Organizing for the Smart African City: Leveraging the urban commons for exerting the right to the city

Abstract

To accommodate the need for community engagement and place-based approaches in smart city agendas in Africa, we build on the literature on smart cities, southern urbanism and the urban commons to develop a conceptual framework for urban commoning in Africa. We argue that commoning, as an organizing process, establishes institutions for urban commons that account for different urban dwellers’ needs, perspectives and knowledges thereby strengthening inclusion and producing knowledge-intensive smart city development. We explain how the proposed conceptual framework is particularly suited to the African context, as it can mitigate the formal-informal divide and enable marginalized citizens to meaningfully express their right to the city. By enabling citizens’ voice in planning and distributing urban resources, commoning helps redefine local bureaucracies, rendering them more open and inclusive while limiting the enclosure and marketization of cities, which is often a source of contestation in the development of smart cities.