Poverty penalty: strategies for coping with water access problems among urban poor in Abuja, Accra

The aim of this paper is to examine water access in Abuja, an informal settlement in Accra, by assessing the coping strategies and their determinant factors used by the urban poor in their daily struggles for water. Data collection was done using mixed methods. The study shows that water is served by a few private vendors, and chiefly among the coping strategies adopted by residents are drinking sachet water, minimizing water use, paying extra to get water elsewhere and bathing or fetching water on credit. These strategies are clearly manifested through determinant factors such as tenure status, the length of stay, household size and social network. The paper concludes that the informal settlement is a space and place where coping strategies are both produced and perpetuated. It recommends that city authorities need to engage in more consultative rather than face-off approaches to ensure a liveable city for all

Cities at risk? Exploring the synergies between smartphones and everyday vulnerabilities

Smartphones present new forms of spatiality and sociality for cities worldwide. The sudden outburst in smartphone technologies has revolutionised human relations creating new possibilities of encounter and connectivity. This paper examines people's smartphone usage patterns and highlights how this is increasing human vulnerabilities in cities with resultant wider societal implications. Drawing on the theory of vulnerability, Hofstede's cultural dimension theory and carrying out semi-structured interviews in the United Kingdom and Ghana, the paper reveals that the current scale of usage and addiction to smartphones and social media are fostering emerging forms of everyday vulnerabilities. Victimisation, privacy breach, home emergencies and road accidents are prevalent vulnerabilities in both Accra and London. By comparing participants' smartphone usage patterns and their motives for adopting or ignoring certain social media practices, the study illustrates how the concept of attitudinal vulnerability extends our understanding of Hofstede's theory of collectivism and individualism. While the finding from Accra complicates Hofstede's collectivism label as there seems to be a loss of genuine sense of care and people-centeredness among participants it confirms individualism tendencies among the participants in London though some tendencies of ‘virtual collectivism’ were observed. In conclusion, the study emphasises how significant behavioural changes among smartphone users can reduce human-induced vulnerabilities in cities. By so doing, we add weight to the literature that focuses on the importance of developing context-specific cutting edge ICT policies vis-a-vis building smart, safe and sustainable cities

Spatial and social transformations in a secondary city: the role of mobility in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana

Existing research on urban Ghana mainly focuses on processes occurring within the country’s major cities, thereby reproducing a trend within the social sciences to overlook the role of intermediate and secondary cities. This paper aims to address this shortcoming by exploring spatial and social transformations in Sekondi-Takoradi, one of Ghana’s secondary cities and the metropolitan area serving the region’s emerging rubber industries as well as the country’s oil and gas economy. Using qualitative interviews conducted with residents in five of the city’s neighbourhoods, and a modified version of Kaufmann’s typology of mobility, we examine migration into Sekondi-Takoradi, residential mobility within the city, and the daily mobility of the city’s residents. The paper highlights how these diverse forms of mobility interact with processes taking place both within and outside Sekondi-Takoradi, most notably influencing and being influenced by livelihood strategies. It is argued that the city and its hinterlands can best be envisaged as a mobile networked whole, rather than consisting of disconnected and compartmentalised locales. The paper thus contributes to broader debates on how mobility shapes urbanisation by providing new empirical data on events unfolding in Africa’s secondary cities, and extends existing research by providing a counter narrative to literature that examines the city and its surrounding rural areas separately

The divergence between acceptability of municipal services and urbanization in developing countries: insights from Accra and Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana

In most developing countries, the provision of municipal services and infrastructure invariably fails to match the pace and demands of urbanization. The outcome is often increased informality due to improper planning, official bureaucratic barriers, and perhaps, insufficient and shrinking public resources, which then makes leveraging private capital for public service provision imperative. Drawing on in-depth qualitative fieldwork in two Ghanaian cities this paper aims to extend literature on the divergence between service provision and urbanization in developing countries. More specifically, it attempts to qualify recent macro-level data indicating that access to water, sanitation and electricity services in Accra and Sekondi-Takoradi are improving substantively. Contrary to dominant policy narratives circulating in Ghana, we illustrate how the acceptability of key municipal services within urban settings is often inadequate, and how acceptability is tied to spatial and temporal factors. We then identify and examine the reasons underpinning these variations. Through exploring residents’ perceptions of key services, and examining critically the possibility and feasibility of meeting urban service needs through leveraging private resources, this paper contributes to broader academic debates over urban service provision, while also feeding into contemporary policy discussions concerning how to achieve several of the SDGs by 2030

SARS-CoV-2 viral shedding and transmission dynamics : implications of WHO COVID-19 discharge guidelines

