Outsourced Urban Futures

The Dominance of Foreign Firms in African Master Planning and its Implications for Sustainable Urban Development

In our inaugural Inclusive Cities Catalyst blog, we look at the extent to which foreign suppliers are predominantly the preferred choice for African cities' master plans, and what implications this has for inclusive urban development, and how it shapes perceptions of urban futures in Africa:

Master plans are used to set a guiding vision for development in a city or state. This guiding vision is ideally grounded in community goals and aspirations for a city within a specific time frame. Although master-planners are tasked with developing a plan, they often do not have the responsibility for executing a plan nor clear implementation of objectives. Master plan can take many forms, as there is no standard or consensus about what they should contain.

Master plans thus often consist of themes with underlying visions of urban futures, informed by shiny imaginations of what a “world-class city” should look like. While many master plans fail to engage the complexity of cities and the multiple overlapping sub themes that constitute urban life, and tend to offer generalised (rather than granular, and actionable) takeaways, they do play in important role in shaping future urban development trajectories according to a particular vision of the future of a city.

Many American and European cities have developed master plans to plan urban futures with varying degrees of success and inclusivity. When it comes to African cities, master plans are seen as critical tools to inform urban planning in the context of challenges such as rapid urbanisation and climate change. African cities are growing at an average annual rate of 4% (twice the global average according to UN-Habitat), and together with Asian cities, African cities will account for 90% of global urban growth from now until 2050. A crucial challenge many African cities have to address is a colonial legacy of urban planning, in which some of the key objectives of planning were domination and extraction. Legacies of spatial inequality but also more nuanced and subtle instrumentalisations of urban design, are difficult to deconstruct. This is particularly true because many African elites often perpetuate colonial planning practices by grounding their urban imaginations in highly exclusive conceptualisations of what a “world-class city” should look like.

Contrary to past urbanisation trajectories in other regions, the growth of cities in Africa is not always accompanied by structural transformation and economic growth (see figure below), which means that the bulk of urban population growth is absorbed by informal settlements. This unprecedentedly rapid and highly unequal trajectory of urbanisation poses unique challenges to policymakers and makes planning even more important and consequential. There is tremendous scope to address crucial issues such as adequate land value capture and domestic resource mobilisation, affordable housing, inclusive transport systems, and the extension of piped water networks though forward-looking planning decisions.

Urbanisation and Economic Growth in East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa

Source: GSMA (2019), Digital Solutions for the Urban Poor adapted from : World Bank (2019), Which Way to Liveable and Productive Cities?: A Road Map for Sub-Saharan Africa

Africa’s rapid urbanisation has also sparked a lot of international interest because of the sheer scale of the challenge and associated commercial opportunities in sectors such as construction, consumer goods, real estate, natural resources, digital connectivity with several experts attempting to estimate the consumer market potential across African cities for their international clients (see Fraym’s Finding the African Consumer or McKinsey’s Winning in Africa’s consumer market). While these opportunities are exciting and can generate significant profits for multinationals, they’re not always associated with making cities more inclusive for low-income urban populations. Another consequence is that some African policymakers prioritise shiny new developments to attract international capital over more substantive investments in long-run urban development. This is exemplified by what Dafe Oputu refers to as “Africa’s Megacity Addiction” with projects such as Eko Atlantic in Lagos being prioritized vis-a-vis improvements to the lives of Lagos’ low-income urban population, which lacks access to basic services, affordable housing, and equality of opportunity. Similarly, in Kinshasa, the recently announced “Ville Kitoko” urban expansion project stands in stark contrast to the living conditions of Kinshasa’s low-income urban population. 

Juxtaposing the “Ville Kitoko Urban Extension Project” with current realities in Kinshasa, where 9,000 tons of untreated garbage accumulated in Kinshasa on a daily basis, or as Kinois would say “Kin La Belle ou Kin La Poubelle” 

As urban development expert Astrid Haas points out, “building new smart cities, in the hope people will follow, may be a higher-risk gamble that most African governments cannot afford.” She also adds that a key objective for proponents of such projects is “leap-frogging economic development and moving Africa’s cities directly into the age of futuristic, technologically advanced, so-called ‘smart cities’.” Of course, it is much easier to buy into blank slate world-class city fantasies than to actually engage in the complex politics of improving basic amenities, or service delivery in cities like Kinshasa, Lagos, or Kampala. Urban fantasies of urban elites and policymakers are affirmed by foreign planning, architecture, and design firms, which have little incentive to engage in the complex challenges facing their clients’ cities. An article by CityMonitor, has pointed out that Subarna Jorung, a Singaporean planning company, is the go-to planner for several African cities. According to Otavio Veras, a Singapore-based researcher, the company “is involved in a range of different projects: from sewage treatment systems in Kenya, passing through capacity improvement of highways in South Africa to the rehabilitation of water dams for power generation in Malawi.” Beyond Suburna, researchers Sylvia Croese and Yohei Miyauchi, point out that Japan is also playing a major role in master planning in Africa through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Recently, JICA has placed a particular focus on urban transportation and infrastructure planning with projects ranging from Abidjan to Dakar, including Lilongwe, Nairobi and Nouakchott. In this visualisation, we show the sheer extent of this outsourced planning process with 21 of African capital master plans that we studied being led by foreign firms. 

