on:africa

By Hannah Gibson

2011 will be remembered as the year in which the global population hit 7 billion. Of this 7 billion, Africa is the second most populated continent with a population of 1 billion. Although, taken against a backdrop of Asia which has a population of 4.1 billion (accounting for over 60% of the world’s population), Africa actually appears quite modest. And then there is urbanisation.

Urbanisation rates in Africa are the highest in the world. With more than half of the population of Africa expected to be living in the continent’s rapidly expanding urban centres by 2025, the urban population is growing almost twice as fast as the general population. The challenges urbanisation brings with it and the implications for social justice are manifold. Strains on natural resources and on infrastructure put further pressure on the built environment and ecosystems.

Two African cities featured in the a Time list of the 10 fasted growing cities; Lagos and Kinshasa. With its already massive population, Lagos came in sixth with a predicated increased in population by 2025 at 5.23million. As Nigeria’s economic centre and wealthiest city, Lagos is the recipient of scores of migrants from rural areas and the all-too-common stories of overcrowding and the fight for resources, abound.

Kinshasa

Kinshasa came in third with a predicted 6.29million increase by 2025. Kinshasa was described as ‘ill-prepared’ for its place amongst the world’s fastest-growing cities with an economy rooted in the primary sector based on quickly depleting natural resources. The concerns over infrastructural shortcomings are exacerbated by the level of civil unrest in the country and high crime rates are further fueled by the increasing gap between rich and poor.

So what future is there for these cities and indeed the continent? What future is there for the urban populations when the cities are not ready and no one knows when they will be? The challenges which cities bring with them are not unique to Africa with overcrowding and infrastructural worldwide phenomena. However, many of the local responses which have come out of African cities are uniquely African and mainly because they need to be.

Kibera, often described as the biggest slum in Africa, is a high-density settlement in Nairobi with an estimated population of 1 million. Kibera was a blank spot on the map until 2009 when young people living in Kibera created the first free and open digital map of their own community.

MapKibera

Map Kibera has now grown into a complete interactive community information project. Kibera is also home to an Urban Harvest project which has seen a number of residents establish vertical farming projects to help people grow food in between them homes and wherever then can find space, a response to both the issue of increasing food prices and malnutrition.

The Kuyasa Project in Cape Town saw the homes of 2300 low-income households fitted with solar-water heaters so that its residents don’t have to paraffin-power their way through the infamously cold and damp winter months. The benefits of this project include an estimated US$100 saving a year on energy costs as well as the associated health benefits and employment creation as a result of the project.

The African Centre for Cities has also just brought out the first edition of its magazine CityScapes a publication which seeks to ‘establish a critical and creative platform for interdisciplinary thinking around urbanism and design on the African continent, with reference to thinking and practice in the wider global South’.

And the list could go on and on. Because ultimately these cities that we talk of, as though they themselves are the living breathing beasts, are made up of people. And the people who live in them know what the challenges are just as well as knowing what brought them there in the first place and what makes them stay. It is the city-dwellers who will innovate and make suggestions as to how to improve the quality of their cities and indeed the quality of their lives. It is the city-dwellers who will organise and put demands on those around them who have the power and are telling them what their futures should look like. And not just because they will need to, but because they have already begun.