Fractured fiscal authority and fragmented infrastructures: Financing sustainable urban development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Cirolia, Liza Rose

doi:10.1016/j.habitatint.2020.102233

Cited by 40 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…The lack of urban planning as cities have expanded outward has led to a patchwork of formal, informal, and unregulated water and sanitation services (Cirolia 2020;Jaglin 2014). Many fastgrowing cities have struggled to address the spatial imprints and segregated infrastructures of colonial histories that determined access to basic services.…”

Section: Poor Urban Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is clear that business-as-usual practices are unable to meet growing water demand and the sanitation needs of sprawling settlements (Cirolia 2020;Pieterse et al 2020). Alternative provision and vendors fill in the gap for water and sanitation services, but without regulation, these further water resource exploitation (e.g., overdrawing wells) and water pollution (e.g., dumping untreated fecal sludge directly in water bodies).…”

Section: Unsustainable Water Management and Distribution Practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the low resources and capacity of most utilities, African cities will need innovative short-and medium-term solutions to improving household water security in addition to expanding coverage of the public network. For many African cities, a complex web of alternative services already exists with a number of actors-some formalized and some not-influencing the service delivery networks (Cirolia 2020). Some examples include water tanker trucks, small-scale vendors, neighborhood water kiosks, septic tank vacuum trucks, and pit latrine emptiers that can reach dense slum households with no paved road access.…”

Section: Strategies Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Municipal capacity has been unable to keep pace with urban growth, widening inequalities in access to services and infrastructure (Mitlin et al 2019). Unmet demand and longstanding infrastructure deficits for water and sanitation have resulted in a largely unregulated ecosystem of alternative, informal providers and/or self-provision (Cirolia 2020;Pieterse et al 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Water Resilience in a Changing Urban Context:  Africa's Challenge and Pathways for Action

Habtemariam¹,

Gelaye²,

Du³

et al. 2021

WRIPUB

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Cities in Africa face escalating water-related challenges, compounded by worsening climate change and rising urbanization. Water insecurity threatens economies, livelihoods and the health and wellbeing of billions. The answer: smart, systematic investments in urban water resilience that ensure communities have safe, reliable and affordable water; and that water resources are protected through disaster preparedness and water-sensitive infrastructure. Water Resilience in a Changing Urban Context: Africa's Challenge and Pathways for Action, demonstrates that African cities can address these challenges with a fresh approach centered on water resilience. This publication frames core challenges and major barriers that prevent water resilience in African countries. The authors, experts in water resilience, highlight the potential power of city-regions in Africa to drive transformation. It offers four priority pathways for action as a starting point for cities to build urban water resilience: 1) plan for water, 2) prioritize the most vulnerable, 3) create change at scale and 4) get finance right. Water resilience is essential to many development goals, from the Sustainable Development Goals and UN Habitat’s New Urban Agenda, to the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the Paris Agreement.

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Section: Poor Urban Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Unsustainable Water Management and Distribution Practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Strategies Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Water Resilience in a Changing Urban Context:  Africa's Challenge and Pathways for Action

Habtemariam¹,

Gelaye²,

Du³

et al. 2021

WRIPUB

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“…In this article, we instead consider projects at the scale of the city and metropolitan area, which remain neglected in the China-Africa debate despite being crucial in African contexts experiencing rapid urban growth and high infrastructural demand with limited financial resources (Parnell and Pieterse, 2014). The metropolitan scale is also of interest given the dense constellations of overlapping institutions and agencies that characterise large cities, and because of the relative tangibility and immediacy of impacts of infrastructure at this scale compared to national or trans-national projects (Amin and Thrift, 2017;Cirolia, 2020;Rode et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contingent infrastructure and the dilution of ‘Chineseness’: Reframing roads and rail in Kampala and Addis Ababa

Goodfellow

Huang

2020

Environ Plan A

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Amid growing interest in China’s role in financing and building infrastructure in Africa, there is still little research on how Chinese-financed infrastructures are negotiated and realised at the city and metropolitan scale. We compare the Light Rail Transit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with the expressway linking Kampala to Entebbe airport in Uganda, examining the processes of bargaining behind these transport infrastructures and their emergent effects on urban land use and city-dwellers’ mobility. We find that both projects were designed and implemented through opaque negotiations between African national elites and Chinese agencies, with little or no engagement from city authorities, leading to haphazard outcomes that are poorly integrated with broader planning. Yet we also suggest that despite being enabled and mediated by Chinese agencies, such projects do not embody a Chinese global vision. They instead reflect the entrepreneurial activities of Chinese contractors and the varying ways in which these connect with African national governments’ shifting priorities. Moreover, as they are subsumed into the urban context, these transposed infrastructures have been rapidly repurposed and their ‘Chineseness’ diluted, with one morphing into an infrastructure for the poor and the other into a site of private value extraction. We thus argue that, far from representing a domineering or neo-colonial influence, Chinese-financed infrastructures that land in institutionally complex African city-regions can be rapidly swallowed up into the political-economic landscape, producing contingent benefits and disbenefits that are far removed from the visions of any planners – Chinese or African, past or present.

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The Urban Question in Africa

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Fractured fiscal authority and fragmented infrastructures: Financing sustainable urban development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Cited by 40 publications

References 47 publications

Water Resilience in a Changing Urban Context:  Africa's Challenge and Pathways for Action

Water Resilience in a Changing Urban Context:  Africa's Challenge and Pathways for Action

Contingent infrastructure and the dilution of ‘Chineseness’: Reframing roads and rail in Kampala and Addis Ababa

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