Abstract
The distinctiveness of urban processes and dynamics in Africa are of global significance. Achieving sustainable transitions in African cities must necessarily engage with theory and practice, which are derived out of context, and applied in systems and structures that are not globally understood. As sites of knowledge production, universities on the continent have a key role to play in addressing Sustainable Development Goal 11, which seeks to make cities sustainable. The ‘third mission’ of universities, which involves shaping societal benefits, extends their traditional mandates of research and higher education teaching beyond and across academic disciplines, to engage in local and global partnerships. Evidence from a range of knowledge co-production programmes anchored at African universities show that transdisciplinary approaches have made positive contributions to society. With the goal of realising the full potential of sustainability transitions, a network of scholars convened around a series of workshops to understand and enhance the effectiveness of the New African Urban University. Through processes of knowledge exchange, the network showed that realising the full potential is hampered by challenges of working across and beyond disciplines, highlighting the structural and systemic shifts required within African universities. Furthermore, partnering across the Global North and South in international transdisciplinary programmes is beset by power dynamics that shape assumptions and practices based on universalised assumptions about both theory and practice. This article outlines dimensions of an agenda to inform a more global and inclusive positioning of African universities as agents of social change.
Key messages
African universities engaged in international transdisciplinary programmes provide evidence of their transformative potential in achieving Sustainable Development Goal 11.
While transdisciplinary approaches are necessary to advance urban change, universities must undergo systems changes to support and enable these emerging forms of scholarship.
Harnessing the potential of African cities to shape global trajectories hinges on amplifying and supporting the concept of the New African Urban University to engage with the visioning and shaping of local societal benefits.
Addressing the global urban crisis as an epistemic challenge requires an engagement with the politics of the global knowledge ecosystem whose practices and norms are determined by Northern-driven assumptions about relevance and the application of knowledge.
African universities as global urban actors
Since the early 2000s, African universities and urban research centres have spearheaded transformative transdisciplinary programmes that have had positive roles to play in advancing just and sustainable urban change (Parnell, 2022; Schneider et al, 2023). Key lessons emerging from these experimental programmes include, first, the acknowledgement that the mechanisms through which change is affected by African universities remain unclear and inconsistent. Second, that amplifying these gains in ways that have global impact hinges on engaging more closely with understanding the opportunities and barriers faced by African universities in a global knowledge ecosystem that is out of kilter with their histories and trajectories. The lack of clarity and inconsistency in approaches, and the implications this has for urban change across the continent and globally, were the focus of a network of scholars who convened to create spaces for global and local dialogue about the necessary changes in different higher education sectors (New African Urban University, 2021). The point of convergence for the network was the consensus that transdisciplinary approaches are necessary to advance sustainable and just urban change, and that universities (both in Africa and partnering universities) must undergo systems changes to support and enable these emerging forms of scholarship. The network focused their joint discussion on means to optimise and integrate engaged scholarship, partnering beyond the university, in research and curriculum development; and means to support such partnerships between universities and other urban knowledge brokers for the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 in African cities. A further proposition shaping discussions is the acknowledgement that harnessing the potential of African cities to shape the global environment and development trajectories over the next decade, to 2030, hinges on amplifying and supporting the concept of the New African Urban University to engage with the visioning and shaping of local societal benefits (New African Urban University, 2021). By advancing the idea of the New African Urban University, the partners engaged with the promise and potential of African universities to steer just and sustainable urban transitions.
The evidence that cities and urban processes lie at the heart of reconfiguring the global polycrises facing humanity and the planet is firmly established (Brenner and Schmidt, 2011). While policy interventions including SDG 11 with its focus on cities and human settlements are national and local authority responsibilities, the scale, extent and speed with which African cities are transforming implies that the global outlook is interwoven with the future of the continent (Parnell and Pieterse, 2014). Partnerships and networks within, across and beyond the continent have become leverage points to generate the data required to engage with and intervene in the distinctiveness of African urban futures (Patel et al, 2022). Transformative change in African cities must necessarily therefore be seen as part of a global knowledge system, that is beset with power relations that have implications for the extent to which African universities are able to leverage their roles. This article reflects on deliberations of a network of urban scholars working in or with African universities, whose premise is that shifting systems to enable African universities to be agents of urban change must be a global initiative, requiring work at a number of levels – internally within African universities – but also within other Southern and Northern universities; and extending to the wider knowledge ecosystem that shapes the kinds of scholarship that are rendered visible globally. While many of the themes discussed by the network are documented elsewhere, the significance of the New African Urban University network was the creation of spaces that brought together African and Global North research partners into difficult conversations to learn from one another’s experiences and to document these collectively. By drawing on the collective experience of research partners, the foundations for a more global and inclusive positioning of African universities as agents of social change were laid (New African Urban University, 2021).
