Matthew Abunyewah

Charles Darwin University | CDU · Discipline of Psychology

Decades of political ambivalence, housing injustice, and a neoliberal housing sector aided by the government's lax approach to housing provision have meant that, private rental housing remains the predominant sector for housing urban residents and their shifting geographies into secondary cities. Residential satisfaction in urban areas provides an...

We explore the challenges women technology entrepreneurs face in South Africa and the role of institutions and societies in contributing to and overcoming these challenges through the lens of Institutional theory. Focusing on IT as a masculine-labelled niche and women as a minority, this study evaluates the impacts of cognitive culture, normative f...

Prior disaster experiences often provide lessons for communities to respond to new disasters. In informal communities prone to disasters but conditioned within reactive disaster management regimes, residents and Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) play immense roles in disaster risk reduction and response. In Freetown, Sierra Leone, limited govern...

This ethnographic report argues that informal social protection continues to be the first source of support to minimise climate change and disaster losses. Literature suggests that informal social protection takes place within social settings including complex social ties and capital that are formed and connected to each other through rights and ob...

This study explores the household adaptiveness to climate change risk in Sumba Island, a semi-arid region characterised by smallholder livestock farming and frequent climate-induced disasters in Eastern Indonesia. It investigates the strategies employed by rural households to cope with climate change and disasters, defining household adaptability a...

The rapid transformation and modernization of African cities have resulted in the gradual but solid deployment and consumption of digital products for various purposes. While the integration of digital technologies and products in urban life is essential for tackling numerous socio-spatial and economic challenges of African urbanization, their end-...

The role of technology in e-waste management is receiving increasing attention as a dominant strategy to achieve long-term sustainability and well-being goals. However, a lack of comprehensive understanding of the contemporary factors influencing e-waste urban mining technology design and adoption remains. This is the first study to propose a taxon...

The urban majority in Africa do a great deal of walking, yet we do not fully understand the lived realities of the so-called captive walkers, who have no option but to walk. This study explores the everyday lived accounts of urban residents as they navigate the walking environment in two low-income neighbourhoods in Accra, Ghana’s capital. The stud...

Purpose: Integrating and advancing social sustainability is foundational to achieving the urban sustainable development goals. Given the rapid transformation of cities in the Mediterranean region, this study sought to assess residents' evaluation of social sustainability in two socio-spatially diverse neighbourhoods of metropolitan Istanbul. Desig...

This book takes a theoretical and empirical distance from urban slums/low-income settlements as a threat to environmental sustainability and recast them as places where environmentally rehabilitative and circular practices occur—drawing on the theoretical lens of the circular economy (CE). CE is defined as regenerative system that minimizes waste,...

Spatial informal urbanism practices towards value retention and circularity have received little attention in extant literature. Yet, informal settlements in African cities have played out as built spaces for necessity-driven value retention of materials, goods, and services, which potentiate the circularity of waste resources. This chapter highlig...

This concluding chapter weaves together the individual contributions in this book to develop a slum-circular economic model that aligns slum livelihoods, slum spatial appropriations, and slum housing with the core principles of the circular economy. The chapter makes the case for a just circular transition. It argues that policies that instill dist...

The reality of informalization and ‘slummification’ of Global South cities has garnered much interest in academic and policy circles at international, national, and local levels, as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals, the New Urban Agenda, and even broader issues around Sustainable Futures. Here, the Circular Economy (CE), which encompa...

Small and Medium-sized Cities (SMCs) are becoming the new frontiers of global urban population growth. The newly developed degree of urbanization projection suggests a gradual transition from rapid growth in the last half-century to slow growth by 2050, especially in large cities of middle and low-income countries (UN Habitat, 2022; UN DESA, 2018)....

Disaster risks in African cities are compounding due to the triple convergence of climate change impacts, unplanned urbanisation, and entrenched socio-spatial inequities. Disaster events are, therefore, common with disproportionate impacts on informal residents yet resting within reactive and extremely limited disaster management regime that leaves...

In sub-Saharan African cities, community-driven development has emerged as a collective response to entrenched socio-spatial inequalities and inappropriate local development planning responses to the challenges of informal settlements. Social capital is considered to stimulate such community-driven initiatives. There are also claims that social cap...

