Getting the politics right – Political contestation has stalled Africa’s urban development - Africa in Fact

Terence Corrigan

Adopted in 2014 by the African Union, the African Charter on the Values and Principles of Decentralisation, Local Government and Local Development is a recognition of the importance of the continent’s urban centres to its future. Africa – particularly sub-Saharan Africa – has been a late urbaniser, and the acceleration of the process is powering a profound socio-demographic transformation. 

In 1960, less than 15% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa lived in cities; in 2000, this stood at 31%, and in 2023, at 43%. Although it varies from country to country, Africa will have an irrevocable majority urban population by the mid-century. Two cities, Lagos and Kinshasa, already have more than 10 million inhabitants, while a further 12 will have grown to that size over the same period. 

The Charter attempts to plot the ordinal points of a governance response to this dynamic. Its content is unremarkable. It pledges respect for democratic norms, popular participation, and effective administration. It requires proper capacitation of local governments with the financial resources they need. It enjoins national governments and local governments to cooperate. 

Interestingly, it was adopted at an assembly in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. Malabo is the largest city in Equatorial Guinea, one of Africa’s most urbanised countries; three-quarters of its population live in cities. It is also, on paper, relatively wealthy, with an economy drawing on substantial oil reserves. But this has accrued to a small coterie around the ruling Obiang dynasty, with a rough order maintained by a corrupt state and heavy-handed security forces. 

Malabo itself embodies this, with a pristine colonial-era core, gleaming buildings housing the offices of oil companies, villas of the wealthy existing alongside sprawling, underserviced shack lands where thousands of households depend on single standpipes for water, and pirated electricity comes through dangerously exposed overhead networks of cables. Development initiatives, such as social housing for the city’s poor, have invariably ended up in the hands of the monied elite. 

In future, hopes are that the eyesores of slums and poverty will be less of an inconvenience for the country’s elites, as a new bespoke capital is under construction in the country’s interior. Ciudad de la Paz will embody the ethos of oligarchy: remote, exclusive, designed to offer an organised and pleasant life to a community of insiders. 

Scholarship on the urban transition recognises two distinct developmental forms. The first, prevalent in Asian centres such as Mumbai and Shanghai, is cities as sites of production. Their growth is accompanied by high-value-adding activity, such as manufacturing, and their economies are linked to markets across their countries and the world. This absorbs a growing population and provides them with avenues for social mobility. 

For the most part, this is not the pattern in Africa. As Dr Patricia Jones of Oxford University has written: “The problem is that Africa is urbanising without industrialising. Few African cities are expanding their manufacturing sectors – at least not at the same rate as cities in other regions.” 

Most African cities are sites of consumption. The economy is based on trade and services, offering limited scope for generating wealth and participating in value chains. Perhaps more than anything, consumption cities are sites of government and the political access to resources that come with it. 

Malabo is an example of this. It is the venue for a political and administrative class to subsist off state budgets, dependent on the country’s resource rents, mediated by the grip of the Obiang dynasty. Ciudad de la Paz stands to be even more so. 

Equatorial Guinea is a harshly authoritarian society, though political activity has tended to be organised in its cities. The reluctant turn of its government to nominal pluralism in the 1990s was spearheaded by municipal polls in 1995; while these were widely denounced as rigged, the opposition could at least claim some small wins in Malabo. And it has been in Malabo that calls for protests have arisen from time to time. 

Africa in Fact discussed this with Tutu Alicante, an Equatoguinean activist living in exile in the United States. “Equatorial Guinea is, geographically, a small country,” he explains, “people gravitate to the urban areas where there is a possibility of work and services. But they don’t find it. They see chaos and kleptocracy. But being close together and sharing frustration is a possibility of organisation.” 

While Equatorial Guinea is an extreme example – Alicante describes it as a “mafia state” not understandable by the rules of ordinary countries – he touches on a profoundly important contemporary dynamic in African politics. 

The urban transition stands (potentially) to upend traditional political paradigms on the continent; from this perspective, old-school ethnic and regional politics and the neo-patrimonial governance (neopatrimonialism denotes the use of formal institutions to dispense patronage to informal support networks) that underwrites it. The African city is considered the birthplace of a turn to modernity. The renowned Senegalese Africanist Mamadou Diouf put it lyrically: “The city is the seat of power, the terrain for expressing the imaginary of the ruling class and its ascendance. In this field, there are no possibilities other than confrontation and negotiation.” 