African urban transitions as an epistemic challenge
The significance of cities is firmly established through the standalone SDG 11. As sites of unprecedented demographic and spatial shifts, the effects of economic processes of consumption and production are deepening patterns of inequality and are posing significant threats to the functioning of life-sustaining global systems. It follows therefore that advancing sustainable and just cities lie at the heart of reconfiguring the global polycrises facing humanity and the planet. Indeed, over the past decade, global and local policy architectures are increasingly reflecting the role of cities in addressing global sustainability challenges. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted cities most severely, highlighting that ‘building back better’ must therefore necessarily be focused on the city scale (Simon et al, 2021; Smit, 2021). Despite these interventions, globally, the effects of climate disasters, public health crises, displacement, and lack of access to basic services are more acute now than ever before.
The global significance of African cities that are in an upward growth trajectory is established through the African Union Agenda 2063. Africa’s urban revolution (Parnell and Pieterse, 2014) is distinctive, temporally, spatially and demographically. With projections of an additional 1 billion Africans on the continent over the next 25 years, global sustainability and stability is closely tethered to the nature of urban transformation in Africa (Parnell and Pieterse, 2014). For African cities, the global focus on sustainable recovery provides an opportunity to respond to the challenges of increasing urbanisation, the urbanisation of poverty, and the dominance of systems of informality (Maniga and Moustanjidi, 2021). What must lie at the heart of urban transitions is the need to reconceptualise and reorient post-pandemic responses in and for African cities in ways that prioritise social and environmental justice imperatives (Chirisa et al, 2020; Kihato and Landau, 2020). Furthermore, given Africa’s colonial past, intervening in urban change in Africa is not simply an African problem, but a global challenge that must necessarily engage with theory and practice, and with the present, the past and the future (Parnell, 2022). The politics of the uneven distribution of the responsibility for and effects of the undermining of global systems is complex and multifaceted. Nonetheless, engagement with the politics of the disproportionate burden carried by the countries and people of the Global South is gathering momentum, with a spotlight on African cities as a priority focus to get a transition to a just and sustainable world right (Parnell, 2022).
Since the early 2010s, numerous shifts have been triggered to transform the global outlook including a range of policy interventions at different scales; the burgeoning of multitude partnerships and networks; and technological advancements to steer urban transformation. In the main, the success of these policy and governance shifts is dependent on the availability of robust data and knowledge systems (Simon et al, 2016; Patel et al, 2017; Croese and Parnell, 2022). Simply put, the extent to which urban decision-making draws on relevant and inclusive knowledge and experience has a direct bearing on urban outcomes (Patel, 2022). In the contemporary data-driven policy world, the dominance of informal systems that characterise African cities complicates the role of science and data. Who knows about African cities and how they are run is not in the control of governments, but in the hands of citizens, who are auto-constructing urban futures. It is the unserviced who are the real knowledge custodians, as they have detailed and nuanced understandings of the areas of functionality and dysfunctionality within our cities. While informality eludes formal systems of data collection, examples of transdisciplinary initiatives and experiments that engage in partnership with urban dwellers in the process of data collection are well documented (Ambole et al, 2019; Buyana et al, 2019; Buyana, 2020), and provide much opportunity to bridge the data science gap.
The centrality of data and ‘knowing the city’ underscores the diversity that exists within Africa, with uneven access to information on urban processes across urban centres within and across countries (Patel et al, 2017; Parnell, 2022). Indeed, the International Expert Panel on Science and the Future of Cities highlighted the significant global disparities on access to knowledge and data production across the Global North and South (Science and the Future of Cities, 2018). These scalar tensions shaping power differentials are political, rendering some realities more visible than others, with direct implications for why we should pay attention to African cities. Transforming cities then is understood as an epistemic challenge (Polk and Kain, 2015). Under these circumstances, questions of epistemic justice, between the Global North and South (and the politics of responsibility), and the divides created between the formal and informal, and between different knowledge brokers, must be foregrounded and engaged in any attempt at leveraging transformative change in African cities.
Universities must play a pivotal role in generating data, supporting knowledge systems, and developing the skills and competencies required to address the global goals. Emerging discourses – including that of the ‘New Urban University’ and ‘UniverCity’ – reflect the strategic intent of universities to align their mandates to contribute to urban transformations (Kärrholm and Torisson, 2024). Universities traditionally hold two main mandates: research and higher education teaching. As sites of knowledge generation, universities are well placed to configure alternative frameworks, methodologies, tools and concepts for various sustainable urban responses, while involving new sets of practices and competencies. In addition, universities have a ‘third mission’, involving visioning and shaping societal benefits (Nabaho et al, 2022). As such, partnering with actors and institutions beyond the university is increasingly commonplace. Postcolonial contexts characterised by capacity constraints, and ill-fitting policy and planning practices have long necessitated knowledge partnerships with universities. Knowledge brokers in African cities are consequently well versed in transdisciplinary approaches seeking to grasp the complexity of urban transformations.
