by HSRC Press on Jan 27th, 2012
The inhabitants of capital cities in Africa are increasing at spectacular rate. Lagos, Nigeria’s capital, has a current population of 10 million and a growth rate of 4.44% per year – making it the second fastest growing city in Africa. It is estimated that Lagos will have 15 million inhabitants by 2030.
Urbanisation is often positively liked to economic growth and development, but according to a Polity.org report by the Institute for Security Studies, rapid urbanisation will also result in many challenges. The report states that, “Without a clear strategy to address service delivery, employment and governance issues, African countries in transition from rural to urban population growth could experience instability in the future.”
Read the complete report:
In 2008, for the first time in human history, the number of people living in urban areas outstripped the rural population; however, the same will not occur in Africa until nearly 2050. Even so, Africa’s cities are urbanising at a profound rate, reaching 40% in 2012, up from 19% in 1960. Due to the implications of urban population growth on the economy and other social factors, it is imperative that African state leaders and policy-makers plan for these transitions adequately. The changes that will occur, and in fact have begun taking place, in terms of urbanisation, need to be factored into long term planning, as not doing so could lead to possible political and economic instability.
According to City Mayors, an organisation dedicated to the research of cities and metropolitan areas, Africa has 19 cities with a population over 1 million, and this is a conservative estimate given that most reliable city population data is 15 years old. The fastest growing city, according to Foreign Policy magazine, is Bamako, Mali, currently at 1.3 million people and growing at 4.45% a year, a result of both economic growth and desertification. Bamako, however, is dwarfed by the estimated 10 million people that live in Lagos, Nigeria, Africa’s second fastest growing city at 4.44% a year. Fifteen million people are expected to live in Lagos by 2030, overtaking Cairo, Egypt, as the continent’s largest city. The UN recently performed a study on mega-cities and concluded that an additional urban phenomenon is the growth of mega-regions, like the 600km urban stretch between Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria that now links the whole region’s economy. According to Business Day, Minister of Lands, Housing and Development in Nigeria, Amal Pepple, stated that with an urbanisation rate of five percent per annum, the West-African region is recording the fastest urban growth in history, estimating that by 2020, 52 percent of the region’s populations would reside in cities. This is sure to have a profound impact for West Africa.
Book details
Cats: Academic,
Africa,
Non-fiction,
South Africa
Tags: Academic,
Africa,
Alan Mabin,
Amadou Diop,
Capital Cities in Africa,
Challenges,
Employment,
English,
Gabriel Tati,
Göran Therborn,
Governance,
HSRC Press,
Instability,
Lagos,
Laurent Fourchard,
Nigeria,
Non-fiction,
Odile Goerg,
Paul Jenkins,
Philippe Gervais-Lambony,
Polity.org.Institute for Security Studies,
Population,
Power and Powerlessness,
Samuel Owuor,
Service Delivery,
Simon Bekker,
South Africa,
Teresa Mbatia,
Urbanisation,
Wale Adebanwi
Quick URL
by HSRC Press on Jan 19th, 2012
In an article for Business Day, Mike Muller says that South Africa needs to urgently start managing its water resources efficiently. He argues that many organisations want to work together to achieve this end, but that the government’s “delays in management arrangements” is preventing them from doing so. Some of the problems he identifies are “long delays in issuing water-use licences; incoherent licence conditions; uncontrolled illegal water use; and the widespread pollution of rivers”.
For more about water rights, read the study Fluid Rights: Water Allocation Reform in South Africa by Synne Movik:
SA URGENTLY needs to manage its water resources better. The good news is that many of the people and organisations that use or enjoy the resources want to play their part. But they are frustrated by the government’s failure to put arrangements in place that would allow them to work together.
Those are the key findings of a study supported by the Water Research Commission in the Upper Vaal and Olifants, two highly stressed rivers that flow through the Free State, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and Limpopo.
The study poses an immediate challenge to Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa . It reports management failures that are undermining economic activity. These include long delays in issuing water-use licences; incoherent licence conditions; uncontrolled illegal water use; and the widespread pollution of rivers.
Book details
Cats: Academic,
Green,
Law,
Non-fiction,
South Africa
Tags: Academic,
Business Day,
English,
Fluid Rights,
Green,
HSRC Press,
Law,
Mike Muller,
Non-fiction,
Resources,
South Africa,
Synne Movik,
Water,
Water allocation reform,
Water Allocation Reform in South Africa,
Water rights
Quick URL
by HSRC Press on Jan 11th, 2012
In Capital Cities in Africa, edited by Simon Bekker and Goran Therborn, the authors look at the rapid process of urbanisation – more politically than economically driven – that led to the formation of Africa’s largest capital cities, and the inevitable challenges resulting from it.
