Associational Life in African Cities: Popular Responses to the Urban Crisis

The seventeen essays in this volume focus on the multitude of voluntary associations that has emerged in African cities in recent years. In many cases, they are a response to mounting poverty, failing infrastructure and services, and more generally, weak or abdicating urban governments. Some associations are new, in other cases, existing organisations are taking on new tasks. Associations may be neighbourhood-based, others may be city-wide and based on professional groupings or a shared ideology or religion. Still others have an ethnic base. Some of these organisations are engaged in both day-to-day matters of urban management and more long-term urban development. Urban associations challenge the monopoly of local and central government institutions. After an introductory chapter by the editors: "The African Urban Crisis, Governance and Associational Life", the contributions are grouped into the following sections: 1. Coping through Informal Networks, 2. Religion and identity, 3. Land and Housing, 4. Services, 5. Emerging initiatives. Recurrent themes are under what circumstances and in what contexts people have organised themselves and how needs are serviced. The essays relate to 13 countries mostly in Northern and Western Africa.