Green Structural Adjustment in African Cities

Cities play a major role in climate change mitigation. African cities are scripted as the least prepared to deal with climate change, lacking the governance structures and finances to bring about infrastructural resilience independently. Thus, various international actors are seeking to harness private investment in green and smart infrastructure, framed as a ‘win-win’ situation that would open up new investment frontiers for ‘stagnant Northern capital’ and allow African cities to close the infrastructure gap.

This practice has been criticised as ‘Green Structural Adjustment’ (GSA), as it imposes conditionalities designed to make cities ready for foreign investment through municipal governance reforms, environmental data production, and administrative capacity building (Bigger and Webber, 2021: 37). However, we know little about how GSA unfolds outside the boardrooms of donors like the World Bank. While their focus may be on making cities ‘investable’, such infrastructural investment may also create interstitial spaces for action and agency. Exploring the real-life effects and possibilities of GSA sketches out a multi-level and interdisciplinary research agenda in response to urgent development challenges.

Our project explores these dynamics through trans-scalar research in economic hubs in Kenya, Cameroon and Mozambique; exploring how bi-lateral and multilateral organizations realize urban infrastructure investments in the name of ‘resilience’, and how communities are affected by and respond to the deployment of such infrastructure.