The Practice and Politics of DIY Urbanism in African Cities

Across Africa, protracted economic crises and enduring class stratification have impacted a majority of the continent’s city-dwellers, meaning that urban residents are forced to draw on their own resources and skills, often adopting experimental approaches to sustaining access to services and livelihoods.

This ‘do-it-yourself’ urbanism has generally been appraised through a developmental lens, in which case studies are understood in isolation. In this book, a comparative and cross-regional approach seeks to analyze this phenomenon across the continent, and to gain an understanding of the dynamics of DIY urbanism in a range of cities where urban residents experience economic distress and marginalization.

Does DIY urbanism present a form of resistance, or merely an acquiescence, to the inequalities that make it necessary? And what prospect is there for a radical politics to come out of this grassroots organization, to make cities work better for their poorest, and most marginalised, residents?