Globalizing City: The Urban and Economic Transformation of Accra, Ghana

6. Globalizing from Below: Slum Dwellers in a Globalizing City

111 6 Globalizing from Below Slum Dwellers in a Globalizing City in the cOntext OF prOtr acted debates about informal settler evictions in Accra, four slum dwellers, supported by a local NGO leader, obtained passports, purchased airline tickets, and participated in a Nairobi “official” visit. The slum dwellers had never traveled outside of Ghana before. In Nairobi, the four slum dwellers received a delegations’ welcome. There, they met with municipal officials and representatives from community based organizations, traveled to Kibera (one of the largest slums in Africa), and held face-to-face meetings with local slum dwellers. During their exposure trip, they discussed community organization and urban rehabilitation efforts, among other things. The government of Ghana did not arrange the AccraNairobi visit. Instead, a local community organization, with links to an international nongovernmental organization, strategically planned the visit. A requirement for participation in the Nairobi exposure trip was that slum dwellers had to keep diaries and record their observations and selfreflections . One member of the delegation expressed that “the Nairobi exchange is the emergence of a new era that links Accra’s settlers with communities on the other side of the continent.”1 He went on to reflect that he “is getting firsthand knowledge and experience . . . and knows that (informal ) settlers in Accra will have a future.” The Nairobi visit, combined with a series of other NGO-initiated events in Accra, such as the Old Fadama slum receiving a visit from South African slum organizers, illustrates the 1. Interview with Old Fatima representative who wishes to remain anonymous, May 10, 2005. 112 | glOba lizing cit y very different backdrop to the usual politics surrounding the future of urban slums in Africa. All of these actions were taken because rapid rates of urbanization in Accra have put new pressures on land and its value (Berry 2000; Mabogunje 1992; Juul and Lund 2002) and called for new thinking. I contend that a new political geography of landlessness and homelessness is emerging in globalizing Accra on a scale not witnessed before. The poor’s desire for survival means they cannot operate in the typical political sphere. Their survival calls for action at different scales that were previously unthinkable. NGO-initiated intervention encourages the poor to frame their situation in a global context. Movements among the urban poor, such as the branch I document in Accra are connected to Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI).2 SDI involves an international federation spanning twenty-one countries in 2008 whose members share ideas and experiences and lend each other support in their efforts to secure access to housing, infrastructure, and land (D’Cruz and Mitlin 2004). A transformation is underway; local squatters are transitioning toward active globalizing citizens. Three developments have facilitated this trend. First, there is a new importance of a different politics of scale in urban land. The presence of an NGO (that otherwise would not have been there) in a particular place can connect that place into a global network and bring new meanings, resources, forms of power, and a range of other influences to bear on that place (Bebbington 2004, 732). Accordingly, the choice of spatial scale is not one or another but possibly both or more, entailing inherent complexities . The most politically successful grassroots organizations become part of a geographically flexible network in which there is an intermingling of the scales of political action to the extent that the scales can become mutually constitutive (Routledge 2003). 2. SDI is a network organization with a presence in South Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It grew out of alliances formed in the mid-1980s by three Indian organizations: the National Slum Dwellers Federation, Mahila Milan (a network of poor women), and the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers (a research group). International networking led to the development of a similar approach comprising parallel organizations and peoples in South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe (Huchzermeyer 2004, 73). glOba lizing FrOM belOw | 113 Second, NGOs and citizens’ movements are appropriating urban governance functions (Appadurai 2001; Taylor 2005). New forms of globally organized power and expertise operate inside national boundaries (Ranney 2003), but elites are not the only ones who can harness global expertise to design policies and to position their interests in the national and urban economies. At the same time, interventions in housing for the urban poor do not have to be dependent on the World Bank and/or national governments anymore...