intermediate-size cities and small towns. Africa’s populations are concentrating in urban contexts that define themselves as political constituencies in their own right. In other words, not only the African peoples but also African polities are now urbanizing. Rising political awareness; demands for more participatory governance; local self-determination, as well as transparency and accountability in the use of domestic financial and other resources are all indications that Africa’s political values and cultures are rapidly transforming. The promotion of change in political cultures is implicitly embedded in the global drive for more decentralized governance. Although “every ship needs a captain”, the effective deconcentration of decision-making powers according to the subsidiarity principle is required. That would go a long way in providing the engaged governance modalities, the delivery on election promises, and the responsiveness to popular needs increasingly demanded by African populations. However, as in so many countries around the world, the International Guidelines on Decentralization and Strengthening of Local Authorities45 have been interpreted by many African central governments as an excuse simply to “decentralize” the problem-resolution responsibility. The fiscal resources required (or the authority to raise the funds locally) have typically not been decentralized. In such contexts decentralization becomes ineffectual, if not meaningless. At the other end of the power spectrum, Africa needs to unite and pan-Africanism should be far more vigorously pursued, despite inherent political obstacles. Today’s world is a globalized one in the political, economic and financial sense. While advanced and emerging economies around the world increasingly operate in the unison of shared-interest blocks, Africa continues to deal bilaterally in its strategic international relations. If continued, such practice will reduce Africa’s chances for achieving the political, economic and social transformations to which it aspires. Strategic repositioning in the world can no longer be effectively pursued from parochial national perspectives; it requires the numbers and powers found only in cooperative unity. This third issue in The State of African Cities report series attempts to explain why Africa is at a critical junction in its political, economic and social development. The unfolding major transformations offer Africa opportunities to jettison the development trajectories that have failed to deliver its postindependence visions of human development and prosperity. Given the present economic momentum, there are options to reflect on the desirable urban development trajectories in the light of looming resources scarcity and other vulnerabilities. Given the political changes widely demanded by its peoples, Africa has the opportunity to reconsider the adaptations required in its political cultures. Inaction in these areas would imply perpetuation of the development models that have proven unable to deliver prosperity for all, and which are more likely to deliver significant socio-political risks. A deep re-imagining of African urbanism may be critical, because there cannot be political, economic, social and environmental sustainability without sustainable urbanization.
THE STATE OF AFRICAN CITIES 2014
for rapidly growing cities all remained elusive. Instead, public institutions became bloated with employees who weakened state coffers rather than delivering the policies required for economic and social transformation. The political transitions that emerged in Africa during the 1980s and 1990s occurred alongside (some say, because of ) the Bretton Woods institutions-induced economic liberalization and structural adjustment programmes. The interventions that followed from these programmes mostly concerned change in politico-economic systems per se yet largely failed to transform the underlying economic structures and political cultures. Indigenous, pre-colonial Africa had distinct political cultures: they were largely feudal, albeit with democratic aspects, and based on bonds of kinship, language and religion. The new, post-independence African leaders - many derived from small, urban and westernized elites - mostly embraced political models inherited from Europe. They ignored the notion that these models had evolved under different conditions and were alien to, if not incompatible with, Africa’s often culturally and locally-defined political identities.42 The western political philosophies which were introduced in Africa had one thing in common: they all failed to deliver the post-independence visions of development and prosperity for all. Although the global political and economic terrain was tilted against the interests of emerging Africa, tardiness in introducing true political change and the lack of attention to needed reform in political culture, especially over the past few decades, is also to blame for non-delivery on Africa’s developmental aspirations. Asian nations, for instance, were more astute in this respect. Despite their post-independence transitional problems, on the whole they performed better than African nations. It is telling that 12 Asian and 27 African nations are considered to be among the world’s 40 least-performing, with the five worst rankings all occupied by Africa.43 Admittedly, there is much criticism of this assessment but it cannot be completely ignored as a broad indicator of different levels of state fragility around the world. The African peoples and their authorities live in separate worlds, whether economically, politically, culturally or all of these combined. In several countries, statehood mostly exists in the capitals and other large cities, while the remainder of the domestic territory is a kind of hybrid nation; a geographic amalgamation of local territories defined by kinship, language and cultural bonds rather than identifying with the nation state. Furthermore, the rural bias – once judged necessary to capture the essence of African sociocultural systems – has, until very recently, almost systematically ignored the realities of urbanizing societies. This bias has also neglected to recognize how African peoples – modernizing faster than the political cultures in their nation states – seek to access power and control resources.44 Mobile technology and increasing population mobility are now enforcing demands for rapid change in the political, economic and social relationships between Africa’s financial and governance power centres and the outlying
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