Transdisciplinary approaches are essential in this regard, as they contribute to engaged scholarship that serves to simultaneously diversify knowledge expertise beyond and across academic disciplines. They do so by including scientists, policy makers, citizens, communities and activists, while co-producing usable knowledge to the benefit of society (Shackleton et al, 2023). These emerging knowledge partnerships create new ways of knowing, while generating different questions and insights on urban change. Other benefits of transdisciplinary partnerships with African universities include the building of trust between diverse urban stakeholders, increased acceptability of solutions including technologies and/or policy options; building credibility of researchers; developing a diversity of skills; and democratising urban knowledge (Patel et al, 2022). Despite these benefits, the extent to which engaged scholarship through transdisciplinarity is articulated as a strategic imperative of African universities and the relationship between rhetorical commitment and the systems changes necessary to support these practices is both unclear and unevenly spread (Nabaho et al, 2022). Furthermore, the role of such experiments in shaping urban change at scale in the contexts of rapid urbanisation remains unclear and undocumented.
African universities have different histories and trajectories relative to the process of knowledge production (Schneider et al, 2023). Furthermore, African universities and the practices shaping the knowledge project are still largely influenced by the Global North. The threads that bind us are numerous. Some can be directly traced to where and how academics are trained, while others are more complicated and entrenched in the broader knowledge economy that shapes academia globally. Despite the power dynamics underpinning the theory and practice of urban transitions (Parnell, 2022), frameworks to advance just and sustainable urban change are assumed to be universal in contemporary debates. Research, teaching and engagement must be different on the African continent because of the unique contexts and histories. Similarly, universities themselves need systemic change if they are to remain relevant in shaping the urban agenda on the continent (Nabaho et al, 2022). These changes cannot be confined to African universities alone but need to extend to address the power dynamics of partnering between Global North partner universities and beyond, to foster changes in the broader knowledge ecosystem that invisibly steer knowledge processes and norms (including funding mechanisms, the publishing industry, and promotion and ranking requirements, among others) (Shackleton et al, 2023).
New African Urban University
During the covid years (2020–22), a network of scholars from Africa and the Global North convened around a series of workshops to understand and enhance the effectiveness of the New African Urban University.1 With funding from the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN), partners with WUN affiliations were selected, based on the criteria of having a demonstrable track record of engaging with research and teaching aimed at supporting sustainable and just urban change in Africa. The convening of research partners was based on their established expertise and international standing in the research areas of urban sustainability transitions, knowledge co-production and transdisciplinarity, and the role of universities in urban change. While the primary focus is on urban research and institutional and incentive structures at African universities, African urban research programmes are not confined to African universities. As such, five African universities and four universities across the UK, Europe and Australia were convened into an online network, engaging through a series of workshops to foster mutual learning and exchange. While partners have strengths either in the conceptual aspects and/or in the application of such concepts in African contexts, the reach of all the partners is global, engaging in networks and programmes that are diverse and expansive. The timing of the convening during the covid years was significant for the network, as the pandemic focused the minds of scholars to addressing questions of inequality. This period fostered a climate of solidarity, with a real willingness from participants to learn with and from one another.
The first goal of the network was to serve as an amplifier, to make visible how partner universities are contributing to engaging with urban change in Africa through research, curriculum development and engaged scholarship. While network partners had worked together previously in different combinations on transdisciplinary global partnership projects, these projects were not designed to create opportunities for different partners to learn from one another regarding their institutional circumstances. In addition to learning from one another, the series of workshops were designed to capture experiences across the network to collectively make visible experiences beyond the partnerships through media including websites, reports and academic publications. The second goal sought to develop an agenda that identified opportunities to strategically align the three missions of universities to enhance the contribution of African universities in shaping urban transitions and securing the long-term impact of transdisciplinary projects beyond the project cycle. It was assumed that the diverse network and comparative approach would deliver a distinctive approach to theory and practice, thereby moving the dominant discourses and approaches away from what is assumed to be universalised in contemporary debates on the role of universities in urban change. These shifts in theoretical framing were assumed to, in turn, shape both sustainable urban practices and support the strategic intent of African universities to contribute to societal change (New African Urban University, 2021).
