Place and Function of African Cities in the Global Urban Network: Exploring the Matters Arising

Abstract

As the world shrinks into a 'global village', cities have come into focus as dominant nodes in the global transactions and flows of capital, commodities, people and services. The resulting economic cum information order is not only transforming the architecture of discrete cities everywhere but is also motivating new patterns of inter-city relations and networks. Global urban network is now synonymous with the trans-state processes that make up the global economy (Taylor, Political Geography 19:5-32, 2000). Hence, cities are increasing perceived as a new 'resource' and 'spring board' for connecting to and operating at the global level. The article explores these issues with reference to the place and function of African cities in the global urban network. A citybased assessment of this nature offers a fresh and fluid scope to African development question and quest as against the more conventional 'state-centric' benchmarking.

‘When we launched the government's agenda…’: aid agencies and local politics in urban Africa

“…The last remaining United Nations (UN) troops left the country at the end of 2005 (Doyle 2005), leaving behind a ‘postconflict capital … for a region that is not yet postconflict’ (Hoffman 2007: 404). Unlike Lusaka, the city that Resnick analyses in depth, Freetown today remains one of many economically isolated urban centres on the African continent (Onyebueke 2011). When the UN troops left, ‘donors provided around 50% of [the Sierra Leonean] Government revenue’ (Jackson 2005: 50), and although resources external to the country have always mattered greatly in shaping the city's political economy throughout the last century, the magnitude of foreign aid poured into Sierra Leone's political system (notably not into its economy) in the aftermath of the country's armed conflict was unprecedented.…”

Primary Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa: Quasars, Loose Connections, and Black Holes

“…The country also has a low rate of ethnic fractionalisation and the city has a relatively small slum population, due to the extensive slum clearance and housing development projects. Harare also scores high in Onyebueke's (2011) list of well-connected African cities.…”

“…Both these types of cities are marginalized in a dependency relationship within the global urban hierarchy (Castells 1996). However, certain SSA cities are increasingly being integrated within the global economy (Van der Merwe 2004;Onyebueke 2011). In the article, leading SSA cities conforming to the characteristics of leading cities in the developed world are termed quasars to contrast them with black holes and loose connections.…”

World Cities Are Just “Basing Points for Capital”: Interacting with the World City from the Global South

“…World city research, for example, privileges a certain type of economic development, while ignoring other often more important sectors. While Taylor's theoretical framework of an interlocking world city network shows no signs of directly building on empirical evidence from cities in the global south, many studies apply this framework and associated methodologies to cities in the global south (Gugler 2004;van der Merwe 2004;Amen et al 2006;Onyebueke 2011), while there has hardly been a framework developed in southern cities that is applied to northern cities. On the other hand, the interlocking world city network is a theory of a global network, rather than of cities themselves.…”