Africa has the fastest rate of urbanisation compared to all other regions. According to UN Projections Africa will more than double its urban population over the next two decades, from 400 million presently to a staggering 750 million in 2030 and 1.2 billion by 2050! The rapidity and scale of this demographic and social transition is almost unimaginable especially if one considers that the vast majority of existing urbanites make do in utterly miserable living conditions due in part to state neglect, skewed economic development patterns, limited resources and administrative incompetence; dynamics that are of course in one way or another tangible legacies of the savage colonial experiments we have been subjected to for most of the Enlightenment. However, tonight I am less interested in spending all my time on painting the visible demographic drama that will remake the Continent in an irrevocable way, but rather want to explore what it means when we are bereft of a philosophical-social theoretical vocabulary to make sense of these transitions in the specificities of our African soil, spirit and phenomenologies.
Resource collections
- Evaluating humanitarian action
- Monitoring of humanitarian action
- UN Habitat - Urban Response Collection
- Urban Response - Urban Crisis Preparedness and Risk Reduction
- Urban Response Collection - Community Engagement and Social Cohesion
- Urban Response Collection - Economic Recovery
- Urban Response Collection - Environment and Climate Change
- Urban Response Collection - Housing, Land and Property
- Urban Response Collection - Urban Crisis Response, Recovery and Reconstruction
- Urban Response Collection - Urban Resilience