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Urban Fragility and Security in Africa (Africa Security Brief, Number 12, April 2011)
Abstract
Unprecedented rates of urban migration over the past decade have contributed to a dramatic expansion in the size of urban slums and higher levels of poverty, violence, and instability in Africa's cities. The drivers of violence associated with urban fragility are primarily related to weak and illegitimate governance, inequitable development, limited livelihood opportunities, and legal structures that inhibit land tenure and new business start-up. Solutions to Africa's urban fragility cannot be addressed solely through security structures but must be part of a broader development strategy. Urban fragility is likely to become an increasingly greater focus of African security interests in the coming years. Conventional security approaches, by themselves, will prove ineffective in addressing these challenges and will, in fact, just treat the symptoms. Rather, determined efforts are needed to build Africa's local governance capacity and opportunities for urban unemployed youth, while increasing slum dwellers' stake in society.
... The international relations literature originally conceptualized fragility to explain a country's vulnerability to collapsing (Bakonyi & Stuvøy, 2005;Call, 2011;De Waal, 2009;Giroux, Lanz, & Sguaitamatti, 2009;Wedeen, 2003). Scholars generalized fragility as governments failing to enforce social compacts to explain fragile cities (Boer, 2015;Commins, 2011;Muggah, 2014). We draw on this literature to refine the definition of fragility into an accumulation of fractures of social compacts. ...
... Even when sources of fragility affect both types of cities, the way fragility plays out is different in the context of a developed city. For instance, the most common way of discussing fragility is a government maintaining its monopoly on legitimate force (Baker & Scheye, 2007;Commins, 2011;Muggah, 2014;Stepputat et al., 2007). The current Syria civil war has multiple competing rebel factions fighting against the regime of Assad, demonstrating that the Syrian government does not have a monopoly on legitimate force (Council on Foreign Relations, 2018). ...
... Muggah (2014) considers fragility as a combination of risk factors that include economic inequality, systemic injustice and insecurity, demographic pressures, and crises of legitimacy. Commins (2011) defines fragility as the uncertainty of social networks brought on by income inequality, high rates of violence, weak community ties, and weak safety nets. International relation's major contribution to understanding fragility is that it is a spectrum. ...
Cities, like any complex adaptive systems, may become increasingly fragile if not properly managed. To date, the literature has focused primarily on the examination of cities within fragile countries. This has resulted in a dearth of studies that have looked at how developed (or even advanced) cities that operate in relatively stable countries and/or environments might allow unresolved issues to accumulate in the city: degrading its ability to function. Studying fragility in developed cities is a worthwhile undertaking given their economic, social, and political significance. This paper puts forth a conceptual framework to understand the nature of fragile cities in the developed world. Our framework frames fragility as a function of unresolved fractures of social compacts that degrades a city's ability to function over time and stress exacerbates its effects. Drawing on over two dozen incidents from developed cities, we ground the framework and illustrate its value.
... They play major role concentrating human activities to confined geographical spaces. Cities are not only providers of better employment, shelter and services but also as centres of culture, learning and technological development, and industrial centres for the processing of agricultural produce and manufacturing, and places to generate income [2]. In Africa, the rapid expansion and commercial development, along with population pressure in the region's urban space, has ushered in deterioration to the urban environment as growth is unmatched with supply of the much needed services [12]. ...
... Urban poverty is the most critical issue facing African cities at the moment. It is also often understated statistically and thus not likely to be addressed in its full dimensions [2]. One of the major consequences of the rapid urbanisation process has been the burgeoning supply of job seekers in both the modern (formal) and traditional (informal) sectors of the urban economy [17]. ...
... Most urban municipalities lack the financial autonomy and capacity to bankroll any initiatives they deem fit for implementation in their jurisdictions. This is also in light of the fact highlighted by [2] that unlike all other regions of the world, urbanisation in Africa has not contributed, through economies of scale and value-adding production chains, to overall growth in GDP. Finance and lack thereof has played a part in the limited success of the green agenda in African cities. ...
... They play major role concentrating human activities to confined geographical spaces. Cities are not only providers of better employment, shelter and services but also as centres of culture, learning and technological development, and industrial centres for the processing of agricultural produce and manufacturing, and places to generate income [2]. In Africa, the rapid expansion and commercial development, along with population pressure in the region's urban space, has ushered in deterioration to the urban environment as growth is unmatched with supply of the much needed services [12]. ...
... Urban poverty is the most critical issue facing African cities at the moment. It is also often understated statistically and thus not likely to be addressed in its full dimensions [2]. One of the major consequences of the rapid urbanisation process has been the burgeoning supply of job seekers in both the modern (formal) and traditional (informal) sectors of the urban economy [17]. ...
... Most urban municipalities lack the financial autonomy and capacity to bankroll any initiatives they deem fit for implementation in their jurisdictions. This is also in light of the fact highlighted by [2] that unlike all other regions of the world, urbanisation in Africa has not contributed, through economies of scale and value-adding production chains, to overall growth in GDP. Finance and lack thereof has played a part in the limited success of the green agenda in African cities. ...
This article is woven to satisfy interlinked objectives of assessing the determinants for successful greening of the city and comparing and contrasting cities in their greening. A cross-sectional review of literature on the role of planning in city greening, the determinant factors for success and limits to this success has been done coupled by case analyses of five cities in the region. To better the situation and future of the African city space, it is imperative to examine the effect of this lack of interactive data and stakeholders’ input into urban greening efforts. Unless such a preliminary analysis is done and a model for addressing this, developed, Africa will miss what the industrial city of the eighteenth century missed which eventually led to misery and suffering as cities developed in an unsustainable manner.