A series of three online workshops provided the opportunity to recognise African universities for their role as urban actors that can shape city processes through generating new knowledge, developing competencies and convening alternate partnerships. Different members of the network cohered around each of the different themes, ensuring representation and leadership from within Africa together with Northern university partners. Primers for each of the workshops were co-developed in advance of the workshops, which formed the basis for discussion aimed at distilling themes to populate research agendas (New African Urban University, 2021). Our assumption was that increased strategic intent to support engaged scholarship at universities that contributes to positive societal impact has the potential to foster closer alignment between research, curriculum development and processes of urban change. As such, discussions centred around the intersections between three imperatives – urban research, alternative forms of knowledge co-production and skills development – to support urban change; as identified in the Project Primer (New African Urban University, 2021). Each of the workshops cohered around a defined question outlined in the New African Urban University Workshop Synthesis report (2022: 1) as follows:
Urban Africa: issues, processes and dynamics addressed the question How are African universities leveraging their role(s) in sustainable urban change? The focus of this workshop was to map the research contributions of partner universities towards addressing sustainable urban development.
Urban Knowledge: methods and approaches focused on the question What role does knowledge co-production play in urban transformations in varying African contexts? Here, identifying methods and approaches to knowledge production used by partners and identifying factors determining impact were prioritised.
Urban Competencies: curriculum development and pedagogy questioned What and how we currently teach about African cities, and how this relates to the sustainable cities and transdisciplinary agendas? The objective here was to engage with skills and competency development focused on transdisciplinarity and urban transitions.
(Re)positioning universities as agents of change
Urban Research
Responding to the Project Primer (New African Urban University, 2021), the question that shaped the discussions in the Urban Research2 workshop was: How are African universities leveraging their role(s) in sustainable urban change? The task of understanding the effectiveness and impact of universities in shaping urban change in African cities, was described as there being multiple tracks that need to be considered in order to have something useful to say about the relationship between universities as research institutions and urban change. The workshop followed three of these tracks: conceptual and structural issues shaping knowledge creation; the global embeddedness of African universities; and bridging between basic and transdisciplinary research (New African Urban University, 2022).
Workshop deliberations, as captured in the synthesis report (New African Urban University, 2022), foregrounded that the starting point for engaging the effectiveness of African universities in leveraging change must be to take a historical perspective that engages with the present. Given Africa’s colonial past, knowledge threads have historically aligned African universities to Northern institutions to varying extents. Considering how African universities have evolved over time, and what this means for how they are equipped to respond to current urban challenges must be foregrounded. This engagement is complicated by the fact that African universities are not homogenous in their ethos, and while African cities share many distinctive and common features, different localities have varying urban development priorities. The rise of private universities responding to the enormous demand for tertiary education raises the need to debate the merits of more coherent education policies set at a national level. Furthermore, the extent to which the nature and range of partnerships between universities and non-academic partners differs between public and private universities will also have a role to play in shaping urban change. Similarly, engaging with the knowledge threads that have historically aligned African universities with Northern institutions (particularly European institutions, given Africa’s colonial past) as well as the opportunities and instances of disobediences or divergences are of significance. The extent to which these practices and functions indicate distinctive research methods specific to building knowledge of African cities is important to establish the extent to which a pan-African ethos and repositioning of African institutions is both happening and is possible. With respect to identifying an African ethos and knowledge threads, the relationship between urban agents and agendas becomes important as positionality is shown to be related to credibility, legitimacy and utility. Furthermore, the ability of African universities to shift knowledge politics and affect change varies. Disruptions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have been shown to provide opportunities to shape alternate responses. Strategically leveraging crises and disruptions (of which there is no shortage across the continent) outside of the lumbering policy cycle provides an opportunity for universities to shift the knowledge politics. However, the ability of universities to respond creatively in these moments of crisis hinges on fostering agility and awareness of the structural points of leverage.
Universities are not islands, they are locally, nationally and globally embedded. The global embeddedness of African universities was shown to provide opportunities for innovation, inclusiveness and solidarity. As recognised at the workshop, the constituents themselves – the students themselves – use and appropriate the university as a platform for many different kinds of agendas, that interact with one another. South African universities have a long history of student protest, the anti-apartheid agendas, to decolonisation (#Rhodesmustfall), and more recently, solidarity for Palestine. Similar movements on university campuses are currently at play at a range of American-based universities. By straddling the local and the global, points of commensurability and incommensurability are surfaced, which aid in explaining the disjunctures in the politics of knowledge production. The emergence of knowledge counter-threads, and alternate ways of seeing and engaging global agendas, are surfaced in these local expressions. The extent to which these alternate knowledge threads influence intellectual discourse as well as development priorities at different scales is dependent on how university authorities respond to student mobilisation.
