Inception Workshop on Urban Governance and Turning Africa Cities Around
Abstract
In the last decade and a half, Africa has been undergoing massive social, economic and political transformation. One huge area of change is the rapid rate of urbanization on the continent which calls for a corresponding structural response from urban authorities, particularly in regard to better public goods and services provision. Recent improvements in Africa‘s complex and diverse cities call for deeper contextual and comparative empirical analyses of the determinants of the improvements, their dynamics, factors such as the mix between institutional depth, leadership and devolution that have given rise to 'turning around‘ cities on the continent. In response to this, the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR) with financial support from the Department for International Development (DFID) is facilitating an empirical comparative analysis on three African turn around cities of Lagos, Johannesburg and Luanda. The studies will look at the preconditions for the turn-around; analyze the process and prospects for other cities on the continent.
An inception workshop was organized to build consensus on conceptual and analytical issues central to the study to be conducted by a team of researchers from the three cities. The inception workshop brought together 20 participants including researchers and key policy actors from Angola, Nigeria, South Africa as well as reference group members, a principal investigator and PASGR staff. This report provides the key issues that were discussed during the inception workshop.
Citation
PASGR. Inception Workshop on Urban Governance and Turning Africa Cities Around. Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR), (2015) 29 pp.
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