Controlling the capital city: state power and urban land in Africa

Tom Goodfellow, University of Sheffield. Chaired by Marco Di Nunzio, African Studies and Athropology.

This seminar presents findings from two separate research projects on comparative politics in urban Africa, both of which explore how national governments seek to dominate cities and their populations – including through the use of urban land as an instrument of control. Land is often central to the relationship between cities and states in Africa; colonising powers commonly instituted divisive land regimes to build and consolidate forms of public authority, and postcolonial governments used urban land as a way to bolster bureaucratic central state power. Intentionally or otherwise, these processes often weakened the authority of city governments in the process. In this context, the power to govern cities – and especially capital cities – is often contested between central state authorities and a range of city-level actors whose power is often constituted outside of the state.

As well as presenting the overarching arguments of a recent book, Controlling the Capital, this seminar will put these arguments in conversation with a project funded by the African Cities Research Consortium, to explore how urban land and infrastructure become enrolled in struggles for political advantage in rapidly urbanising contexts. 

Tom Goodfellow

Tom Goodfellow is a Professor of Urban Studies and International Development at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on the comparative political economy of urban development in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, migration, and urban institutional change. Recent books include Politics and the Urban Frontier: Transformation and Divergence in Late Urbanizing East Africa (OUP, 2022); Living the urban periphery: Infrastructure, everyday life and economic change in African city-regions (Manchester University Press, 2024; with Meth, Charlton and Todes), and Controlling the Capital: Cities and Dominance in the Urbanizing World (OUP, 2023; co Editor with Jackman). He is currently also part-seconded as a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.