The role of counter-knowledge theorisations arising from embracing a multiplicity of knowledges through engaging across and beyond the university has the potential to be a powerful transformative force. Postcolonial African universities have a long history of participatory research, to leverage their role as agents of democratic and inclusive processes. Although there is evidence of shifts towards co-creating knowledge through transdisciplinary practices, these shifts are not happening across all urban sectors, or uniformly across the continent. Workshop participants cautioned that the sharing of knowledge through peer-reviewed articles and policy briefs is a continuous display and projection of Global North institutions and partners to be the overseers of work from data points across Africa. We need to be candid about this imbalance if we are going to talk about an urban African research agenda. Ensuring that transdisciplinary practices do not shape the consolidation of glocal embeddedness requires deliberate steering to provide local relevance to global imperatives. Converting new narratives and alternate sources of data emerging from transdisciplinary processes into counter-theorisations is central to developing a pan-African ethos, while transcending knowledge hierarchies. While this steering is epistemic, it is also structural, identifying pathways for institutional change in African universities. Finally, despite the focus on engaged research, participants cautioned that a delicate balance needs to be maintained between understanding the contexts under which these approaches are useful and preserving the role of basic and blue-sky research. Engaged scholarship is necessary to advance sustainable and just urban transitions, however, it is insufficient on its own.
Urban Knowledge
In the Urban Knowledge3 workshop, the network reflected on the question defined in the Project Primer (New African Urban University, 2021: 10): What role does knowledge co-production play in urban transformations in varying African contexts? While there are a growing number of transdisciplinary research projects across African cities, the challenge of ensuring long-term impact beyond project cycles is limited. Initial discussions suggested there were two broad themes to examine: the context of knowledge production and the processes of knowledge production (New African Urban University, 2022).
The report highlights that contexts of knowledge production engages with the core problematic at the heart of the network – unpacking how institutional contexts in Africa and partner universities shape the production of knowledge for just and sustainable transitions (New African Urban University, 2022). The first point of departure is appreciating that African universities are co-producing knowledge and have been doing so for decades. Academics have been working with the state and civil society on challenging urban issues is a necessary component of postcolonial urban development and predates the recognition of co-production as a discourse and method in academia. Situating this history of practice is important for understanding global circuits and politics of knowledge production. The role of scale, and how straddling local and national level partnerships contribute to global outcomes requires careful consideration. In more recent times, international funding schemes have shaped the transdisciplinary research landscape, by supporting partnerships which often include African partners, typically also including Global North partners. These funding arrangements perpetuate assumptions about capacity, and directions of knowledge transfer and exchange in North–South partnerships that position the Global North as leaders. However, these assumptions are upended when the long history of engagement between African universities, the state and civil society are considered. The imbalanced patterns that are emerging through funding architectures supporting knowledge co-production research consortia must be challenged through a critical and evidence-based engagement with the political economy of knowledge co-production. As well as repositioning leadership, ensuring that representation across the continent is secured. Particular African urban areas have come to stand for the whole. Cities like Nairobi, Accra, Lagos, Dares Salaam, Kamala, Johannesburg and Cape Town have become emblematic, with funders favouring these locations. Shifting the politics of relevance and distribution of opportunity across the continent become aspects of challenging the political economy of knowledge co-production.
In diversifying partnerships, local contexts and the heterogeneity of universities need to be appreciated. There are three different types of universities – research intensive, teaching focused and those that are more engaged with the world and societal issues. These different types of universities are embedded into local contexts differently. Understanding these differences has implications for partnering and for accountability. Given these differences, the workshop participants raised the question: ‘Can we even talk of “the New African Urban University” as a singular concept, given its rhizomatic nature, located in concentrated zones of political contestation?’ The institutional contexts of different African universities were appreciated as having a direct relationship to their ability to function as urban institutions.
The process of knowledge production shifts the focus beyond methods, to home in on strategies and tactics for knowledge mobilisation. A key objective of transdisciplinary partnerships is to challenge and address epistemic injustice by fostering knowledge democracy and legitimacy across partners. By creating third spaces for engagement that give voice to the informal and insurgent, co-production holds a revolutionary role in reshaping methods and practices. To succeed, new research tactics are required, including knowing when to work together, when to work apart and when to work under the radar. This process of asymmetric reciprocity has been shown to be of tactical significance in fostering transformative change (Patel, 2022). In creating spaces for imagination and alternate epistemologies, tensions emerge in the relationship between practice and theory when hustling, invisibility and operating under the radar are tactical strategies. The workshop participants converged on the view that epistemic justice and intersectionality are critical to understanding co-production, and what it could and should mean. Tracking moments of epistemic closure and opening were identified as key inquiries to understand the potential for shifts in institutional systems that marginalise the contribution of African universities.
