Understanding the Linkages Between Urban Food Systems and Non-Communicable Diseases in Namiba by researchers Ndeyapo Nickanor, Tobias Shinyemba and Lawrence Kazembe, is the fourth in a series of Nourishing Spaces working papers edited by Jane Battersby. (more…)

Food Systems and Diet-related Non-Communicable Diseases in Kisumu, Kenya by researchers Paul Otieno Opiyo and Stephen Gaya Agong, is the third in a series of Nourishing Spaces working papers edited by Jane Battersby. (more…)

Vanessa Watson and Caroline Skinner have contributed an article to the forthcoming issue of Town Planning Review. Planning and informal food traders under COVID-19: the South African case outlines the scale and nature of the informal food economy in South Africa and then considers the impact of lockdown regulations on informal traders as well as […]

Food Systems and Diet-Related NCDS in Cape Town, South Africa, by researcher Jo Hunter-Adams is the first in a series of Nourishing Spaces working papers edited by Jane Battersby. ABSTRACT The aim of this working paper is to offer insight into the lived experience of changing food systems and diet-related non-communicable disease (NCDs) in a […]

As part of their PEAK Urban research project Analysing Human Settlement Transformation in Cape Town, researchers Nobukhosi Ngwenya and Liza Rose Cirolia co-authored this paper which uses land occupations in Cape Town as a lens to explore conflicting rationalities. ABSTRACT One of the most pervasive planning challenges in Southern cities is the formal housing shortage. […]

Contested fiscal geographies: Urban authority, everyday practice, and emerging state-finance relations by Liza Rose Cirolia is published in GeoForum. ABSTRACT The study of fiscal geographies foregrounds the spatialities of fiscal instruments, such as taxes or bonds. Of central concern in the fiscal geographies literature are the ways that fiscal spaces are co-constituted with state-form and […]

ACC Postdoctoral researcher Martin Magidi has co-authored an article with Innocent T. Mahiya entitled Rethinking training: the role of the informal sector in skills acquisition and development in Zimbabwe for the Journal of Development Southern Africa.   ABSTRACT Training and skills acquisition have received widespread approval as one of the most important steps towards achieving […]

ACC’s Amy Weimann and Warren Smit, are co-authors along with Noxolo Kabane, Tracy Jooste, Anthony Hawkridge and Tolu Oni, of Health through human settlements: Investigating policymakers’ perceptions of human settlement action for population health improvement in urban South Africa published in Habitat International. ABSTRACT Informal settlements, characterised by inadequate living conditions and high disease burdens, […]

Caroline Skinner and Michael Rogan co-authored The Covid-19 crisis and the South African informal economy: ‘Locked out’ of livelihoods and employment, as part of the working papers that accompany the NIDS-CRAMS reports. ABSTRACT There is widespread recognition, both internationally and in South Africa, that the measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 have impacted particularly […]

The first of five reports from the National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) was released a on 15 July 2020. (more…)

Over-reliance on food imports from other regions of Kenya and neighbouring countries leaves Kisumu city vulnerable to food insecurity should there be any disruptions in the supply chain such as been highlighted by the current pandemic. (more…)

The first contribution (Zinnbauer 2019) to the Cities of Integrity working paper series put forward two key messages: first, that tackling corruption in urban development is a key policy challenge of our time; and second, that activating the professional integrity of the urban planning community is a particularly promising and underexplored response to this challenge. (more…)

Over the past two years ACC and international law firm, Pinsent Masons have collaborated on developing an African Cities Thought Leadership Programme. (more…)

Andrew Tucker and Neil R. Hasan have published a new paper entitled Situating sexuality: An interconnecting research agenda in the urban global south in GeoForum, volume 109, February 2020. Abstract Significant opportunities exist to connect more directly sexuality research to urbanisation research in the global South. This article considers such connections in relation to the […]

The International Science Council has published a new report on the collaboration between science, policy and society carried out through transdisciplinary research in a range of African cities. (more…)

The recent IPCC Climate Change and Land Report [1] lays out evidence of the need for urgent shifts in the global systems in light of climate change. This commentary reflects on Chapter 5, the Food Security chapter, from our perspective as researchers focused on urban food systems and non-communicable disease in Africa. (more…)

