Africa’s new urban spaces: deindustrialisation, infrastructure-led development and real estate frontiers

ABSTRACT

Many African governments have embraced centralised spatial planning and the construction of large-scale connective infrastructure as a means to synergise industrialisation and functional urban development. This article examines the tensions between these economic and urban development objectives in Ghana and Kenya. Infrastructure-led development in both cases has fuelled extended and unplanned urbanisation and the production of new frontiers for real estate investment. However, the evidence indicates that it has failed to contribute to processes of structural transformation. This argument advances debates about the tensions between supply chain and rentier capitalism and problematises the assumed relationship between infrastructure-led development and industrialisation.

RÉSUMÉ

De nombreux gouvernements africains ont adopté la planification spatiale centralisée et la construction d'infrastructures connectives de grande échelle comme moyen de créer une synergie entre l'industrialisation et le développement urbain fonctionnel. Cet article examine les tensions entre ces objectifs de développement économique et urbain au Ghana et au Kenya. Dans les deux cas, le développement axé sur les infrastructures a alimenté une urbanisation étendue et non planifiée et la création de nouvelles frontières pour l'investissement immobilier. Toutefois, les données indiquent que cela n'a pas permis de contribuer à des processus de transformation structurelle. Cet argument fait avancer les débats sur les tensions entre la chaîne d'approvisionnement et le capitalisme rentier, et problématise la relation supposée entre le développement porté par les infrastructures et l'industrialisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Deindustrialisation
• infrastructure
• urbanisation
• real estate
• Ghana
• Kenya

MOTS-CLÉS:

• Déindustrialisation
• infrastructures
• urbanisation
• immobilier
• Ghana
• Kenya

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Tom Goodfellow for comments on an earlier draft, and to Jörg Wiegratz and the anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback. The figures were produced by Glen Cutwerk. The usual disclaimers apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Tom Gillespie gratefully acknowledges support from a University of Manchester Hallsworth Research Fellowship and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office-funded African Cities Research Consortium. Seth Schindler gratefully acknowledges support from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ES/R008159/1).

Notes on contributors

Tom Gillespie

Tom Gillespie is Lecturer in Global Urban Development and Hallsworth Research Fellow at the University of Manchester.

Seth Schindler

Seth Schindler is Senior Lecturer in Urban Development and Transformation at the University of Manchester.