Urban Africa: Changing Contours of Survival in the City

Many African urban dwellers have to find ways of making a living within cities dominated by powerful economic and political interests. This book explores how they negotiate the spatial practices, politico-economic processes and social relations that entangle place, identity and power in urban sites. While historically familiar links between countryside and city remain, these are constantly being reworked to give life to highly diverse urban formations. Meanwhile, African cities are being further fashioned through the geographically uneven dynamics of globalization. Institutional structures change rapidly, informal agreements flourish, and innovative ways of managing relationships are found. Urban change is not a process that easily managed or steered. What stability exists is itself the product of an enforced adaptation to instability.