African City Master Plans Carried Out by Foreign Firms

Source: Inclusive Cities Catalyst (click the image to view the interactive map)

This detached, and outsourced urban planning process has important implications. Given their post-colonial context, many African countries are embarking on significant nation-building exercises. The process is necessarily generative and includes visions of a best-case scenario, and it cannot be deprioritised for technocratic and international economic development objectives. The significance of statues, monuments, the built environment, spaces for creative expression, museums illustrate that urban planning, and nation-building are deeply linked. In the previously mentioned City Monitor article, Issa Diabaté, a partner in Koffi & Diabaté Group an architecture firm in Abidjan, laments that instead that most African governments “bypass much of the creativity that surrounds them.” Empowering local planners and architects is not only important from a developmental perspective, but also determines whether visions of global urban futures can correspond to local narratives, dreams, ambitions, and fantasies.

From an urban development perspective, plans led by foreign firms often do not sufficiently consider key local policy priorities, local political economies, or the interdependencies between different spheres of governmental authority. They also prioritise signalling “we are modern and we are open for business” to foreign investors over making genuine attempts to make cities more liveable. As such, some plans are mere marketing exercises that are not meant to be realised in earnest.

Another challenge is lack of transparency. Many master plans are never fully made public, which means that citizens, local experts, entrepreneurs, innovators, or political opposition members have little scope to scrutinise them. This means that many master plans do not receive vital feedback on issues such as feasibility, or community buy-in, and prevents a more iterative, focused, and localised approach to urban planning. Lacking transparency also characterises the tender process through which master plans are commissioned, as contract terms with selected master plan suppliers are often difficult to find or not made public. The lack of transparency in tender processes puts new local suppliers at a disadvantage and eschews opportunity to develop local capacity. Historically, public tender has been  a key component of East Asian development states’ strategy to build globally competitive domestic capacity.  Surbana Jurong, the Singaporean firm contracted for the majority of master plans began as  the Building and Development Division in Singapore's Housing and Development Board. Instead of simply making Singapore’s strategy more successful by outsourcing master plans to Subarna, African governments should invest in local expertise and build local centres of excellence.

Lacking transparency not only leads to lacking inclusion, but also means it is difficult to hold city governments accountable with regards to implementation. There are often no public key performance indicators (KPIs), risk assessments, implementation stages, or clearly defined objectives. It is great to know that a city aspires to become a tech hub, or aspires to be “green” or “sustainable” in the future, but beyond these buzzwords, how does it plan to achieve these objectives, and is it feasible? 

Even when plans do include KPIs, they often do not engage with local policy processes, implementation capabilities, and political priorities. As research from the New York University Marron Institute shows, many of the city plans from across the continent “almost never get implemented.” Many plans are out of touch vis-a-vis the absorption capacity and implementation capabilities of host governments. This makes prioritisation, sequencing, and coordination based on domestic political priorities really challenging. They also do not appreciate the transformative potential of community buy-in, as civil society organisations and interest groups can be key drivers and partners of successful adoption and implementation leading a city as a whole to internalise the objectives and priorities of the plan. This is exemplified by Broadway Maylan’s sleek Luanda Master Plan. The plan not only fails to engage in local urban policy making processes, or pays attention to the socioeconomic context of Luanda, one of the most unequal cities in the world, but with the political backing of a faction in Angola’s political elite, it allegedly also resulted in the bulldozing of an informal settlement, was home to a thriving fishing community of 3,000 families. What for? While the initial Marginal da Corimba plan envisaged luxury homes, a new fishing port, commercial districts and parks (not necessarily the most vital needs of Luanda from an urban development perspective), Angola’s new president ended up cancelling the project.

While cities in the West, or in resource-rich Middle Eastern countries, may have the luxury to spend public funds on ill-conceived master plans, African cities do not. According to Guillaume Josse from Think Tank Resources, French municipalities have budgets of three to four thousand euros per resident per year. The corresponding amounts in African cities are a fraction of that with Dakar’s annual budget accounting for 100 euros per resident, Cotonou’s budget coming at 18 euros per resident, and Kinshasa’s budget at just two to three euros per resident! The scarcity of public funds has two important implications for city master plans carried out by foreign suppliers. Firstly, master plans carried out by foreign suppliers often fail to recognise the fiscal realities of African city governments, and how these feed in to policy trade-offs and local political economies. Many plans propose public funds to enable flashy real estate developments with little consideration for the developmental returns associated with the use of public funds. Secondly, master plans carried out by prominent foreign suppliers can be extremely costly. Though donors sometimes contribute to some of these costs, such as master plan can entail a significant expense for an African municipality. Ultimately, urban development in Africa is too important for African city governments to waste scarce public funds on master-plan world-class city marketing exercises, which are vague, bypass politics, and do not centre the needs of the majority of the urban population.

Making cities work for everyone, and ensuring that rapid urbanisation results in wealth creation and economic development, will be one of the most important development challenges facing African cities in the coming decades. While it is critical for African cities to draw on international expertise, ideas, and best practices, it is vital for this engagement to reflect critically about how past engagements have failed to contribute to sustainable urban development in order to actually address the long-term challenges African cities face. Giving local stakeholders a more prominent role in planning will also ensure that no region or school of thought has a monopoly on conceptualisations of modernity, and that inclusive urban futures can be rooted in different forms, traditions, and architectural practices.

Stay tuned for more Inclusive Cities Catalyst posts, and fill out this survey if you know about other master plan projects in Africa executed by foreign suppliers to complement our mapping database. In the coming months, we’ll be sharing more posts related to the importance of data systems to urban development, and how urban planning practices can be more participatory and inclusive of local stakeholders.