The workshop highlighted the shifting role of academics to that of active intermediaries in knowledge co-production, bridging between and across different knowledge domains. The tension in this shift in role is that institutional systems are not set up for this level of epistemic, financial and cultural bridging. As such, academics must play roles that stretch beyond the university, and within their universities as activists to defend the space and these practices. Getting beyond knowledge hierarchies requires knowledge co-production to sit alongside other knowledge types and methods, and a critical awareness (by researchers and systems of reward and incentives) if the implications for outcomes in choosing different knowledge types and partners. The SDGs have catapulted urban research into orbits that focus on urban science, big data and digital technologies. Understanding these knowledge hierarchies and how they intersect, while leveraging them individually and collectively to shape sustainable urban transitions in Africa is the role of the New African Urban University.
Urban Competencies
Taking its lead from the Project Primer (New African Urban University, 2021), the focus for the Urban Competencies4 workshop was originally framed to explore teaching practices and content on African cities and, specifically, how this related to the sustainable cities and transdisciplinary agendas. As captured in the Workshop Synthesis report (New African Urban University, 2022), we sought to understand the contribution of the New African Urban University to pedagogy and curriculum in developing skills to support urban change. Developing the skills and competencies of the next generation of scholars and urban influences is a central imperative of universities. The data and knowledge requirements of the SDGs provide an opening for the kinds of methodological and analytical skills that students require. Furthermore, the distinctiveness of theory and practice shaping urban transitions in African cities underscores the need to decolonise the curriculum in ways that reflect contextual relevance and challenge universalised assumptions. Curriculum and new pedagogic modes emerging through partnering beyond the academy were shown to be of relevance for changing the landscape of practice and research. Therefore, in addition to the hard skills required to fill urban knowledge and data gaps, skills development for transdisciplinary engagement must access different teaching and learning cultures, mindsets and approaches from those within and outside the university. It was found that identifying the range of soft skills needed for effective partnership building is more challenging to identify and integrate into curricula. The United Nations Education for Sustainable Development initiative recognises the significance of values and attitudes to enable a more just and sustainable society for all. In building relevant curricula and pedagogies to support urban transformations, questions that were addressed included: what is it that students need to know, learn and practice to build the New African Urban University? How is this delivered, and by whom? What does ‘transdisciplinary’ mean for teaching-led research and research-led teaching?
Participants problematised the notion of ‘competency’, by raised questions including: What does it mean to be competent to address urban sustainability challenges? Who holds competency? How is it recognised? How is it deployed? These questions cast the light on both who does the teaching, what skills they have, where teaching happens, as well as the skills and knowledge students come with, and leave universities with. A key departure point here included the acknowledgement that there is already a significant field of information available which deals with African Cities and Education. A deep engagement with these resources can assist in articulating what ‘competency’ means in African universities; map the taxonomies and lexicons embedded in the curriculum and pedagogy space; and documenting local and decolonially framed teaching approaches from Africa.
It was recognised that the teaching or theory at African universities remains euro-centric, with slippages between the syllabus and lived realities. While research is directly related to generating decolonial, place-based material for teaching, educators who can draw on their own lived experience and that of their students are valued. Who are brought into the classroom as ‘experts’ and where the classroom moves (through field engagement) are key to building relevant, actionable and transformative curricula. Given the varied nature of African cities (even within national borders), as well as their rapidly changing nature, the ability of syllabi and content to be delivered in ways that are responsive to change is required. This agility requires a break with rigid structures as well as imagination and diverse methods. Being able to imagine and think about alternate futures, and to consider the potential for change must be part of the competencies of the New African Urban University.
In addition to the who and where of relevant and responsive pedagogy, taxonomies and lexicons of language and framing of urban challenges too must be engaged. Terminology and basic concepts embedded in teaching for sustainability transitions, including sustainability and understandings and engagements with time and futures do not translate in many African languages and sensibilities. When words/terms do not translate, visual methods including art, drama, music and comedy could be used as alternate methods in teaching. While the use of English as the dominant language has limitations for multicultural and multi-ethnic students, the diverse backgrounds of students must also be reflected in the examples and experiences being represented in the classroom. Drawing on ‘street-languages’ and non-verbal languages (tactics) must form part of the restructuring of the urban lexicon. Furthermore, drawing on diverse lived experiences must be a conscious endeavour. All too often, lived experience is represented as the lives of the poor and marginalised; however, talking about the middle classes and their role in perpetuating inequalities in infrastructural distribution is largely absent. Unsettling privilege and making students think differently about their own circumstances is an important part of building empathic and caring graduates who question the systemic nature of inequality.