It is with these challenges in mind that Stacy Passmore, urban designer with the Chife Foundation in Nigeria, has tried to move away from the idea of an African “megacity”, towards what she calls “rurban” development – a hybridisation of the best of urban and rural sectors, “using mobile technologies to bring information and traditionally ‘urban’ opportunities to remote locations”.
It is projected that by 2025, 200 million Africans will migrate to urban areas due to political neglect and changing global economic patterns. Colonial-era policies have dismantled functioning agricultural systems of access and land ownership, while rampant environmental degradation caused by erosion, loss of biodiversity, pollution, and poor water management have diminished the productivity of farming. This failing agriculture sector means that many African countries now import vast quantities of staples such as fish, rice, wheat, and corn at the detriment to local enterprise.
Scholars, most interested in the African megacity, often neglect a key feature of African societies: migration has resulted in a highly mobile rural society with increasingly urbanized relationships, rather than a strict urban/rural dichotomy. Despite an overwhelming focus on the megacity, some scholars, including Director of the African Centre for Cities Professor Edgar Pieterse, project that in the next wave of African development “relatively small settlements of less than half a million people will dominate the urban landscape.” McKinsey Global Institute also recently issued a report that promises a similar evolution in global economic growth patterns; approximately 400 mid-size cities in emerging markets – mainly sub-Saharan Africa – are posed to generate nearly 40% of global economic growth over the next 15 years.
Book details
Cats: Academic,
Africa,
Non-fiction,
South Africa
Tags: Academic,
Africa,
Alan Mabin,
Amadou Diop,
Capital Cities in Africa,
Chife Foundation,
Design,
Development,
Economics,
English,
Gabriel Tati,
Göran Therborn,
HSRC Press,
Hybrid,
Hybridisation,
Laurent Fourchard,
Megacity,
Mobile,
Nigeria,
Non-fiction,
Odile Goerg,
Paul Jenkins,
Philippe Gervais-Lambony,
Politics,
Power and Powerlessness,
Rapid,
Remote,
Rural,
Rurban,
Rurbanism,
Samuel Owuor,
Simon Bekker,
South Africa,
Stacy Passmore,
Technology,
Teresa Mbatia,
Urban,
Urban Design Review,
Urbanisation,
Wale Adebanwi
Quick URL
by HSRC Press on Dec 22nd, 2011
Simon Bekker and Göran Therborn’s Capital Cities in Africa looks at the capital cities of nine sub-Saharan African countries, examining their roles as “host centres of political power”. In Chapter 5, dedicated to Lagos, contributor Laurent Fourchard describes how the capital of Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, is the product of both its national and colonial histories:
At the end of the 18th century, Lagos became the first slavery port in West Africa. From the 19th century onwards, like many other port cities in Africa, it was increasingly involved in the circulation of people, goods, ideas and technologies. By the 20th century, Lagos had become the main port of the most populous African country and was the federal capital of Nigeria from 1914 to 1991. Today, the city of Lagos boasts a concentration of capital assets, trading companies and public investments, a large bureaucracy and a transnational political, intellectual and religious elite. Since the 19th century, in fact, Lagos has been at the forefront of new cultural and social practices in Nigeria, despite Abuja (the new federal capital since 1991) and Port Harcourt (the oil capital in the Niger Delta) having recently acquired increasing influence.
Lagos has been shaped both by its national history as the federal capital and by remaining at the centre of political opposition to colonial rule (from 1920 to 1960), to military and civilian regimes (from 1966 to 1999) and to the current ruling party (from 1999 to 2008). This history has deeply influenced the way the city is governed, in particular in an international context.
Book details
Photo courtesy Businessweek
Cats: Academic,
Africa,
Book Excerpt,
Nigeria,
Non-fiction,
South Africa
Tags: Academic,
Africa,
Alan Mabin,
Amadou Diop,
Book Excerpt,
Capital Cities in Africa,
English,
Gabriel Tati,
Göran Therborn,
HSRC Press,
Lagos,
Laurent Fourchard,
Nigeria,
Non-fiction,
Odile Goerg,
Paul Jenkins,
Philippe Gervais-Lambony,
Power and Powerlessness,
Samuel Owuor,
Simon Bekker,
South Africa,
Teresa Mbatia,
Wale Adebanwi
Quick URL
by HSRC Press on Dec 13th, 2011
In an article featured on Afesis-corplan, Kwandiwe Kondlo, co-editor of Africa In Focus: Governance in the 21st century, examines what we mean when we speak of “the Youth” in political discourse, and wonders whether this force in our society deserves the “weight of our expectations”:
Let these things be examined, let them be debated not only for us but for generations to come. For despite of our sense of self-importance and pride, we are all just a passing phase. The Youth is also a passing phase and can hardly claim to represent a particular historical force. It is a lie that the Youth of today, as represented by the Youth League of the ANC represents the historical force of the Youth League of Mziwakhe Lembede, AP Mda and Nelson Mandela. Without an identifiable programme, but only snippets around controversial programmes such as the nationalisation of mines, we cannot fully count on this Youth as the seedbed of the democracy to come.
