African Cities: Competing Claims on Urban Spaces (review)

This book offers further evidence of the increasing interconnectivity and vibrancy of African studies across Western Europe. It emerged from papers presented to a themed conference in Scotland in 2006 of the Africa–Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS), the third book in the past five years to be published in AEGIS's book series with Brill. It is not unexpected that there are several contributors from Scotland, but the geographical range of scholars represented is noteworthy: authors from Portugal, Belgium, England, and France join those from South Africa and Nigeria in offering chapters that focus on cities in eleven sub-Saharan African countries. Among the eleven content chapters, one or two are oriented primarily around theories, concepts, and wider discussions, but even here case study research enriches the conceptual material.

The I in AEGIS stands for interdisciplinary, but eight of twelve authors are historians, joined by a geographer, an anthropologist, and two urbanists—and three of those whose affiliations are outside of history spend much of their chapters on historical matters. However interdisciplinary the aims may be, urban social and political history predominates. Yet it is encouraging to see so many African historians turning toward cities—in many countries, for far too long urban history has seemed the poorer cousin to other arenas of the discipline. What the editors refer to as the "coming of Africa as an urban continent" (1) has given rise to a growing literature in the social sciences on African cities, but the historian's voice in this volume reminds Africanist urban studies of the continent's long trajectory of urbanization. (Nonetheless, colonial history—as distinct from pre-1900 history—is prominent in most chapters.)

Locatelli and Nugent's introduction sets the book's tone—not blind to myriad urban problems, but not pessimistic or alarmist in outlook. They also argue for the value of comparative urban studies—an argument strengthened by ensuing chapters. Theodore Trefon's fine chapter follows. Informed by his empirical work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this is one of the first attempts to think through the meaning of peri-urbanity in Africanist urban studies scholarship.

The remaining chapters are more strongly oriented around case studies. Cristina Rodrigues examines the resegregation of Angolan cities emerging in peacetime along lines both similar to and distinct from colonial patterns. Claire Bénit-Gbaffou's chapter on rising crime in postapartheid Johannesburg maps the variegated geographies of community—and discusses their implications for policing strategies; she includes fascinating passages from interviews in townships with those struggling to secure public space.

We stay in southern Africa for the third chapter, Paul Jenkins's analysis of contestation over land tenure. Like Trefon, Jenkins widens the conceptual lens a bit, but his emphasis is firmly centered on a case study of Maputo. This chapter also adds evidence to the strong critiques of land titling and registration programs in contemporary Africa. Akinyele's chapter focuses on Lagos, with an emphasis similarly on land tenure. Here the struggle resides more with out-of-control tactics of indigenous (or allegedly indigenous) landholders in asserting land rights over rapidly growing residential areas.

With the chapter on Kumasi we move from the element of earth to that of water (although fire and air are left out of the book). Tom McCaskie brings a historical perspective to contemporary struggles over the (attempted) privatization of water provision. Musemwa's chapter also focuses on water issues, this time in Bulawayo. As with Bénit-Gbaffou's contribution, the deployment of interview narratives is effective in showing the harsh effects of drought and mismanagement on ordinary residents.

The remaining chapters follow less clearly from one another. Laurent Fourchard ably crosses the Francophone–Anglophone divide in African studies in his chapter, articulating an effective comparison of colonial strategies for dealing with "strangers" in cities of Nigeria and French West Africa. Francesca Locatelli's chapter provides a glimpse into...