Insecurity is a prominent phenomenon that threatens the peace and development of Africa in general and particularly, the Lake Chad Basin [LCB]. One of the factors driving the menace is the phenomenon of youth bulge. This article argues that young people with poor economic prospects are liable to be recruited for violence. Situated within the grievance model, the article shows how youth make up the larger percentage of protesting, violent and armed groups in the region and presents evidence of how grievance against deprivation moves demography to exacerbate insecurity. The article adopts a qualitative approach and relies on secondary data sourced from briefs, government reports, peer-reviewed journal articles and internet sources. The findings show that the endless supply of children and young people in the LCB is a major factor driving insecurity. By examining the phenomenon of Almajiri, child soldiers and youth radicalisation as enablers of conflict and insecurity in the LCB, the article concludes that population explosion amid a lack of resources leads to grievance and fuels insecurity. This is significant given the paucity of literature on the incidence of demography and insurgency in the LCB; which has become a theatre of insecurity in Africa.
This paper systematically maps the field of scholarly works on the theme of youth and violent conflict in Africa. It reviews the evidentiary base of the nexus between youth and violent conflicts in Africa by interrogating the conceptual, methodological, and empirical foundations of the different explanations adduced for why and how youth participate in armed conflicts. It observes that the evidence base linking youth vulnerability and exclusion with violence is generally mixed across the board; each extant perspective offers some useful insights within its narrow conceptual and methodological contours. In addition, the social agency of youth and the power context of society are crucial to understanding the link between youth and violence, and the risk of violence in Africa. Social agency speaks to why and how youth encounter, process, interpret and act on social phenomena, including violence. It highlights the need for further research into the dynamic nature of how youth identities interact with new trends in violence and insecurity such as violent riots and protests and post-election violence, among others.
Daily decisions made by stakeholders within Nigeria’s criminal justice system are a reflection of the relative seriousness of different types of crimes. The level of seriousness of urban crime often influences the type of response. It is broadly accepted that the impact of crime on urban development in sub-Saharan Africa is relatively high. However, techniques for gauging this impact have received minimal attention. More effective measurements of crime impact can help ensure that adequate attention is paid to the design and implementation of crime prevention policies and programmes. This chapter represents a first step towards making these judgements across urban Nigeria more explicit by adopting a metric of harm that calibrates the impact of urban crime according to the legally defined impact inflicted on urban victims.
Afrika'daki kentler halen gelişmekte olan yapıtlar ve aynı zamanda fazlasıyla yaratıcı ve bazen son derece durgun olarak betimlenebilir. Özellikle son yıllarda kıta genelinde gerçekleştirilen önemli altyapı çalışmaları ve artan kentli nüfus sebebiyle tüm devletler ve küresel şirketler Afrika kıtasını yeni bir ekonomik cazibe merkezi olarak görmektedirler. Bununla birlikte, son yıllarda kıtaya dair kentleşmesinden, ekonomisine ve tarihine kadar çok farklı alanlarda yeni çalışmalar da yapılmaktadır. Akademik olarak bakıldığında kıtadaki kentsel gelişim ve değişime değinen çalışmaların azlığı dikkat çekmektedir. Çalışmanın amacı sömürge öncesi dönemden günümüze Afrika'daki kentleri ve kentleşme hareketlerini analiz etmektedir. Afrika kentleşmesi dört büyük sorunla karşı karşıyadır. Birincisi, yetersiz ekonomik faaliyetle hızlı nüfus büyümesi, eşitsiz fiziksel ve işgücü sermayesi tabanlıdır. İkincisi, düşük yoğunluk ve kayıt dışılığın, kıtanın yoksulluğunu artırmasıdır. Üçüncüsü, su, enerji ve sağlık hizmetleri başta olmak üzere, temel altyapı hizmetlerinin çok az sayıdaki bir nüfusa hizmet vermesi, kent ya da kırsalda refahı arttırmanın önündeki engeldir. Son sorun ise yönetim, kurumlar ve genel planlama kapasitesi bağlamındaki zayıflıklardır. Anahtar kelimeler: Afrika, kentleşme, sömürge öncesi kentleşme, sömürge dönemi kentleşme, sömürge sonrası kentler Cities and urbanization movements in Africa from precolonial period to present-day ABSTRACT The cities in Africa are still evolving and can be described as very creative and sometimes extremely stagnant. Particularly in recent years, significant infrastructure work across the continent and the increasing urban population have led all states and global companies to see the African continent as a new center of economic attraction. In recent years, a wide range of academic studies has been conducted on the continent. New studies are carried out in many different areas from urbanization to economy and history. However, the shortage of studies on urban development and change in the continent is noteworthy. At this point, the aim of the study is to analyze urbanization and cities in Africa from precolonial period to present day.
Many disasters take place in urban areas, affecting millions of people each year through loss of life, serious injury and loss of assets and livelihoods. Poorer groups are generally most affected. The impact of these disasters and their contribution to poverty are underestimated, as is the extent to which rapidly growing and poorly managed urban development increases the risks. But urban specialists do not see disasters and disaster prevention as being within their remit. At the same time, few national and international disaster agencies have worked with urban governments and community organizations to identify and act on the urban processes that cause the accumulation of disaster risk in and around urban areas. This paper summarizes the discussions from a workshop funded by UNDP on the links between disasters and urban development in Africa, highlighting the underestimation of the number and scale of urban disasters, and the lack of attention to the role of urban governance. It notes the difficulties in getting action in Africa, since the region’s problems are still perceived as “rural” by disaster and development specialists, even though two-fifths of its population live in urban areas. It emphasizes the need for an understanding of risk that encompasses events ranging from disasters to everyday hazards and which understands the linkages between them – in particular, how identifying and acting on risks from “small” disasters can reduce risks from larger ones. It also stresses the importance of integrating such an understanding into poverty reduction strategies.