Peri-urban areas present planning challenges of contemporary urbanisation and settlements in the Global South. Studies about peri-urban area tend to focus upon the Global North and Asia, while little has been done on sub-Saharan Africa. Available research in sub-Saharan Africa is largely confined to studying economic forces driving periurbanisation, land markets and informality. Few have explicitly examined the policy forces driving it. This article analyses the urbanisation and policy forces driving periurbanisation in Hawassa, Ethiopia. It scrutinises the city’s urbanisation policy and the nation’s land policy to find out how and why they are linked with the city’s periurbanisation processes. The analyses utilises primary data collected through household surveys, field observations and key informant interviews, which are complemented by secondary data from national legal and policy documents, and regional and city administration reports. The findings show that Hawassa’s periurbanisation is driven by policy forces emanating from annexation-based rapid urbanisation and the loopholes in the nation’s land policy.

Taxi drivers in Hawassa, Ethiopia, have come into conflict with government administrators over the strict regulation of their three‐wheeled motorcycle taxis, known as Bajaj. Their conflict with the government is best conceptualized not through a state‐market binary but in relation to competing moral discourses concerning modernity, reciprocity, and the right to a livelihood. Such discourses are mediated by the particular characteristics of the Bajaj, an inexpensive, flexible, and labor‐dependent transportation technology. These discourses have emerged in a context in which urban Ethiopians and their social networks act as the infrastructure that enables cities to function. The encounter between these social networks and vital technologies such as the Bajaj is fundamental to the politics of infrastructure.

This article examines the relationship between the politics of ethnicity and road construction in Hawassa, Ethiopia. The Ethiopian state has recently invested unprecedented amounts of money in the construction of urban roads. These roads both undermine and reinforce longstanding ethnic hierarchies within Ethiopian cities. Contrary to the image promoted by the state of harmony among residents of different ethnic backgrounds, our research revealed a great deal of tension, particularly concerning the distribution of benefits from state-led infrastructural development. The experiences of residents in rapidly changing neighbourhoods, demonstrate that the benefits of recent road construction are not necessarily distributed according to the policies of the current regime. Instead, historical inequalities interact with contemporary urban development in ways that may actually disrupt the state's vision of unity through diversity. Stratification is built into the city and attempts to reshape the city necessarily interact with recent and long-standing inequalities.

It is often reported that young people in Africa, the Middle East and North African regions are stuck in situations of ‘waithood’, unable to progress to full adulthood. Utilising a series of innovative research methodologies that included life history interviews, surveys, media training and qualitative interviews, the research project’s aim was the co-production of data, in order to delve into the housing and work nexus in two non-central locations in Ethiopia and South Africa. The variety of mixed methods that were used yielded a depth of engagement and allowed the researchers to deepen and nuance ideas of waithood and stuckness. The rich and varied data showed how young people move through moments of stuckness and moments of movement, and that some movement is possible even when faced with difficult and sometimes overwhelming structural challenges. It also demonstrated how co-produced research can assist young people in moving forward and countering the experience of stuckness and waithood.