This work was supported through the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA), a funding, agenda-setting, programme management initiative of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), the African- Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), founding and funding global partners and through a resolution of the summit of African Union Heads of Governments.The evolving nature of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has necessitated periodic revisions of COVID-19 patient treatment and discharge guidelines. Since the identification of the first COVID-19 cases in November 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) has played a crucial role in tackling the country-level pandemic preparedness and patient management protocols. Among others, the WHO provided a guideline on the clinical management of COVID-19 patients according to which patients can be released from isolation centers on the 10th day following clinical symptom manifestation, with a minimum of 72 additional hours following the resolution of symptoms. However, emerging direct evidence indicating the possibility of viral shedding 14 days after the onset of symptoms called for evaluation of the current WHO discharge recommendations. In this review article, we carried out comprehensive literature analysis of viral shedding with specific focus on the duration of viral shedding and infectivity in asymptomatic and symptomatic (mild, moderate, and severe forms) COVID-19 patients. Our literature search indicates that even though, there are specific instances where the current protocols may not be applicable ( such as in immune-compromised patients there is no strong evidence to contradict the current WHO discharge criteria.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

City dynamics: mobility and livelihoods of urban residents

City dynamics: mobility and livelihoods of urban resident

SARS-CoV-2 Viral Shedding and Transmission Dynamics: Implications of WHO COVID-19 Discharge Guidelines

The evolving nature of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has necessitated periodic revisions of COVID-19 patient treatment and discharge guidelines. Since the identification of the first COVID-19 cases in November 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) has played a crucial role in tackling the country-level pandemic preparedness and patient management protocols. Among others, the WHO provided a guideline on the clinical management of COVID-19 patients according to which patients can be released from isolation centers on the 10th day following clinical symptom manifestation, with a minimum of 72 additional hours following the resolution of symptoms. However, emerging direct evidence indicating the possibility of viral shedding 14 days after the onset of symptoms called for evaluation of the current WHO discharge recommendations. In this review article, we carried out comprehensive literature analysis of viral shedding with specific focus on the duration of viral shedding and infectivity in asymptomatic and symptomatic (mild, moderate, and severe forms) COVID-19 patients. Our literature search indicates that even though, there are specific instances where the current protocols may not be applicable ( such as in immune-compromised patients there is no strong evidence to contradict the current WHO discharge criteria

‘We are at the mercy of the floods!’: Extreme weather events, disrupted mobilities, and everyday navigation in urban Ghana

This paper examines how extreme weather events affect the mobility of low-income urban residents in Ghana. Bringing together scholarship on extreme weather and mobilities, it explores the differential impact of flooding on their everyday lives as they navigate the cities of Accra and Tamale. A range of qualitative methods were drawn on, including semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and follow-along-participant observations in selected communities of both cities. Three key themes emerged: disrupted road and transport infrastructure, everyday mobility challenges, and coping/adaptive strategies. In flooding conditions, residents experienced difficulties leaving/returning home, engaging in income-generating activities, and accessing transport services and other key urban infrastructure. Conceptually, the paper reveals how disruption to urban residents’ daily movements and activities (re)produces new forms of mobilities and immobilities, which have three relational elements: postponed, improvised and assisted. Throughout the analysis, we show how these mobilities/immobilities vary by age and gender: all urban residents, (though women in particular), experience postponed mobility; young people especially engage in improvised mobility; and children and the elderly are in greatest need of assisted mobility. The paper thus contributes to scholarship on extreme weather events and mobility by providing a more spatially nuanced understanding of the multi-faceted domains in which flooding, socio-economic conditions and adaptive strategies intersect to influence urban mobility in resource poor settings

Everyday contours and politics of infrastructure: Informal governance of electricity access in urban Ghana

This article contributes to shaping the discourse on unequal geographies of infrastructure and governance in the global South, opening up new ways of thinking through politics, practices and modalities of power. Conceptually, informality, governance and everyday urbanism are drawn on to unpack how the formal encounters the informal in ways that (re)configure infrastructure geographies and governance practices. This conceptual framing is empirically employed through an analysis of electricity access in Accra, Ghana, highlighting how residents navigate unequal electricity topographies, engage in self-help initiatives, and negotiate informal networks and formal governance practices. The spatiality of the electricity infrastructure has created inequity and opportunities for exploitation by ‘power-owners’ and ‘power-agents’ who control and manage the electricity distribution network and, in turn, privately supply power. Electricity connections are negotiated, access is monetised and illegality excused on grounds of good-neighbourliness, thereby producing and perpetuating everyday politics of ‘making do’. Community movements, everyday acts of improvisation, and incremental modifications are shown to influence the workings of formal institutions of government and shape uneven power relations and experiences of inequality. Such an understanding of how marginalised residents navigate the electricity topographies of Accra reveals a more nuanced politics of infrastructure access, which reflects the complex realities of hybridised modalities of governance and the multiple everyday dimensions of power that shape urban space. The article concludes that informality should not be recognised as failure but as a sphere of opportunity, innovation and transition