How can Ghana’s cities promote social inclusion, climate resilience and fiscal capacity all at once? Cities as a Strategic Resource: Guideline for Ghana’s National Urban Policy Revision, based on the work of the Ghana Urbanisation Think Tank, provides a guideline to the National Urban Policy revision being undertaken by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development in […]

The severe drought experienced by Cape Town between 2015 and 2018 and the imminent threat of “Day Zero” should serve as a warning for other cities as to what climate impacts might look like in future. This paper, Gina Ziervogel, unpacks the governance of the drought in Cape Town, in order to understand what conditions […]

For cities to develop in ways that are sustainable, climate resilient and equitable, considerations of climate variability and change must factor into planning, investment and management decisions. To do so requires robust, actionable climate information. In addition to having such information, capacities and mechanisms are needed to factor it into complex technical and political urban […]

ACC researcher Sylvia Croese is a co-author on Localizing the Sustainable Development Goals Through the Lens of Urban Resilience: Lessons and Learnings from 100 Resilient Cities and Cape Town in Sustainability. (more…)

In this paper for the Journal of Gender Studies, Andrew Tucker seeks to consider new ways in which sexuality is framed and regulated in South Africa and the impact these framings have for different sexual subjects. (more…)

This article presents one of a number of conclusions from a four-year ESRC/DfID-funded project entitled Consuming Urban Poverty, based at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town. (more…)

For Tanzania, rapidly growing cities could either become a national liability or the springboard towards global competitiveness, sustainability and middle-income status. Tanzania has both a growing economy and an urbanising population, but the two trends are not currently mutually reinforcing. (more…)

Laura Nkula-Wenz and Zayd Minty examine how different cultural policy approaches have been locally mobilized and reworked in Bandung and Cape Town in response to situated realities and in partnerships between cultural, academic, business and local government actors, in this article for Cultural Trends. ABSTRACT This article compares the cultural governance pathways of two UNESCO […]

This background paper The Urban Finance Landscape in Ghana – Mobilising Investment in Sustainable Urban Infrastructure by Wayne Shand is structured to provide an in-depth study of the urban finance landscape in Ghana and the challenges and opportunities to mobilise resources to invest in sustainable urban infrastructure. An introduction is followed by a review of […]

African Centre for Cities and the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) collaborated to produce Africa 2063: How Cities Will Shape the Future of a Continent, edited by Edgar Pieterse and Tobia Zevi. (more…)

ACC researcher Sylvia Croese is one of the co-authors for this paper published in Volume 11, 2019 of the International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development. (more…)

ABSTRACT Informalization and casualization have been twin meta-trends in African development over the last several decades. However these processes are also now being articulated with, and altered by, processes of virtual accumulation and informationalization, giving rise to what some have called Uberization. (more…)

During National Water Week this week, the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) African Centre for Cities (ACC) released a new paper which warns that the Cape Town drought has powerful climate-change adaptation lessons for other South African municipalities. (more…)

African Centre for Cities (ACC) has released a new paper Unpacking the Cape Town Drought Lessons Learnt by Associate Professor Gina Ziervogel. The report was commissioned by the Cities Support Programme, within National Treasury in the South Africa National Government, to ensure that lessons learned from Cape Town drought experience would serve to inform other municipalities when […]

ACC’s Liza Rose Cirolia co-authored Property Tax in African Secondary Cities: Insights from the Cases of Kisumu (Kenya) and M’Bour (Senegal) with James Christopher Mizes, a working paper for the International Centre for Tax and Development. (more…)

ACC’s researcher Liza Cirolia co-authored Urban infrastructure and development with Philipp Rode, Executive Director of LSE Cities and Associate Professorial Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science as part of LSE Cities Working Paper series on Urban Governance and Institutional Frameworks. (more…)

This working paper was prepared by the African Centre for Cities. It was developed in partnership with the Coalition for Urban Transitions, which is a major global initiative to support national governments to accelerate economic development and tackle dangerous climate change by transforming towns and cities.  (more…)

ABSTRACT Decentralization reforms and rapid urbanization place increasing pressure on African urban authorities. In response, land-based finance has been gaining popularity within development discourses as a method of increasing local autonomy and financing local government infrastructure provision. This paper discusses the conceptual basis for land-based finance, the instruments that form part of this approach, and […]