AFRICITIES - The African Mirror

Apr

01

2026

China is helping build Africa’s cities, but its approach sidelines local urban planners and residents

AFRICITIES

AS African cities experience some of the fastest urban growth rates in the world, China has become a major bilateral financier for urban infrastructure. From Nairobi’s elevated expressways to Lagos’s airport upgrades and Addis Ababa’s new riverside developments, Chinese-backed projects are transforming skylines and daily life across the continent. I study China’s economic engagements in Africa, focusing on how development is enacted, negotiated, and contested across sites of production, governance, and everyday life. My recent analysis of 267 Chinese-financed projects in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo), Lagos (Nigeria), Luanda (Angola), Lusaka (Zambia) and Nairobi (Kenya) shows that…

Nov

29

2025

By SINENHLANHLA MEMELA and PHILIPPA IRVINE

No space for culture: ‘matchbox housing’ leaves residents unable to honour customs in a South African town

AFRICITIES

IN South Africa, urban planning is influenced by Western-centric and colonial planning, including social housing, building technologies, architectural form, master plans, zoning, and land tenure systems. The colonial and apartheid planning policies and practices from the 1930s gave European settlers the sole rights to live, work and be educated in urban areas, where they had complete freedom of movement. On the other hand, the presence of African people in urban settlements was strictly controlled through pass laws, spatial segregation, and systems of land tenure that restricted them from living in towns and cities. If Black people needed to stay close…

Nov

25

2025

By MARIO SCHMIDT and MIRIAM MAINA

High-rise living in Nairobi’s Pipeline estate is stressful – how men and women cope

AFRICITIES

WITHIN sight of Kenya’s main international airport in Nairobi’s east, Pipeline residential estate stands out like a sore thumb. Composed almost entirely of tightly packed high-rise tenement flats, the estate has been described by the media as an urban planning nightmare. They point to its garbage problem, its waterlogged and frequently impassable streets, and the effect of dense living conditions on children’s health. Pipeline’s transformation started roughly two decades ago. High-rise apartment blocks were a response to demand for low-cost rental housing in the rapidly urbanising capital. Individual private developers gradually converted the area, roughly 2km², into a dense, high-rise…

Aug

29

2025

By ASTRID R.N. HAAS

Africa’s city planners must look to the global south for solutions: Johannesburg and São Paulo offer useful insights

AFRICITIES

FOR decades, the dominant theories and models in urban studies have been built from the experience of a small set of mostly Western cities. Other urban contexts, particularly those in Africa, Latin America and Asia, have too often been treated as peripheral, as if they simply copy or lag behind “northern” norms. Urban geographer Jennifer Robinson has called this out, arguing that urban theory needs to take seriously the diverse realities of all cities. This means starting from places like Johannesburg, South Africa’s commercial capital, and São Paulo, Brazil’s financial capital, not just as isolated case studies, but rather as…

Aug

20

2024

By ASTRID R.N. HAAS

Raising revenue from land: what African cities might learn from Hong Kong’s unique land-lease system

AFRICITIES

LAND prices across many African cities are soaring. This is because land is a city’s key asset. As urbanisation progresses, demand for land will rise, and therefore so will land prices, because the supply of land in cities is limited. Investments in public infrastructure, and zoning regulations that convert land to alternative uses, will also boost land value. In fact, studies have shown that simply converting rural land to urban can increase its value by 400%. All these changes are driven by the government and collective action, rather than by private individuals. However, the beneficiaries of higher land prices will…

Jul

27

2024

By SINTAYEHU W. DEJENE and RAZAK KIRIBOU

Urban greening in Africa will help to build climate resilience – planners and governments need to work with nature

AFRICITIES

NATURE-BASED solutions are actions that use nature to solve environmental problems. Examples in cities would be setting up a wetland near a group of buildings to absorb floodwater, or building permeable pavements. The world’s developed countries have been implementing nature-based solutions since 2015 but Africa has fallen behind. We are part of a group of environmental scientists who analysed the plans of African countries to adapt to climate change. We found that only 15 African countries (27.7%) have implemented nature-based solutions. Just 119 projects have been set up in Africa to adapt to climate change in water, agriculture, forests and…

Jul

12

2024

By ASTRID R.N. HAAS

African urbanisation: what can (and can’t) be learned from China about growing cities

AFRICITIES

THE economic growth paths of Asian and African countries have often been compared. China, with a gross domestic product per capita of US$251 in 1987, was poorer than most African countries at the time. Uganda’s GDP per capita was US$392, Zambia’s US$319 and Ghana’s US$354. Yet today China has a GDP per capita of US$6,091 and it is the world’s second largest economy. In Uganda, it is still only US$964. Asia and Africa have urbanised at similar speeds. Africa is undergoing the fastest urban transition the world has experienced to date with projections that nearly 1 billion more people will…

Feb

23

2024

By ZANIEL DADA, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Architect building a photo library of the Lagos cityscape is also changing the narrative on how we view African architecture

AFRICITIES

WHILE commuters are trying to escape the snaking rush hour traffic backed up around the Lagos metropolis, Tolulope Sanusi is calmly setting up for work, 13 floors above the gridlock. This is Africa’s second-largest city, with an estimated population of more than 20 million people. From up on her rooftop perch, the gridlock resembles serpentine coils, choking the city. Soon, the coils will release their hold and the city will be free - at least for a few hours, before the next rush hour. Sanusi, an architecture photographer, has been commissioned to capture images of Stanbic Bank's headquarters on Victoria…

Jan

30

2024

By The African Mirror

Lagos city planning has a history of excluding residents: it’s happening again

AFRICITIES

IN Lagos, a megacity with a population estimated at 21 million, the state government has been building a satellite city, known as Eko Atlantic. At the same time, it has been destroying informal settlements, where as much as 60%-70% of Lagos’s population may live. HALIMAT SOMOTAN, Assistant Professor of African Studies, Georgetown University Makoko, a community on the mainland of Lagos, is one of the places threatened with demolition. Its residents, who originated from coastal communities in the Niger Delta, Benin, Togo and Ghana, claim to have occupied the area since the early 1900s. Half of the population resides in…

Jan

19

2024

By CONRAD ONYANGO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Rising megacities: A superhighway for Africa’s shared mobility market

AFRICITIES

AS Africa's urban centres continue to grow and with an increasing number of cities now expected to surpass 10 million residents, the shared mobility sector is expanding fast too, raising prospects of more income for cab-hailing companies and drivers. Global management firm, Oliver Wyman, has revealed in a new report that ride-hailing, scooter or e-bike rentals, and car-sharing, which together make up the shared mobility sector, could double in size on the continent by 2030, generating an additional 550,000 employment opportunities. The report, ‘Shared Mobility's Global Impact,’ supported by data made accessible for the first time by global mobility operator…