Getting back to the subject – speaking of the Youth, what does one mean? To speak of the Youth is to speak not only of the future of a people or of a nation, but it is to speak of hope; it is to speak of the very ‘soul’ of a nation. Hope, as Paulo Freire (2008) indicates, is an ‘ontological need that demands an anchoring practice’. It requires a realistic practice for it to become edifying; for it to become ‘historical concreteness’. The ‘soul’ of a nation, on the other hand, infers the very seat of power; the wholeness of essence and the propelling drive to higher levels. This underlines the weight of meaning and the depth of value the Youth carries in a nation and to its people. Soren Kierkegaard in his book, ‘Either/Or’ indicates that he prefers speaking to the Youth for with them there is hope that they grow to become rational beings. This he said in the early 1800s, which shows the great hope attached to the Youth throughout generations of scholarship and throughout generations of human existence. The theme ‘the role of the Youth in participatory democracy’ invokes both the ‘performativity’and the ‘constantive’ (Derrida,2002) attributable to that section of society seen as young, fresh, capable and full of life – the Youth. But the question is: are we betting on the right horse? Are we throwing the weight of our expectations and hope where it deserves to be thrown?
Book details
Scribd.com book preview:
Africa in Focus: Governance in the 21st Century
Cats: Academic,
Africa,
Non-fiction,
South Africa
Tags: Academic,
Afesis-corplan,
Africa,
Africa Focus,
Africa In Focus,
Chinenyengozi Ejiogu,
Derrida,
English,
Governance in the 21st century,
HSRC Press,
Kwandiwe Kondlo,
Non-fiction,
Participatory Democracy,
South Africa,
Youth
Quick URL
by HSRC Press on Dec 2nd, 2011
The launch of sociologist David Cooper’s The University in Development: Case Studies of Use-Oriented Research was a well-attended event with many of UCT‘s senior academics present in the audience. Cooper invited fellow academics Andries du Toit of PLAAS, Glenda Kruss of HSRC, and UCT professor of sociology, Lungisile Ntsebeza, to respond to the text.
Cooper’s “in development” research concerns an analysis of the transformations within academic institutions and how they correspond to changes in the global society of which they form part.
The book’s singular claim is that the driving force behind these changes is “a global post-1970s new capitalist industrial revolution”. This has had the effect of giving primacy to use-orientated research. In effect, The University in Development looks at the extent to which economic forces shape and drive research methodology.
In his introductory speech, Cooper outlined the “unusual timeline” of the history of his research, which has taken him some ten years to complete. Upon returning later to the original research group interviews he’d conducted in 2000, Cooper discovered “none of them were behaving like I wanted to predict!” However, since he does believe in some degree of prediction in the social sciences, Cooper revised his old theories and eventually completed the project.
Cooper reflected on the concept “in development” as presented in the title. “I’m arguing that the university is involved in development with the external society, so these research groups are connecting, in terms of socio-economic and cultural development, with wider society.”
Moreover, he highlighted the need for an internal reconstruction of the university. “The book says we need a revolution at UCT. We need an internal revolution; a ‘value restructuring’. We need new research centres, even though there is no money for these,” he said. Andries du Toit explored this subject in greater detail when he took up the microphone. He spoke optimistically of the discovery that many professors were organising themselves into small research units, utilising old-style “research chair” structures.
* * * * * * * *
Rebecca Pointer of PLAAS tweeted from the launch using #researchuse:
* * * * * * * *
Liesl Jobson tweeted using #livebooks:
* * * * * * * *
Facebook gallery
Book details
Cats: Academic,
Events,
Non-fiction,
South Africa
Tags: Academic,
Andries du Toit,
Book Launch,
Case Studies of Use-Oriented Research,
Centre for African Studies,
David Cooper,
English,
Events,
Glenda Kruss,
HSRC Press,
Lungisile Ntsebeza,
Non-fiction,
Sociology,
South Africa,
The University in Development,
UCT,
University of Cape Town
Quick URL
by HSRC Press on Nov 21st, 2011
HSRC Press cordially invites you to join us at the launch of The University in Development: Case Studies of Use-Oriented Research by David Cooper. The launch will take place on Monday, 28 November, at UCT’s Centre for African Studies.
See you there!
