Urbanization, Legacies of Elite Capture, and Multi-Dimensional Exclusions in Ghana: Towards Just Housing and Neighborhood Policies in African Cities

Abstract

Persisting housing challenges in Africa’s cities are often theorized as driven by rapid demographic expansion outstripping housing supply or by the urbanization of poverty which puts the cost of adequate and serviced housing beyond the reach of many urban dwellers. This theorization links the problem of inadequate supply and low quality of housing to ahistorical, apolitical factors such as the size and income/poverty characteristics of Africa’s urban population and ignores legacies of elite capture and multi-dimensional exclusions reflected in policies and practices. Yet these policies and practices shape urban governance and who gains access to land, housing finance and ultimately serviced housing and neighborhoods. Drawing on a review of policies, media sources and literature on housing in Ghana and taking a critical postcolonial institutional theoretic approach, we argue that a more complete conceptualization of Africa’s urban housing crises should involve a close look at the regressive historical patterns of urban investments and persisting elite biases in institutions managing land, finance and housing. This re-framing of housing problems creates a more holistic framework and better articulates the unjust foundations of regressive and exclusionary policies and practices. Further, it highlights elite capture and multi-dimensional exclusions that perpetuate current housing and service failure in African cities. An explicit focus on power, exclusion and injustice is necessary to formulate and advocate alternative policies that are more likely to produce inclusive livable housing and neighborhoods. These include moratoriums on evictions, expanded slum upgrading, progressive property and land taxation, more inclusive planning systems, better regulation of rental housing and improved delivery of land and finance for transit oriented affordable public and rental housing.