Advancing African Urban Scholarship: The Impact of the African Urbanities Project

The Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (CAS) at the University of Pretoria has strengthened its role as a leading hub for transnational, collaborative research following the recent publication of Social Dynamics, Volume 50, Issue 3 (2024). The special issue, titled “African Urbanisms and their Hinterlands: Contemporary cultural imaginaries of spatial connections,” represents a significant scholarly outcome of the Mellon Foundation–funded African Urbanities Project, a multi-year initiative led and coordinated by the Centre.

Guest edited by Professor Rebecca Fasselt (University of Pretoria), Dr Femi Eromosele (Utrecht University), and Lwanga Songsore (University of Ghana), the volume showcases research from the project’s scholars that demonstrates how artistic practices, local improvisations, and cultural movements contribute to the formation of African urban identities. Together, these contributions challenge conventional ways of studying African cities by shifting attention away from infrastructure and governance alone, toward the social and cultural processes that make cities vibrant, adaptive, and dynamic. The volume exemplifies interdisciplinary, collaborative research grounded in African intellectual traditions that the Centre fosters. 

Launched in 2019, the African Urbanities Project, formally titled “Entanglement, Mobility and Improvisation: Culture and Arts in Contemporary African Urbanism and its Hinterlands”, examined the interconnectedness of urban and rural spaces on the continent through social, cultural, and economic exchanges. Rather than viewing cities and hinterlands as distinct or opposing spheres, the project explored the entanglements that link them, and how mobility, improvisation, and creative expression shape everyday life in these interconnected spaces. Supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Centre initiated and led a supra-national research network involving the University of Ghana, Makerere University, and the University of Cape Town.

The project was led by then-CAS Director Professor James Ogude as Principal Investigator, working with co-Principal Investigators Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo (University of Ghana), Professor Dominic Dipio (Makerere University), and colleagues at the University of Cape Town, initially the late Professor Harry Garuba, followed by Professor Chris Ouma and later Professor Polo Moji. From its inception, the project placed mentorship and capacity development at its core, with a particular focus on supporting early-career scholars and doctoral researchers across partner institutions.

Over four years, the African Urbanities Project brought together approximately 30 early-career and established scholars from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria, alongside collaborators from the United States and the Netherlands. Through a series of summer institutes, virtual reading groups, and writing workshops, participants engaged in sustained comparative and transdisciplinary dialogue. These activities provided an important platform for emerging scholars to develop new approaches to urban research that foreground the role of culture and the arts in shaping urban and peri-urban life.

For senior scholars, the project created opportunities for renewed intellectual exchange across regions. Professor Ampofo reflected that participation in the project deepened her understanding of African urbanism by revealing “the forward and backward linkages between the so-called urban space and its hinterland in much more complicated and nuanced ways.” These insights, developed through conversations with colleagues from across the continent and beyond, speak directly to the project’s core intellectual contribution.

Beyond intellectual development, the project also fostered leadership, collegiality, and collective responsibility. Professor Dipio observed that “it was not just the intellectual growth of the scholars but their leadership, organisational and team spirit that was developed.” By the third and fourth years of the project, she noted that a strong sense of kinship had emerged, one marked by mutual care and a shared investment in one another’s growth.

This sense of scholarly community is a recurring theme in the project’s second collaborative publication, a reflection book featuring contributions from the scholars involved in the African Urbanities Project. The volume offers a sincere account from the scholars of how this initiative shaped their academic practice and intellectual identity. These reflections illuminate forms of impact that are not visible in academic publications or other traditional outputs and outcomes.

Professor Moji’s reflection captured this ethos. Recalling the 2023 summer institute in Accra, she describes standing at the feet of Kwame Nkrumah’s statue as a moment of profound connection. For her, the African Urbanities Project was one of the “few academic spaces into which one, as an African researcher, truly builds a sense of community that combines intellectual rigour with conviviality and generosity”. She depicted the project’s commitment to nurturing African early-career scholars and creating a Pan-African community as standing on the shoulders of the preceding giants of African scholarship.  

For postdoctoral fellows and doctoral students, the project proved equally transformative. University of Pretoria postdoctoral fellow Dr Agnetta Nyabundi reflected on how the intergenerational engagement challenged her to rethink the role of community in academia. She noted that “walking through what you are studying or researching truly brings to life what reading through the pages of books might not be able to give”

Several doctoral students highlighted the value of the project’s comparative, mobile structure. Dr Tinashe Mutero (University of Pretoria) described the summer schools as an opportunity to encounter African cities he had previously known only through texts, allowing him to see his own city reflected in others across the continent. Makerere University doctoral student and visual artist Stephen Gwoktcho similarly reflected on how reading Kampala through the lenses of other African cities and its citizens will continue to shape his scholarship and artistic practice, fostering a deeper appreciation of African beauty and aesthetics “through the eyes of an African.”

Participants from the University of Ghana emphasised the project’s role in epistemic transformation. Doctoral student Aseye Tamakloe described her journey as one of “learning, unlearning, reimagining, rethinking, and re-reading” how African Urbanities can be studied and practised. Postdoctoral fellow Dr Dorothy Takyaikwaa noted that the institutes strengthened her confidence in identifying and challenging Western-centric hegemonies in scholarship on African cities and their hinterlands.

Mentorship emerged as a defining feature of the project’s impact. University of Cape Town early-career fellow Dr Laura Nkula reflected on the project’s use of the term “elder” rather than “supervisor” or “mentor,” highlighting an intergenerational model of knowledge production rooted in critique, care, and personal investment. This approach, grounded in African intellectual traditions, reinforced the idea of scholarship as a collective and relational endeavour.

From the perspective of senior participating scholars, the project delivered tangible academic outcomes alongside these less visible forms of impact. Professor Eileen Julian (University of Indiana, Bloomington) observed that early-career scholars published articles, advanced dissertations, and enriched their teaching. More importantly, she observed, “they have begun to take part in continental and transcontinental conversations, in which they share insider knowledge and perspectives on the diverse cultures they call home”.

The Social Dynamics special issue stands as tangible documentation of this collective labour. Of the 11 articles in the volume, 10 are authored or co-authored by early-career scholars from the University of Pretoria, the University of Ghana, and Makerere University. Together, they demonstrate how sustained mentorship, collaboration, and institutional support can translate into high-quality, globally visible scholarship.

Taken together, these publications capture the impact of the African Urbanities Project. They reveal how CAS’s leadership enabled not only innovative research on African urbanism but also the cultivation of enduring scholarly communities, the development of future African scholars, and the reimagining of how African knowledge is produced and shared. In doing so, the project reflects the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship’s ambition to be a trusted convenor of Pan-African research collaborations and a catalyst for transformative scholarship on the continent.

The complete Social Dynamics special issue (Vol. 50, No. 3) is available via the Taylor and Francis Online platform. You can read the digital version of the Reflections on the Summer Institutions book below.