Overall, African cities display traceable threads (and even scars) of their colonial histories. The fixation with order in space as imposed through colonial influences has erased a history of precolonial planning of African settlements. Exploring the potential of imagining and building futures that are a hybrid between pre-existing planning logics with colonial and postcolonial sensibilities is a role of the curriculum of the New African Urban University. Building competencies to integrate these different temporal frames has implications for who new approaches to city building is aimed at. Who has rights to the city, and questions of inclusion and justice in creating cities that provide benefits for all who live in them, including people who occupy cities on a temporary basis requires approaches that look beyond infrastructures and architectures of cities, to pay careful attention to the human dimensions that shape African cities. Competencies that heighten awareness about the social dimensions of cities must be foregrounded.
Towards a transformative urban agenda: the gaps
The three workshops confirmed that despite the success of partnering across disciplines and between different knowledge partners, the transformative potential of African universities as agents of urban change is hampered by untransformed knowledge systems. The distinctiveness of urban processes and dynamics in African cities requires alternate approaches to theory and practice in the advancement of sustainable and just urban futures. Ensuring that universities respond with relevance to this imperative requires reorientations in research, pedagogy and ways of partnering (within and beyond academia) to ensure that they are fit for purpose. Based on the collective experience of the network, four gaps in our collective knowledge of African universities as agents of urban change were identified, with a focus on: the effectiveness and impact of universities in shaping urban change in African cities; how time- and funding-bound transdisciplinary urban projects can have long-term impact; the role of curriculum and pedagogy in developing skills to support urban change; and the systems changes required at universities to support engaged scholarship for sustainable and just transitions. These are detailed in the Project Primer (New African Urban University, 2021), and summarised here.
Understanding the effectiveness and impact of universities in shaping urban change
While academics have had a long-standing role in informing and shaping urban change in African cities, little is documented about how African universities are leveraging their role(s) in sustainable urban change. Strategic planning interventions in postcolonial and post-apartheid cities have been largely driven by knowledge and expertise from urbanists and planners based at universities, who respond as consultants to calls for capacity strengthening across subnational and national governments.
Similarly, academics have supported non-governmental organisations and community outreach structures in devising alternative solutions to municipal service delivery. Nonetheless, little is known about the spread of interventions being addressed through urban research, and what gaps might exist (both sectoral and geographical: the what and the where). Networks of African urban researchers have provided evidence that there are a range of strategies and interventions that are being introduced; however, this is being done unevenly at different universities and with varying levels of effectiveness.
Understanding how time- and funding-bound transdisciplinary urban projects can have long-term impact and can be upscaled
As the significance of urban Africa for global environment and development systems becomes clearer, the number of funding programmes to support transdisciplinary research on and in African cities is increasing. These interventions are a significant opportunity for challenging colonial and imperialist histories of infrastructure domination. While there are a growing number of transdisciplinary research projects across African cities, the challenge of ensuring long-term impact beyond project cycles is a perennial threat. While momentum is gathering around transdisciplinary research, our understanding of the range of partnership and knowledge co-production engagements is limited. Deeper engagement with the nodes of intersection that can bring together different actors and expand the range of collaborations between university researchers, policy makers and societal actors in driving sustainable urban development are needed.
Similarly, identifying opportunities to leverage the role of time- and funding-bound projects in delivering impact and fostering long-term change is limited. While project timelines are a more obvious and tangible variable, we have limited understanding of what it means, or could mean, in African cities where questions of relevance, justice and ‘who benefits’ are highly contested. Identifying points of leverage for universities to support upscaling and maximising impact based on local experimentation are critical for building the credibility of transdisciplinary and engaged research.
Understanding the role of curriculum and pedagogy in developing skills to support urban change
Developing the skills and competencies of the next generation of scholars and urban influences is a central imperative of universities. The data and knowledge requirements of the SDGs provide an opening for the kinds of methodological and analytical skills that students require. However, the distinctiveness of theory and practice shaping urban transitions in African cities underscores the need to decolonise the curriculum in ways that reflect contextual relevance and challenge universalised assumptions.
Curriculum and new pedagogic modes are required to change the landscape of practice and research. In addition to the hard skills required to fill urban knowledge and data gaps, skills development for transdisciplinary engagement must access different teaching and learning cultures, mindsets and approaches from those within and outside the university. Identifying the range of soft skills needed for effective partnership building is more challenging to identify and integrate into the curricula.
Understanding systems changes required at universities to support engaged scholarship for sustainable and just urban transitions
While there is consensus on the key role of universities in supporting urban transitions at a strategic level, our understanding of the kinds of structural changes that are required to deliver on this intent are limited. For example, the extent of systems changes required to support working across disciplines and beyond the university is not clear. Evidence shows that an explicit focus on engaged scholarship at a strategic level is rare at African universities. African researchers face several constraints, including factors ranging from the lack of flexibility in finance systems to the systems of reward and incentives surrounding publications and promotions, which are traditionally premised on disciplinary depth and contribution. It is not yet clear how the competencies required for engaged scholarship – such as the building of relationships with communities, policy engagements and write-ups – will be integrated into the quality assurance mechanisms for graduate students and university human resources.