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a debilitating socio-economic impact on livelihoods across the world. Extant studies show that livelihood capitals in developing countries have been hard hit due to their vulnerability and the minimal support system available to help people respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the extent of the pandemic’s impact on...

Using data from 24 European advanced and emerging countries between 2000 and 2020, this paper examines the impacts of circular economy (CE) on agriculture employment (AE) and female employment patterns. Based on the availability of data, the study uses three CE indicators: generation of municipal waste (GMW) per capita, the recycling rate of munici...

This paper confronts the current policy landscape and lived experiences of walking in African cities through the lens of policies, plans, institutional, and residents’ narratives. The paper builds on qualitative evidence drawn from content analysis and semi-structured interviews with local-level stakeholders across policy sectors concerned directly...

This paper aims to examine the causal effect of circular technological innovation on greenhouse gas emissions. In the study, panel data are collected from 30 advanced and emerging economies spanning more than two decades, and a recently innovated instrumental variable approach with a common factor error structure is used to analyze dynamic panel da...

The study examines how progress towards a circular economy (CE), patents related to recycling and secondary raw materials as a proxy for innovation, affect tourism receipts. The study uses Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Error Correction Method (ECM) to analyse time series data from EU countries from 2000 to 2020. Our estimates show that...

This study examines the effect of climate change knowledge, anxiety, and experience on climate adaptation using survey data from 874 farmers in the Western North Region of Ghana. To present unbiased estimates, the instrumental variable regression technique was applied to control for endogeneity. Results indicated that climate change anxiety and kno...

Corporate Social Responsibility's (CSR) competitive advantage continues to disappear rapidly due to embedded gaps in practice. Thus, managers and scholars are beginning to shift their focus from the business case of CSR toward how firms address weaknesses within CSR practices. This study reveals the prevalence and influence of different cognitive b...

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are particularly vulnerable to pandemics. Therefore, resilience and adaptation to shocks from pandemics such as COVID-19 are urgently needed. However, despite some coping strategies already in place among SMEs, research on their nature and effectiveness is limited. Thus, it remains unclear how effectively and sus...

The continuing emergence of circular economy (CE) research and practice as a critically important concept for the foreseeable future has renewed interest in understanding its theory and practice. In this chapter, we first analyse the evolution of CE research and practice by examining research published over the last decade. We then summarise the ke...

A balance between economic, social, and ecological performance has emerged as a key concern for organisations around the world. The modern era emphasises achieving eco‐friendly business outcomes to drive social needs along with higher financial performance. However, hybrid organisations in developing countries frequently progress in ecological and...

The circular economy (CE) is touted to have the potential to support the much-needed shift away from the current linear production and consumption economic model. However, many of the discussions on the CE have overlooked cities in the Global South, casting their pervasive slums as enclaves of socio-environmental problems and a barrier to sustainab...

Social capital constitutes an important resource in vulnerable cities of the developing world where formal disaster management capacities are weak, responses are limited, and socio-economic deprivations run deep along spatial dimensions. Yet, little is known about how the different types of social capital contribute to flood preparedness and better...

This study utilized instrumental variable techniques and the Driscoll-Kraay estimator to examine the effect of democracy and natural resources on income inequality using a comprehensive panel dataset from 43 sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The findings from our empirical analysis indicated that natural resources and democracy indices such as electoral, l...

Natural hazards can turn into disasters when not managed well. An important part of disaster risk reduction is to understand how well communities are prepared for natural hazards and how well they can cope with and recover from shocks in the long-term. In this study we assess self-reported community resilience and ask what makes a community resilie...

Resilience measurement is an emerging topic in the field of disaster risk reduction. However , its application in Global South cities has proven to be a challenge due to the uniqueness of southern urbanisms and data challenges. As a result, the Resilience Benchmarking Assessment and Impact Toolkit (RABIT) framework has recently been developed to su...

In the Global South, the COVID-19 crisis has compelled varied efforts to quickly address the pandemic's impact on urban livelihoods. Families, friends as well as public, private, and civil society organizations have mobilized various resources to avert the pandemic's onslaught on the survival of the urban vulnerable. Indeed, there is a burgeoning ‗...

