African Urbanisms: Critical Engagements, Transformative Practices, Alternative Futures

The conference brings together work at different scales, exploring urbanisation experiences.

The Wits-TUB-UNILAG Urban Lab based the school of Architecture and Planning, Wits University, is hosting the African Urbanism Conference on the 23^rd-26^th of October 2024. The conference aims at bringing together work at different scales, exploring urbanisation experiences. This may range from contributions on local phenomena and challenges, to work exploring experiences shared across various cities on the continent and to research on the ways in which African urbanisms influence and/or are impacted by the world beyond the continent.  It also  aims to seek transformative practices that present alternatives to “business as usual” urban development, and to imagine alternative urban futures.

There are three themes in the conference: Critical Engagements, Transformative Practices, Alternative Futures.

• Critical Engagements: The conference endeavours to bring together critical reflections on hegemonic norms, concepts and ways of thinking that have dominated global and African (urban) development policies and agendas in the recent decades. By and large, these have not delivered the promised outcomes for the majority of urban residents or proved to be impossible to implement at the local level. Participants in this theme are expected to make contributions that challenge, deconstruct and disrupt dominant assumptions as well as the concepts and buzzwords that have become empty signifiers in recent decades. This theme aims for reflections from a broad range of in everyday experiences from African cities which may include economic practices, housing, social and cultural networks, ways of moving and infrastructural assemblages amongst others.
• Transformative Practices: Participants will make contributions that explore local community-based approaches and grassroot activism and experimental approaches of local governments attentive to issues of socio-spatial and environmental justice. This theme of conference also aims to explore the role of higher education and knowledge production in enabling, imagining and training for transformative practices through reflecting on research agendas, pedagogies and curriculum development with linkages to urban development practice.
• Alternative Futures: This conference theme calls for a discussion of African urban futures that goes beyond those narratives and is attentive to specific local conditions, relationships, histories, memories and allows for the development of counter-imaginations. This theme also invites utopian speculation about the future of African cities that allows radical difference to be imagined, particularly in terms of justice, equality and structures of solidarity and resilience. It also encourages debates on new concepts and vocabularies and alternative epistemologies through which to formulate different futures for African cities.

The conference programme is as follows:

• October 23: Registration: 16:00-17:00. Opening keynote (17:00-18:30) by Prof Shuaib Lwasa (ISS, Erasmus University Rotterdam), Opening reception (18:30-20:00)
• October 24-25: Thematic sessions and plenary events (9:00-16:45), Book Launch (24 Oct:17:00-18:00), Closing event (25 Oct:1 7:00-18:00)
• October 26: Fieldtrip (9:00-14:00)

The scientific committee includes:

Prof Mfaniseni Sihlongonyane (Wits University)

Prof Marie Huchzermeyer (Wits University)

Prof Philipp Misselwitz (TU Berlin)

Prof Taibat Lawanson (University of Lagos)

Dr Haruna Jimoh (University of Lagos)

Dr Nadine Appelhans (TU Berlin)

Dr Emmanuel Busayo (Wits University)

Lucas Elsner (TU Berlin)

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