Localizing the SDGs in African Cities

This volume brings together a unique set of interventions from a variety of contributors to bridge the gap between research and policy with a distinct focus on Africa, drawing on work conducted as part of multiple interconnected research projects and networks on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and global policy implementation in African cities. Through the framework of the SDGs, and in particular Goal 11, the book aims to contribute to generating new knowledge about approaches to SDG localization that are grounded in complex and diverse local contexts, needs and realities, integrated perspectives and collaborative research. 

The volume draws together contributions from urban experts from different professional and disciplinary backgrounds, ranging from the fields of governance, planning, data, sustainability, health and finance, to provide critical insight into the current dynamics, actors, blind spots, constraints and also good practices and opportunities for realizing the SDGs in Africa. Readers will gain detailed and informed insight into the African experience of SDG localization, monitoring and implementation based on multiple case studies, and will learn of the practices needed to accelerate action towards achieving the SDGs in urban contexts. This book will be of interest to researchers and planners focusing on SDGs implementation in Africa, as well as government organizations, development practitioners and students committed to long-term, inclusive sustainable and participatory development.

This is an open access book.

Chapters 1, 3, 6, 8, 11 and 14 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Dr. Sylvia Croese is a Senior Researcher at the South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning at the School of Architecture and Planning of the University of the Witwatersrand and Research Associate with the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town. She has conducted extensive research on urban politics, policy and governance in African cities through the lens of housing, land, urban infrastructure and mobility. This research is premised on the need for new forms of knowledge that bridge the divide between academic research and (global) urban policy by involving different actors in society through inter- and trans-disciplinary research methods of co-production. She has published widely on this work in major international journals, as well as two co-edited books: Refractions of the National, the Popular and the Global in African Cities (African Minds, 2021) and Reframing the Urban Challenge in Africa: Knowledge Co-production from the South (Routledge, 2021).

Prof. Susan Parnell is a Professor in the School of Geography at the University of Bristol and Emeritus Professor at the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town. She has held previous academic positions and Fellowships at University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University College London (UCL) and London School of Economics (LSE) in the United Kingdom. She has been actively involved in local, national and global urban policy debates around the Sustainable Development Goals and is an advocate for better science policy engagement on cities. She is the author of numerous peer-reviewed publications that document how cities, past and present, respond to policy change. Her most recent books include the co-authored Building a Capable State: Service Delivery in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Zed, 2017) and the co-edited Urban Planet: Knowledge towards Sustainable Cities (Cambridge, 2018).