Event Details
- Date: Monday, 28 November 2011
- Time: 4:30 PM for 5:00 PM
- Venue: Centre for African Studies,
Level 3, Harry Oppenheimer Institute Building
University of Cape Town
- Guest Speakers: Dr Glenda Kruss (HSRC), Prof Lungisile Ntsebeza (UCT) and Prof Andries du Toit (UWC)
- RSVP: Tarayan Stoffels, tarayan.stoffels@uct.ac.za, 021 650 3501
Book Details
Cats: Academic,
Events,
Non-fiction,
South Africa
Tags: Academic,
Andries du Toit,
Book Launch,
Case Studies of Use-Oriented Research,
Centre for African Studies,
David Cooper,
Dr Glenda Kruss,
English,
Events,
Glenda Kruss,
HSRC Press,
Lungisile Ntsebeza,
Non-fiction,
Prof Andries du Toit,
Prof Lungisile Ntsebeza,
South Africa,
The University in Development,
UCT
Quick URL
by HSRC Press on Nov 16th, 2011
Harald Winkler, author of Cleaner Energy Cooler Climate, spoke about the problems of climate change research in his inaugural lecture at the University of Cape Town, titled “Climate Change Mitigation in the Context of Development”.
Winkler spoke about how climate change debates are often mired by “political” overtones, saying that the debate should rather be informed by practical research with input from a variety of disciplines:
Listen to the full lecture in this podcast:
Book details
Scribd.com book preview:
Cleaner Energy Cooler Climate: Developing sustainable energy solutions for Africa
Cats: Academic,
Green,
Non-fiction,
South Africa
Tags: Academic,
Cleaner Energy Cooler Climate,
Climate Change,
Developing sustainable energy solutions for South Afric,
Global Warming,
Green,
Harald Winkler,
HSRC Press,
Non-fiction,
Podcast,
South Africa,
UCT,
University of Cape Town,
Video,
YouTube
Quick URL
by HSRC Press on Nov 11th, 2011
Mahmood Mamdani, author of Saviours and Survivors and Scholars in the Marketplace, attended the inaugural Students for Justice in Palestine National Conference held at Columbia University last month.
Delivering the conference’s keynote address, Mamdani compared the oppression of Palestinians in Israel to Apartheid South Africa, saying that just as South Africa once claimed it was a “democracy for whites”, Israel has declared itself a democracy for Jews, but only for Jews.
Said Mamdani, “Whereas Apartheid South Africa was reluctant to claim that it was a white state, a white democracy, Israel is not. Israel publicly claims it’s a Jewish state and it demands that Palestinians acknowledge it as such.”
Professor Mamdani chose to compare Israel to situations in his native Africa. Born in Uganda, Mamdani spoke about Israel in relation to America and colonialism in Africa. With eventual revolutions that toppled foreign governments, “Africa is the name of the continent where settlers were defeated everywhere.” In contrast, “America is the name of the continent where settlers thrived. They won.” When examining American interest in Israel, Mamdani stated, “America thinks of itself as a place which made the New World, left the Old World, made the New World. It made the world which was not contaminated by narrow notions of place.” America also sees itself as having conquered the twin “problems” of race and religion. Similarly, Mamdani claimed that Israel “admires” America for having solved the problem of “dealing” with the native people. “The Zionists think of that particular part of American history as inspirational,” he said. For Americans, then, Israel is a “liberation project.”
Sara Jawhari compiled a photographic essay of the conference:
Book details
Cats: Academic,
Events,
South Africa
Tags: Academic,
Africa,
Columbia,
Darfur,
English,
Events,
HSRC Press,
Israel,
Mahmood Mamdani,
Non-fiction,
Palestine,
Pantheon Books,
Politics and the War on Terror,
Publisher,
Saviours And Survivors,
Scholars in the Marketplace,
SJP,
SJP 2011,
South Africa,
Students for Justice in Palestine,
Students for Justice in Palestine Conference,
Subtitle,
Sudan,
The dilemmas of neo-liberal reform at Makerere Universi
Quick URL
by HSRC Press on Nov 4th, 2011
Synne Movik, author of Fluid Rights: Water Allocation Reform in South Africa, has made the slide show of her presentation on “Perceptions of Sustainability and Justice in Water Allocation” available online via SlideShare.
In the slides below, Movik unpacks justice and sustainability and tracks the progress of water allocation reform in South Africa:
Book details
Cats: Academic,
Green,
Law,
Non-fiction,
South Africa
Tags: Academic,
English,
Fluid Rights,
Green,
HSRC Press,
Justice,
Law,
Non-fiction,
Perceptions of Sustainability and Justice in Water Allocation,
Presentation,
Resources,
Slide Show,
SlideShare,
South Africa,
Steps Centre,
Sustainability,
Synne Movik,
Water,
Water allocation reform,
Water Allocation Reform in South Africa,
Water rights
Quick URL
