African cities are, at one and the same time, the most underdeveloped and the most contemporary. As they have not coalesced around industrialization, they lack the productive base to provide formal work or infrastructural support to their growing numbers, thus compelling continuous revisions or reinventions of largely rural-informed practices of survival; but they have also fostered socioeconomic practices and forms of social organization potentially well adapted to the globalized postindustrial economies. How to begin to register increases in urban economic productivity simultaneously with human development gains for urban citizens remains a fundamental challenge facing cities in Africa. Particular challenges for African urban governance lie in the social and cultural domain as a result, amongst others, of the profound fissuring tendencies in urban Africa, increased levels of insecurity and crime, and a progressive dissociation of space within cities and across cities. Rather than pinpointing specific policy frameworks and programmes to be adopted by urban managers, the author suggests particular ways of thinking about the city that are important precursors to the generation of specific governance practices. Ref.
