments about the urgency of having secure and permanent tenure in informal settlements. Other cooperative solutions that may address the problems of African cities will be explored in further articles in this volume.

Notes

1. Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Release, “Another Devastating Shack Fire in the Kennedy Road Settlement,” August 10, 2010, http://www.abahlali.org/node/7251.

2. M. Birkinshaw, “A Big Devil in the Jondolos: A Report on Shack Fires,” September 2008, p. 16, http://abahlali.org//////files/Big_Devil_Politics_of_Shack_Fire.word_.doc.

3. UN Habitat, “The State of African Cities 2008” (New York: United Nations, 2008), p. ix.

4. M. Davis, Planet of Slums (New York: Verso, 2007), p. 60.

5. Malan, cited in ibid., p. 60-61.

6. Adapted from: “UN World Population Prospects: The 2001 Revision”. (New York: United Nations, 2002).

7. UN Habitat, “Planet,” p. 4-5.

8. Ibid.

9. Davis, p. 4.

10. C. Purefoy, “Hopes and Troubles Collide in Africa’s Mega-city”. CNN, April 6, 2010, http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/04/06/lagos.megacity.commuting/index.html.

11. OECD, “Preparing for the Future: A Vision of West Africa in the Year 2020,” cited in Davis, p. 6.

12. Guldin, “What’s a Peasant to Do?” cited in Davis, p. 9.

13. Davis, p. 6.

14. UN Habitat, “Planet”, p. 12.

15. Ibid, p. 87.

16. Davis, p. 28.

17. Ibid., p. 27.

18. L. Pawson, “Angola: worlds in collision,” Open Democracy, April 10, 2007, http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-africa_democracy/angola_collision_4514.jsp.

19. Solidarity Peace Trust, “A Fractured Nation: Operation Murambatsvina – Five Years On,” July 30, 2010, http://www.solidaritypeacetrust.org/787/a-fractured-nation-operation-murambatsvina-%e2%80%93-five-years-on/.

20. T. Saxon, “Operation Murambatsvina- Victims Still Crying for a Decent Living,” September 19, 2010, http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=34244:operation-murambatsvina-victims-still-crying-for-a-decent-living&catid=52&Itemid=32.

21. AfricaFiles: Action Focus, “Chad: 10,000 at imminent risk of forced eviction,” October 6, 2010. To find out more about this current crisis and action you can take, click on this link: http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=24444&ThisURL=./actionfocus.asp&URLName=ACTION%20FOCUS.

22. UN Habitat, “Planet,” p.42.

23. http://waterwiki.net/index.php/Access_to_Water_in_the_Slums_of_the_Developing_World.

24. http://washafrica.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/uganda-water-costs-higher-in-kampala-slums/.

25. Mercer Index on Health and Sanitation, cited in Forbes Magazine , http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/26/pollution-baku-oil-biz-logistics-cx_tl_0226dirtycities.html?feed=rss_popstories.

26. Davis, p. 87-89.

27. Ibid., p. 68.

28. E. Harsch, “African cities under strain,” Africa Renewal 15, 1-2 (June 2001), p. 30, http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol15no1/151city.htm.

29. S. Hanson, “Urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Council of Foreign Relations, October 1, 2007.

30. UN Habitat, “Challenge of Slums,” New York: United Nations, 2003, p. 104.

31. Davis, p. 177.

32. Ibid., p. 153.

33. UN Habitat, “Challenge,” p. 45-46.

34. Davis, p. 199-206.