Capital Cities in Africa: Power and powerlessness

Authors

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch (ed)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0435-0214 (unauthenticated)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.57054/codesria.pub.92

Keywords:

Capital Cities, Power, powerlessness, West African Dubai

Synopsis

Capital cities today remain central to both nations and states. They host centres of political power, not only national, but in some cases regional and global as weil, thus offering major avenues to success, wealth and privilege. For these reasons capitals simultaneously become centres of ’counter-power’, locations of high-stakes struggles between the government and the opposition.

This volume focuses on capital cities in nine sub-Saharan African countries, and traces how the power vested in them has evolved through different colonial backgrounds, radically different kinds of regimes after independence, waves of popular protest, explosive population growth and in most cases stunted economic development. Starting at the point of national political emancipation, each case study explores the complicated processes of nation-state building through its manifestation in the ’urban geology’ of the city - its architecture, iconography, layout and political use of urban space. Although the evolution of each of these cities is different, they share a critical demographic feature an extraordinarily rapid process of urbanisation that is more politically than economically driven. Overwhelmed by the inevitable challenges resulting from this urban sprawl, the governments seated in most of these capital cities are in effect both powerful- wielding power over their populace - and powerless, lacking power to implement their plans and to provide for their inhabitants.

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Author Biographies

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch

 Professor Emerita, Paris Diderot University, France; recipient of the Distinguished Africanist Award in 1999

 

Bill Freund

 Professor Emeritus, Economic History/Development Studies Programme, University of KwaZulu-Natal

 

AbdouMaliq Simone

Urbanist and Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London

Wale Adebanwi

 African American and African Studies, University of California, Davis, USA

Simon Bekker

Sociology, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa

Amadou Diop

Geography, Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, Sénégal

Laurent Fourchard

Centre d’Étude d’Afrique Noire, Institut d’Études Politiques, University of Bordeaux, France

Philippe Gervais-Lambony

Geography, University of Paris X – Nanterre, France

Odile Goerg

History, University of Paris 7 – Diderot, France

Paul Jenkins

Architecture and Human Settlements, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland

Alan Mabin

Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

Teresa Mbatia

Urban and Regional Planning, University of Nairobi, Kenya

Samuel Owuor

 Urban Geography, University of Nairobi, Kenya

Gabriel Tati

Demography, University of the Western Cape, South Africa

Göran Therborn

Sociology, Cambridge University, UK

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Cities in Africa Capital Cities

Published

May 9, 2012

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CODESRIA Books
Copyright (c) 2012 CODESRIA Books Publication System

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Cite this book

APA Coquery-Vidrovitch, C., Freund, B., Simone, A., Adebanwi, W., Bekker, S., Diop, A., Fourchard, L., Gervais-Lambony, P., Goerg, O., Jenkins, P., Mabin, A., Mbatia, T., Owuor, S., Tati, G., Therborn, G., & system, (2012). Capital Cities in Africa: Power and powerlessness. CODESRIA. https://doi.org/10.57054/codesria.pub.92

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