Search

Smart cities are becoming a popular urban development strategy to address complex and multiple challenges confronting cities globally, including in Africa. Using the 3RC framework, this paper critically analyses smart cities using experiences from Nairobi (Kenya), Johannesburg (South Africa), Lagos (Nigeria), Kigali (Rwanda) and Casablanca (Morocco). Are smart cities a panacea to Africa's quest for sustainable urbanization? Our analyses demonstrate that, if carefully planned and implemented, smart city interventions have the potential to transform the ways African cities are planned, managed, and governed. At the same time, smart city interventions in Africa are being implemented in contexts characterized by socio-economic inequalities, chaotic transport systems and massive governance failures among other challenges. We demonstrate that if ineffectively deployed, smart urban technologies might deepen existing inequalities and amplify spatial exclusion through privatization and marketization of urban space. Therefore, the adoption of smart city ideas in Africa must be rooted in contextual realities and properly calibrated to create urban spaces that are sustainable and inclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This account uses performance and critical analysis to investigate the entangled histories and multidirectional memories that entwine African colonialism and the Holocaust in Santa's Story by Aviva Pelham. The paper spotlights the intersections between the memory of the Holocaust and colonial Africa by focussing on the memory of women survivors and children of survivors on the African continent. Drawing on Marianne Hirsch's notion of 'postmemory' the paper interrogates the gendered intergenerational transmission of Holocaust and colonial memory through performance to address three interrelated concerns. First it responds to the limited scope of theatre and performance work produced and staged in Africa and elsewhere that engage with the memory and experience of Holocaust survivors on the African continent. Secondly this account responds to the dearth in critical commentary about the performance works created about women Holocaust survivors. Lastly, this dearth extends to creative works by Holocaust survivors' children born and raised on the African continent who explore what it means to 'perform' as their parents on the world stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of Africa-related initiatives have emerged in the 4 years since U.K. prime minister Tony Blair's New Labour government assumed power. Many of them are welcome, suggesting a dynamic and different approach compared to the ad hoc methods of the past. Formulation of an Africa policy is best understood in the context of the government's claim that it will reshape Britain's international agenda. Without overstating the position of Africa–it remains in Whitehall mandarin terms somewhere below South Asia and Latin America–this article contends that the continent is symbolically important in the struggle to broaden Britain's global role. But there are serious concerns about whether the policy has been well thought out and what it means in terms of resource commitments. For a government that has staked its reputation on delivery, it is still too early to tell whether the pledges will be followed through or whether they will amount to another policy initiative that promised much but delivered little. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]