Viewpoint Theorisations of African cities need to be careful of jumping onto the ‘urban band wagon’

Abstract

The observation that cities are growing rapidly especially in the African continent is well acknowledged around the world. Indeed, ‘an urban-centric discourse’ has emerged to assert that the future is ‘urban’ as more people are moving to live in cities (UN, 2018). While the issue of growth cannot be challenged, one needs to look at the dangers of this discourse in African cities. The dynamics of urban growth in African cities are more complex and different from industrialised Europe from which this discourse is modelled. Hence, the patterns of contemporary urban growth and economic transformation in Africa might well undermine assumed urban-centric theoretical associations. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/ The publication was supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funds of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation (BMZ).