The consumptive nature of Africa’s cities, with a few exceptions, is tied to their origins in the pre-colonial and colonial periods. Many of Africa’s cities arose as nodes of extractive trade, market venues, or administrative centres. This was the pattern, for example, with Dakar, Dar es Salaam, and Lagos. Typically intended to cater primarily to a relatively small – often expatriate – community, they were not designed for the mass populations they are now taking on. 

For much of their history, the importance of cities as sites of development and economic growth was not properly recognised. Africa’s cities invariably lacked institutional fortitude. This included the necessary administrative and technical skills, a coherent policymaking and implementation regime, and a capacity for governance distinct from the broader state system, the latter a matter of particular importance where central governments or dominant ruling parties jealously guarded their power. Again, with some exceptions, the result was structurally weak cities subordinated to national power dynamics. 

The political and economic crises that shook the continent in the 1970s and 1980s produced a growing demand for decentralised governance. This was driven both by a frustrated civil society – the nucleus, in many instances, of political opposition – and by donors. This was linked to demands for the opening up of political competition, as one-party states and military governments were falling out of favour internationally. All of this came to be identified with the so-called “good governance agenda”, the idea being that devolving power to democratically elected lower-tier elected authorities would encourage greater accountability and more responsive governance. These sentiments have found expression in the Charter. 

With the benefit of hindsight, it has become painfully clear that many incumbents were acting strictly in response to pressure and sought to manage the democratic openings to their own advantage. In some cases, as in Uganda and Ethiopia, authoritarian governments allowed local political competition to absorb demands for change without ceding national control. 

In others, government devolution was introduced with hard, structural limits to its impact, devolution without substance. Edgar Pieterse, director of the Centre for African Cities, noted, “Decentralisation was often more hollow than substantial. Local governments were created in law, but these tiers of government were seldom awarded the requisite powers, functions and fiscal capacities to take control of their territories. Instead, they would be administrative extensions of national ministries, and most urban infrastructure and services would be planned, implemented and managed by national utility companies that bypassed local political processes. 

“These institutional mismatches are allowed to persist partly because many national governments realised that their political foes would find their greatest electoral support in cities. This phenomenon creates a political incentive to keep local governments, especially in cities, weak and under-resourced.” 

In other words, a half-hearted commitment to democratic politics came to be reflected in a lukewarm commitment to robust urban governance. This can be seen most prominently in authoritarian societies. Equatorial Guinea is an emblematic example, though not the only one. Angola, for example, had no elected local government; its urban centres were subdivisions of the national state. This has helped to maintain the political dominance of the ruling MPLA – and the systems of extraction that have surrounded it. 

More common has been the uneven and inconsistent respect national governments have shown for the prerogatives of cities as opposition parties gained traction. It is worth noting that local politicians such as Daviz Simango, one-time mayor of Beira in Mozambique, Marc Ravalomanana of Antananarivo in Madagascar, and Helen Zille of Cape Town in South Africa became national figures. Some parties that have made a local mark went on to win national power, such as the Patriotic Front in Zambia. This sends a message to incumbents about the possibilities of cities to signal political change. For this reason, resources and urban governance institutions have been abused for partisan advantage. 

Reflecting on the dynamics of East African politics, Deus Kibamba, a Tanzanian political scientist told Africa in Fact: “Opposition groups are preferred by city voters. In response, ruling governments refrain from spending their energies in big cities such as Dar es Salaam, Lusaka or Nairobi. This translates into lesser investments, leaving the cities as dilapidated as ever [even as they expand and the need for services grows]. In the case of Tanzania, even developmental initiatives such as support for youth and women and loan schemes have been taken outside the cities to benefit rural dwellers who are likely to vote incumbent governments in coming elections.” 

Danielle Resnick, a political economist and veteran scholar of Africa, made a similar point in a 2014 analysis: “Central governments do try either to rescind responsibilities for highly visible services that could bolster the popularity of the opposition or to offload important tasks to local government that could undermine the latter’s reputation.” 

