Africa's Urban Infrastructure Development: Ambivalent Projects, Emerging Actors, and Worldmaking Technologies
Practical information
Themes and regions
Related centers and programs
This is a private event.
Learn more about our corporate support packagesOver the past twenty-five years, a confluence of factors, from rapid growth to disastrous impacts of climate change, has focused global attention on African cities.
After decades of focus on rural underdevelopment, the development sector has now built a whole catalogue of programs pertaining to Africa’s urbanization. This urbanization is depicted as as an ambivalent process, rife with both challenges and opportunities. This workshop of Ifri's research program "Governing Africa's Urban Transitions" (GouvUrba) will focus on Liza Cirolia's research on Africa's urban infrastructure.
Liza Rose Cirolia is a Senior Researcher at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town. In this seminar, she will reflect on the ways in which international development finance discourse "lands" in African cities and the related challenges of financial urban infrastructure faced by urban authorities. She will look into two cases from her recent work where very different actors, processes and technologies are involved in tending to infrastructural deficits on the continent. Liza will first discuss the role of Karpowership in supplying urban energy, with a focus on Freetown. Second, the presentation will look at remittance infrastructures, focusing on Somalia. The aim is to spark a debate about how the development sector might enroll non-traditional development actors into our thinking on financing infrastructure in African cities.
Moderation: Sina Schlimmer, Researcher at the Sub-Saharan Africa Center, Ifri, Head of the GouvUrba program
Related Subjects
Other events
Managing nuclear escalation: what's in intrawar deterrence?
Since the return of high-intensity warfare in Europe and the rise of strategic tensions in the Indo-Pacific, the issue of managing escalation between nuclear powers has taken center stage in U.S. strategic thinking and, to a lesser extent, in the European one.
Geopolitical stakes of the New Moon race
As the United States, China, and India solidify their lunar ambitions, Europe is still seeking to define its stance: should it be a reliable partner or an autonomous strategic player? This conference will examine the stakes of this new race to the Moon and Europe’s interest in asserting itself as a lunar power through partnerships, industrial ambitions, and whether its participation in the new lunar race serves as a lever for strategic autonomy and internal cohesion, or an illustration of its dependence.