Rapid urbanisation and its associated challenges in Global South countries have necessitated the use of digital technologies in urban management. Key to their successful utilisation for urban management is residents' perceptions and utilisation of these technologies. Yet, little attention has been given to this area of research. Using data gathered...

In recent years, sustainability concerns have gained increasing attention among countries and stakeholders worldwide. Towards the transition to sustainable rural development, the rural web framework (RWF) has become a consistent tool. Indicators from the RWF have been used to explore sustainable rural development for decision-making tasks, which im...

Background: Drought is a slow-onset natural hazard with significant socioeconomic, environmental and psychological impacts. The extant literature has predominately focused on the physical and economic dimensions of resilience, which mainly address the socioeconomic and environmental consequences of drought. However, the mental health effects of ch...

Organisational studies have found that building organisational competencies and dynamic capabilities is key to achieving sustainable advantage. This has made it imperative to expand the understanding of service research by exploring the antecedents of sustainable services. Drawing on organisational-level variables, this study examines how instituti...

Community water projects offer an economically attractive and physically accessible solution for livelihoods. Piase Community Water Project (PCWP) was initiated in 2005 to provide potable water to the rural communities surrounding Piase. Using data from a field survey with sampled participants in the Bosomtwe district, where this rural water projec...

Purpose There is an emerging digital turn in urban management in Africa, undergirded by efforts to address the challenges of rapid urbanisation. To ensure that this digitalisation agenda contributes to smart and sustainable communities, there is a need to trace residents' use of emerging digital technologies and address any impediments to broader u...

Urban marketplace fires in Ghana are chronic, devasting in economic losses and disproportionately impacting informal sector workers. Yet, the scholarly works on urban disasters have focused on hydrometeorological and other man-made disasters to the neglect of marketplace fires, particularly the challenges in risk communication between emergency man...

Integrating resilience attributes into local plans is considered an important step in enhancing disaster risk reduction. However, the extent to which resilience is captured in local disaster management plans remains underexplored. This paper utilizes content analysis to examine the integration of the UNDRR's resilience attributes across 11 cities i...

There are three questions explored in this paper: (i) To what extent does mining-induced displacement impact livelihood capital, (ii) To what extent does livelihood capital impact livelihood resilience outcomes, and (iii) what impact does coping behaviour have on the relationship between livelihood capital and livelihood resil-ience? A sequential m...

Dhaka, a megacity at the forefront of rapid, unplanned urbanization, is considered to be one of the flood-prone cities in the world. The city’s eastern fringe, though underdeveloped and low-lying, is experiencing rapid growth as a result of migration, which has compounded the nature and extent of flood vulnerabilities. Overflow of surrounding river...

Flood vulnerabilities and eviction threats are challenges informal settlement residents encounter in urban Africa. Although recent literature posits emerging residents’ coping and adaptive capacity to flooding, research on African cities is scarce. To address such a knowledge gap, this chapter explores micro-level flood response strategies in Old F...

In Ghana, the rhetoric of sustainable urban development permeates urban planning and policy. Yet, how this relates to those living at the margins and how their everyday urban struggles mirror the potentials and challenges of achieving the SDGs is rarely grasped. By using in-depth interviews with residents of Old Fadama, an informal settlement in Ac...

There are concerns that responses to urban safety are gradually reinforcing socio-spatial inequalities, with suggestions emphasising community-institutional collaborations for promoting safer urban communities. Yet, the quotidian realities that underpin residents’ lived experiences are scantly used in urban safety strategies, despite that official...

Freetown is confronted with health-related risks that are compounded by rapid unplanned urbanisation and weak capacities of local government institutions. Addressing such community health risks implies a shared responsibility between government and non-state actors. In low-income communities, the role of Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) in comb...

Access to energy is recognised to be at the heart of human development. However, there is a paucity of empirical research on the impact of access to energy on human development, particularly in energy-poor countries. This study, therefore, examines the effect of access to electricity and clean energy on human development in 79 energy-poor countries...

Purpose This paper aims to bring the more recent discourse on the multilayered and interconnected dimensions of flood vulnerability, damage and risk reduction at the microlevel of global south cities to Dhaka, by looking at multiple factors and their relationships. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional research design was used to generate...

