Introduction: youth entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa

Introduction: youth entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Afric

Introduction. Safe and inclusive cities: contesting violence

Introduction. Safe and inclusive cities: contesting violenc

‘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

“It is for home but we use it for work”: intra-urban comparison of infrastructure and home-based enterprises in Accra

Urban infrastructure is crucial for livelihoods and economic growth, however, access remains fragmented. Such differential infrastructure provision within cities necessitates intra-urban comparison and a renewed commitment to re-thinking between and within neighborhoods in ways that do not universalize infrastructure geographies. This paper examines how electricity and water infrastructure affect home-based enterprises in four neighborhoods within one city. The study utilizes mixed methods and comparative analysis to reveal how residents in Accra experience varying degrees of electricity and water accessibility and how this affects their businesses. Each neighborhood has unique utility provisions and micro-economies, which have a tangible bearing on business viability. We argue that knowledge of the complex relationship between infrastructure and home-based enterprises is essential for understanding which processes, policies, and interventions best improve livelihoods and urban life in impoverished settings. We conclude that scholars and policymakers need to pay greater attention to how infrastructure is used productively in (re)producing urban economies and how this varies both between and within neighborhoods.</p

“Fests of vests”: The politics of participation in neoliberal peacebuilding in Colombia

The Colombian Peace Agreement signed in 2016 was saluted internationally by scholars, policy makers and practitioners for encompassing the concept of territorial peace as a means of ensuring local participation in the strengthening of state institutions. Based on engaged research conducted in the Department of Cauca and Bogot?a between 2017 and 2020, we critically analyse territorial peace, exploring its ideation, implementation, and subsequent decline in favour of security and stabilisation. We argue that the government’s peacebuilding rationale and mechanisms sought to reinforce the neoliberal state through a constrained participation model, which marginalised the progressive struggles of local communities living in former conflict affected areas. Without a radical breakdown of pre-existing power structures of exploitation and domination, community participation in peacebuilding runs the risk of legitimising stateled initiatives that ensure the political rule of capital, strengthen the bureaucracies of the centralised state, and create new violent disputes without resolving existing one

Mineralized urbanization in Africa in the twenty-first century: Becoming urban through mining extraction

This article focuses on the urbanizing impact of the post-millennial mineral boom at artisanal and small-scale (ASM) or large-scale (LSM) mining sites in three mineral-rich countries, involving gold in Ghana, diamonds in Angola, and both minerals in Tanzania. The focus is on comparing the agency of miners and other residents migrating to, settling in, and making the mining site habitable. Their mobility and settlement patterns reveal an urbanization trend marked by population agglomeration and expanding labour complexity, taking distinct forms at the rush and mature stages of gold and diamond ASM and LSM sites. Citing data from household surveys conducted at 12 mining sites, we trace how ‘mineralized urbanization’ propels in-migration, rising localized purchasing power, and proliferating service sector and trade activities, fuelling both urban demographic and economic change along the mining extraction trajectory. LSM and ASM generate synergies as well as detractive forces, depending on the size, age and history of the mining settlement development. What emerges is the differential development of households and settlements through strategic economic manoeuvring and the rough and tumble of happenstance, underlined by a compelling, albeit fluctuating, trajectory of non-renewable mineralized urbanization

Designing dwellings to cope with extreme heat in low-income communities

Designing effective passive cooling interventions for dwellings in low-income communities exposed to tropical climates is vital to ensure occupant health and comfort in a warming climate. More knowledge is needed, however, on which interventions would be culturally acceptable, affordable, and effective in reducing high indoor temperatures. Four experimental buildings were built in Ghana to evaluate such interventions. Their initial design was based on a typical home for low-income urban residents in northern Ghana. A multi-disciplinary team contributed to the design and the proposed cooling interventions. Using dynamic thermal simulation, engineers predicted indoor temperatures for different construction materials, shading, and ventilation strategies. Social scientists provided input on the cultural acceptability of the proposed designs. The study showed how simple interventions can achieve worthwhile reductions in indoor temperature. In future work, the dynamic thermal models will be calibrated using data collected inside the real experimental buildings.</p

Comparing indoor air quality in naturally ventilated and air-conditioned hospitals in the tropics

Occupant exposure to airborne pathogens in buildings can be reduced by a variety of means, including adequate provision of outdoor air by ventilation. This is particularly important in buildings, such as hospitals, which may house a higher number of infected individuals relative to the wider population. In tropical Africa, however, there is evidence that new hospitals built with air-conditioning to cope with the extreme heat are poorly ventilated compared to existing hospitals that were designed to be naturally ventilated. As a proxy for indoor air quality, the carbon dioxide concentrations in two hospitals in Ghana were monitored over a period of one week. All wards were naturally ventilated, but some also had mechanical ventilation or recirculating air-conditioning. Airconditioned wards generally had the poorest indoor air quality, with measured maximum CO2 concentrations of 3286 ppm indicating insufficient ventilation relative to occupancy levels. Staff reported keeping windows closed in these wards to prevent mosquitoes from entering and to provide thermal comfort for the patients. Recommendations are that staff working in air-conditioned rooms should regularly open windows to allow outdoor air to enter. Mosquito netting should be installed on all windows to encourage staff to open the windows. Future hospital design should better consider the interplay between thermal comfort, ventilation, and indoor air quality.</p

Cities and extreme weather events: impacts of flooding and extreme heat on water and electricity services in Ghana

Extreme weather events disproportionately affect residents of low-income urban settlements in the Global South. This paper explores the impact of extreme heat and flooding on water and electricity services in Accra and Tamale, Ghana. Interviews with water/electricity providers and water quality analysis are combined with household interviews, focus group discussions and observations conducted in eight low-income urban settlements. The findings highlight the interconnected nature of service provision during extreme weather events, with challenges in one sector reinforcing problems in another, exacerbating difficulties with access. Although households can utilise rainwater during flooding, it is highly susceptible to faecal contamination, and electricity supplies are often disconnected. During extreme heat, demand for water and electricity outstrips supply, leading to severe shortages, especially in Tamale. Water and electricity service providers should consider their interconnected nature and adopt a joined-up approach to cope with extreme weather events, which are predicted to increase with climate chang