The Politics Of Housing In Post Colonial Africa

Housing matters, no matter when or where. This volume of collected essays on housing in colonial and postcolonial Africa seeks to elaborate the how and the why. Housing is much more than a living everyday practice. It unfolds in its disparate dimensions of time, space and agency. Context dependent, it acquires diverse, often ambivalent, meanings. Housing can be a promise, an unfulfilled dream, a tool of self- and class-assertion, a negotiation process, or a means to achieve other ends. Our focus lies in analyzing housing in its multifacetedness, be it a lens to offer insights into complex processes that shape societies; be it a tool of empire to exercise control over private relations of inhabitants; or be it a means to create good, obedient and productive citizens. Contributions to this volume range from the field of history, to architecture and urban planning, African Studies, linguistics, and literature. The individual case studies home in on specific aspects and dimensions of housing and seek to bring them into dialogue with each other. By doing so, the volume aims to add to the vibrant academic debate on studying urban practices and their significance for current social change.

Housing matters, no matter when or where. This volume of collected essays on housing in colonial and postcolonial Africa seeks to elaborate the how and the why. Housing is much more than a living everyday practice. It unfolds in its disparate dimensions of time, space and agency. Context dependent, it acquires diverse, often ambivalent, meanings. Housing can be a promise, an unfulfilled dream, a tool of self- and class-assertion, a negotiation process, or a means to achieve other ends. Our focus lies in analyzing housing in its multifacetedness, be it a lens to offer insights into complex processes that shape societies; be it a tool of empire to exercise control over private relations of inhabitants; or be it a means to create good, obedient and productive citizens. Contributions to this volume range from the field of history, to architecture and urban planning, African Studies, linguistics, and literature. The individual case studies home in on specific aspects and dimensions of housing and seek to bring them into dialogue with each other. By doing so, the volume aims to add to the vibrant academic debate on studying urban practices and their significance for current social change.

The study of Africa arouses many passions and prejudices which are the subject of this book. This book seeks to examine the hegemonic role that African studies has played in the invention of Africanism. Politics within Kenya remains entrapped by Western constructions of institutions and the practice of politics. The post-colonial period is linked inextricably to the colonial period. Kenya's political, economic, social and cultural framework has been and continues to be dominated by the colonial legacy. The discussion of Africanism earlier suggests that the decolonisation process did not achieve liberation fully, except in the narrowest of political terms. Rather, the West continued its dominance by more subtle means which has permeated the very imagination of the colonised. It is this continuing colonisation of the imagination which dominates the political scene. The ever increasing hegemonic role of donor agencies and donor countries, under the guise of structural adjustment programmes, ensures that countries such as Kenya become hostage to the latest manifestation of Africanism.

The problems of providing affordable and adequate housing in Sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on the urban experience in Ghana.

This groundbreaking book makes sense of the complexities and dynamics of post-colonial politics, illustrating how post-colonial theory has marginalised a huge part of its constituency, namely Africa. Politics and Post-Colonial Theory traces how African identity has been constituted and reconstituted by examining issues such as: * negritude * the rise of nationalism * decolonisation. The book also questions how helpful post-colonial analysis can be in understanding the complexities which define institutions including: * the nation-state * civil society * human rights * citizenship. Politics and Post-colonial Theory bravely breaks down disciplinary boundaries. Its radical vision will be essential reading for all those engaged in Politics, post-colonial studies and African studies.

This open access book utilizes new data to thoroughly analyze the main factors currently shaping the African housing market. Some of these factors include the supply and demand for housing finance, land tenure security issues, construction cost conundrum, infrastructure provision, and low-cost housing alternatives. Through detailed analysis, the authors investigate the political economy surrounding the continent’s housing market and the constraints that behind-the-scenes policy makers need to address in their attempts to provide affordable housing for the majority in need. With Africa’s urban population growing rapidly, this study highlights how broad demographic shifts and rapid urbanization are placing enormous pressure on the limited infrastructure in many cities and stretching the economic and social fabric of municipalities to their breaking point. But beyond providing a snapshot of the present conditions of the African housing market, the book offers recommendations and actionable measures for policy makers and other stakeholders on how best to provide affordable housing and alleviate Africa’s housing deficit. This work will be of particular interest to practitioners, non-governmental organizations, private sector actors, students and researchers of economic policy, international development, and urban development.

"This book examines the African home as a key site of struggle in the making of modern KwaZulu-Natal, a South African province that instantiates in extreme form many of the transformations that shaped the colonial world. Its essays explore major themes in African and global history, including the colonial manipulation of kinship and the exploitation of labour, modernist practices of social engineering and the changes wrought within intimate relationships by post-industrial decline. Ranging from the rural to the urban and the pre-colonial era to the presidency of Jacob Zuma, this volume emphasises the affective and ideological dimensions of ikhaya. It offers insight into how the home, which embodies both modernist aspirations and nostalgic longings for the past, has become the touchstone for popular discontent and political activism in recent decades. Just as colonialism in South Africa was a colonialism of the home, so too politics in South Africa are a politics of the home."--Back cover.