Decentralisation processes have often delegated functions without the resources to carry them out (contrary to the requirements of the Charter that “local governments shall be provided with the required human financial and technological resources to effectively and efficiently discharge their responsibilities”). Examples are numerous. In the early 2000s, Uganda’s government initiated construction projects in wetlands around Kampala, under the control of the opposition Democratic Party. This encouraged a rash of unauthorised construction, directly challenging the city’s authority. Indeed, in 2009, Uganda’s parliament passed legislation that stripped the Kampala City Council of its powers and vested administrative powers in a new Kampala Capital City Authority, whose executive director would be appointed by the president. Similarly, the Senegalese government had long been responsible for flood relief measures in Dakar. This responsibility was shifted to the city after it fell to the opposition, Bennoo Siggil Senegaal, in 2009 without the resources necessary to undertake them. The resulting hardships were intended to reflect poorly on the city. Conversely, this function was removed when Dakar came up with innovative solutions to solid waste removal. 

“One of the phenomena we see across Africa is opposition parties being more popular than ruling parties in the most urbanised areas,” Steven Gruzd, head of the African Governance and Diplomacy Programme at the South African Institute of International Affairs commented to Africa in Fact, “You then have a tussle with national governments over resources and sabotaging of local government from the centre. South Africa and Zimbabwe are good examples of this.” 

The South African case is particularly interesting. The country’s local government has a long history, and the institution is constitutionally recognised. Many of its cities are genuine sites of production and should be successful centres of urbanisation. But over the past two decades, several of them – Johannesburg, eThekwini (Durban), and Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), for example – have experienced a visible and unmistakable decline in their administration quality. 

To be sure, South Africa has experienced tensions between opposition-controlled cities (such as Cape Town) and the national government, which is under control (at least until last year’s election forced a coalition) of the African National Congress. But even more intense problems have arisen in ANC-controlled cities. 

Africa in Fact spoke to Prof Ivor Chipkin of the New South Institute, one of South Africa’s foremost experts on public administration – and a former civic activist – to understand this. It comes down, he says, “to the political character of governance”. Following the transition to democracy, the ANC focused on asserting political control. Old order officials, including many with irreplaceable technical expertise, were displaced. Preferment in the senior levels came to rely heavily on political loyalty, a process given impetus by the ANC’s adoption of a formal policy of politicised appointment, “cadre deployment”. (This author covered this theme in AIF 68, “Cadres, incompetence and collapse: South Africa’s local government malaise”.) 

Chipkin adds that this coincided with another governance trend, the so-called New Public Management, that stressed using market-style approaches to service provision. Part of this involved outsourcing functions and the associated procurement spending. “This led to private companies embedded within the ANC’s influence networks,” he notes. The outcome was a state that became increasingly geared towards politically inflected extraction while its capacity to govern declined. This has been mitigated by the presence of a strong private sector and civil society, although the consequences of long-term retardation are impossible to ignore. 

The upshot is that the growth of cities and the increasing urbanisation of Africa’s population have not yet modernised its governance; the developmental vistas of the Charter remain, for the most part, distant. 

Much of this is a direct outgrowth of the failures and pathologies of the politics of Africa’s cities. Politics remains central to livelihoods and the distribution of rewards for hard-pressed populations. With little to distribute and urban economies that are frequently unable to supply the opportunities for socio-economic mobility, office bearers are inclined to turn their attention from providing for the common good to delivering bespoke benefits to their followers – or, indeed, to their patrons. 

Governance systems, meanwhile, have been suborned to engineer political control. This is particularly the case where governments view democracy as a performance – “political theatre, rather than contestation”, in Tutu Alicante’s words – and seek to constrain its consequences. 

African cities and the continent’s urban transition have been stalled by the politics accompanying it. In this respect, it exhibits as much continuity as the change from extant patterns of patronage and extraction that have so much been associated with Africa’s overall developmental malaise. 

Understanding the problems confronting Africa’s cities demands recognising the on-the-ground contest for power, the tussle between disparate groups for influence, and the incentives all of this creates. 

And the challenges ahead are only going to grow. Deus Kibamba comments: “The future of urban governance in the continent will most probably focus on inclusive citizen participation, innovative financing mechanisms, climate-resilient planning, and collaborative efforts between different stakeholders to manage rapid urbanisation.” 

This will be impossible without a different approach to politics, one that respects the integrity of the systems that functional cities require. 

Meanwhile, many African cities see no immediate prospects of improvement. Malabo languishes among them. It seems neither is the completion of Ciudad de la Paz imminent. “They’re running out of money,” says Alicante. “There’s just been too much corruption.” 

Terence Corrigan is projects and publications manager at the Institute of Race Relations (IRR)

https://africainfact.com/getting-the-politics-right-political-contestation-has-stalled-africas-urban-development/