Conclusion
Making cities inclusive, safe, sustainable and resilient for all who live in them cannot be achieved through global policies enacted by local government alone addressing the global social challenges of our times, including the climate emergency, deepening inequalities, conflict, economic and ecological collapse, among others. These intersecting polycrises converge in cities, having a direct bearing on the realisation of SDG 11. Addressing the global urban crisis as an epistemic challenge that hinges on leveraging the role of African universities in urban change requires an engagement with the politics of the larger knowledge ecosystem whose practices and norms are largely determined by Northern-driven assumptions about relevance and the application of knowledge. The New African Urban University network provided an opportunity to challenge the dominance of certain forms of knowledge that stem from colonial histories on the continent and consider the mode complex nature of the contemporary African academy.
By advancing the idea of the New African Urban University, the network demonstrated that the limited visibility of urban theory and practice emerging from Africa is not due to a lack of scholarship and practice, but rather that there are insufficient spaces to give voice to the distinctive processes and dynamics or urban change in African cities. While shifts in theory and practice were shown to require structural changes at universities, the need for shifts in world views held by partnering Northern universities and assumptions held in the wider knowledge ecosystem (including publishing and funding practices) about epistemic relevance in African cities were identified as key interventions required to shift the balance of power that perpetuate and reinforce the blind spots and knowledge hegemonies undermining the potential of the New African Urban University.
In shaping a transformative agenda based on a series of workshops, the findings are not novel. The agenda provides a useful set of guiding principles that can simultaneously form the basis of further research; while providing a useful set of questions to shape partnerships going forward. The significance of the deliberations of the network was the coming together of African and Global North universities, moving beyond simple binary distinctions to take collective responsibility for fostering a more global and inclusive understanding of systems changes required. The endeavour of engaging openly and honestly with scalar and epistemic tensions that beset partnerships facilitated the removal of blind spots through difficult conversations and shared learning. This process of ‘staying with the trouble’ (Haraway, 2016), assisted the network to move towards full spectrum seeing and responding that brought into plain sight interconnections and their consequences, for one another, for the academic project, and for cities everywhere.
Notes
‘The New African Urban University: Building partnerships to realise the promise and potential of sustainable urban transformations’ was funded by the Research Development Fund of the Worldwide Universities Network: https://wun.ac.uk/wun/research/view/the-new-african-urban-university-building-partnerships-to-realise-the-promise-and-potential-of-sustainable-urban-transformations/. The project was led by the author at the University of Cape Town, with a WUN team based at the Universities of Bristol, Sheffield, Makerere, Nairobi and Northwestern Australia. External partners included the Universities of Nairobi and Bergen, and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana.
The Urban Research working group was led by AbdouMaliq Simone (University of Sheffield) and Shuaib Lwasa (University of Makerere), with team members including Isaac Arthur (University of Ghana), Isabelle Adoderin (University of Bristol), Paula Meth (University of Sheffield), Richard Vokes (University of Western Australia), Tom Goodfellow (University of Sheffield), Andrew Tucker (University of Cape Town) and Rabiu Asante (University of Ghana).
The Urban Knowledge working group was led by Beth Perry (University of Sheffield) and Kareem Buyana (University of Makerere), with team members including Gerald Yiran (University of Ghana), Vanesa Castan Broto (University of Sheffield), Elvin Nyukuri (University of Nairobi), Katsia Paulavets (International Science Council), Eunice Abbey (University of Ghana) and Warren Smit (University of Cape Town).
The Urban Competencies working group was led by Dan Inkoom and Linda Robson (University of Western Australia) with team members including Austin Ablo (University of Ghana), James Duminy (University of Bristol), Susan Parnell (University of Bristol), Aba Crentsill (University of Ghana) and George Owusu (University of Ghana).
Funding
‘The New African Urban University: Building partnerships to realise the promise and potential of sustainable urban transformations’ was funded by the Research Development Fund of the Worldwide Universities Network.
Acknowledgements
This article would not have been possible without the generous and insightful engagements with the New African Urban University partners. Views and positions reflected here are those of the collective. As the author of this article, my own views on the role of universities in urban change have also been infused and enhanced through engagement with another network of scholars engaged with the Public Role of Universities (led by the vice Dean of Internationalisation at The Barlett, University College London).
Supplementary data
The New African Urban University website can be accessed at: https://sites.google.com/view/thenewafricanurbanuniversity/home.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
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