Citizen participation in decision-making on water-related initiatives offers a valuable pathway to move towards a more equitable and sustainable water delivery, now and into the future. However, given the acknowledged impacts of active citizen participation in the water governance process, there is an increase institutional search for ideal approac...

Purpose Disaster information is an important resource for flood preparedness, however, the transition of information provision to preparedness and consequently to damage reduction is complex. The nature of complexity has made it imperative to provide context-specific evidence on how disaster information provision influences intentions to prepare fo...

Sub-Saharan Africa is already experiencing the realities of a changing climate – and the situation is only going to get worse. The reasons for this are complex. And they’re exacerbated by deficits in the region’s infrastructure, services and socio-economic dynamics. Urbanisation is another major factor. The continent’s current urban population is o...

Grounded on a disaster-based conceptualization of adaptive capacity, this paper proffers a dynamic perspective which incorporates both the capital assets and institutional governance dimensions of adaptive capacity into disaster management process, and highlights its migration implications. In doing this, the authors link livelihood model of migrat...

This chapter draws lessons from Japanese machizukuri activities, which represent one of the most dynamic opportunities for participatory climate change adaptation in Africa. This chapter adopts a literature-based exploratory and dialectical approach to examine community’s role in climate change adaptation. It highlights the challenges and recent co...

Informal settlements continue to remain a significant component of many cities in the developing world. UN-Habitat describes them as lacking security of tenure, not having durable housing and short of basic services. Globally, almost one billion people are hosted in informal settlements. This is expected to increase to 1.5 billion by 2020

There’s rapid urbanisation happening across Africa. But the rural population hasn’t stopped growing. In fact, Africa is considered a rural continent – only 43% of its total population lives in cities and towns. Often policies focus on rural areas or urban expansion. In fact, the key issue for regional development is to take into account the relatio...

A significant portion of people who migrate from rural to urban areas across Africa end up trapped in slums, where living conditions are characterised by overcrowding, poor housing, limited access to water and sanitation, and insecure tenure. Many of these informal settlements are largely treated as a nuisance by authorities. This condemns millions...

Our study zoomed into an informal settlement called the Abese Old quarter of La Dadekotopon District. The study looked at how self-organisation in the area is shaping up. We also explored how the organisation could be engaged by authorities. http://theconversation.com/policymakers-have-a-lot-to-learn-from-slum-dwellers-an-accra-case-study-96940

Informal settlements, where mostly the urban poor reside, tend to be located in hotspots of natural hazards such as floods, fire, earthquakes and tsunamis. The devastating impacts of these natural hazards on such settlements can be attributed to the higher levels of physical, economic, social and environmental vulnerability in conjunction with inad...

The potential of risk communication as tool for reducing the devastating impacts posited by disaster hazards on human lives and property has been discussed extensively in literature. Most risk communication studies and strategies focus on awareness creation and education on disaster hazards. However, awareness creation and education on disaster haz...

Flood hazards are the most frequent, recurring and destructive hazard accounting for more than half of all related fatalities and one-third of economic losses. Informal settlements suffer greatly from the consequences of flood hazards due to their physical location on flood plains, high poverty levels, overcrowding, high population growth and poor...

Studies on the rationale for effective involvement of affected population in resettlement programs have increased significantly in recent years. Yet, practical aspects of handling participation challenges remain under researched. This paper assesses the effectiveness of livelihood-promoting interventions in mining-induced resettlement programs usin...

Over half of the population in developing countries lives in slums. Issues of slums happen to be globa l rather than regional phenomenon hence; various measures ha ve been adopted by several stakeholders to manage i ts development. Despite the kingpin roles they play in the urban economy, the problems which retard their growth and development withi...

Urban enclaves, who could be argued as a re-emerging process of intricate socio-spatial dynamics in emerging countries are becoming physically evident. Across spaces and regions, the middle and upper class are retreating to private and enclosed spaces. Urban areas are increasingly becoming divided and separated; illustrated in new spatial patterns...

Although Small Scale surface mining has grown significantly in the developing world in recent decades, the hive of environmental and socio-economic discontents that accompanies large-scale surface mining activities are very much unprecedented. This paper therefore examines the operations of large scale mining group in the context of such discontent...