Five Trends that will Shape Urban Africa in 2026

Uncovering the politics of African urbanization

In the next thirty years, Africa’s urban population will double from 700 million to 1.4 billion. The urban transformation is large but uneven, contributing to the growth of informal settlements as well as high-income gated communities. It affects the largest megacities in the world to smaller secondary and tertiary cities. And it opens up numerous employment opportunities while leaving millions of people behind.

The World Bank estimates that it will cost billions of dollars to build sustainable cities. If Africa wants to claim the 21^st century, success will run through its cities.

Urbanization will also shape its politics. In our recent special issue in World Development “Political Transformation in African Cities: Transforming State-Society Relations,” we demonstrate how the pace of urbanization and the context under which growth is occurring shapes whether urbanization leads to protest, electoral violence, claim-making, elite capture, informality, clientelism, or other political practices.

These developments have led to analysts calling to get African urbanization right. Elnathan John warns that this requires some humility and patience, as cities “ask for your caution, your softness, your edges, your vigilance. They ask for your willingness to vanish into the crowd or stand out in it, your readiness to decode silence, to read the small weather of strangers, to understand the choreography of public space.”

With this warning in mind, I outline five trends that will shape urban Africa in 2026:

1. The resurgence of belonging and indigeneity in political discourse

The urbanization of African societies has not led to the decline of ancestral and first-settler claims of belonging. Quite the opposite.

On the one hand, elites and politicians have instrumentalized the discourse to grab land in the name of development. For example, customary authorities in Lagos strike deals with developers and politicians to develop highly valuable land, threatening the existing populations who are not perceived as indigenous to the territory. Lagos State recently demolished the neighborhood of Ilaje-Otumara, leaving an estimated 9,000 people homeless. Forced evictions continue to threaten the livelihoods of the poor in the name of development. Local activist JEI co-director Megan Chapman explains, “A powerful family with links to Lagos State wants to take this land.”

In a chapter in the new book Global Urban Policy, I demonstrate how the politics of belonging in Accra and Lagos undermine residents’ ability to claim rights to the city. In a similar vein, Kwamena Ato Onoma argues that the Senegalese state is able to successfully intervene in neighborhoods dominated by “new” migrants to the city as opposed to those neighborhoods that portray themselves as “autochthones” of these cities, due to histories of distrust and resentment.

On the other hand, claims of indigeneity and autochthony can be empowering. Madagascar youth turn to ancestral rites in search of identity. Across some neighborhoods in Harare and Accra, claims of belonging give residents a sense of pride. These feelings of place attachment are deeply rooted, and can be traced to pre-colonial and colonial periods of urban governance and social solidarity.

These characteristics of place attachment are important for designing the cities of tomorrow, as I suggest in the review essay “Building the City From Below: Toward a Citizen-Centered City-Making.” I emphasize the importance of creative claim-making, contention through crisis, and creating a commons, aspects that take the politics of belonging seriously.

2. The emergence of middle-class politics

Africa’s emerging middle and upper class are transforming African cities. They are fueling a construction boom in places like Dakar, Accra, Addis Ababa, and Antanarivo. The bulldozing mayor of Addis Ababa wants to remake the unrelenting city. African megacities are luxury property’s final frontier. The Airbnb-ification of cities like Cape Town have displaced poorer residents to the periphery. Kurtis Lockhart even calls for a YIMBY movement in Africa.

In her excellent research on Dar es Salaam, Claire Mercer argues that the emerging middle class is constructing urban space that works for them, often excluding the poor in the process. Julien Migozzi explains how middle-class formation leads to a ‘mortgage periphery’ outside Cape Town—a segmented suburban landscape where physical fences and algorithmic barriers governing the production of and access to housing assets materialize class boundaries in terms of ownership, capital gains, aesthetics and property relationships.”

The emerging middle class has become a formidable political actor. Middle class residents form occupational interest groups and residence associations. They push for modernization of their cities and lobby politicians to open up economies. But they also consolidate local control and benefit from private services. In Accra and Lagos, we show how middle and upper-class neighborhoods leverage their personal connections and residence associations to influence state power. One thing seems to be clear: rapid urbanization—in which the emerging middle class is an important outcome—does not seem to be contributing to more democracy in Africa.

3. The centrality of infrastructure and the built environment

Infrastructure and the built environment are having a moment.

A deadly landslide of garbage exposed Kampala’s urban development challenges, and is forcing the city to find better ways to deal with its trash. Cairo’s “Garbage City” provides lessons in recycling and job creation for other cities. The Waste Commons tells the story of the closure of Dakar’s municipal waste dump. Nigeria’s informal road menders have emerged as important actors in the country’s infrastructure boom. Taibat Lawanson and Deji Akinpelu provide insights into reforming the Lagos State Waste Management System. This is how to fix Accra’s streets for pedestrians.

Analysts call for building infrastructure for people. Prince Guma emphasizes the everyday infrastructures of urban life. Stears Open Data is doing some really cool work on water transport in Lagos, including the first comprehensive map of ferries. The Lagos Blue Line offers transport to thousands of Lagosians. China is building much of this infrastructure, but it often bypasses local urban planners and residents. This interactive story narrates the future of urban Africa and its built environment through the lens of Nairobi.

The built environment is also a political structure. It shapes political behavior. For example, Paige Bollen and Noah Nathan show how vernacular architecture shapes political participation and collective action. In a related study, Nathan shows how street networks, social networks, and political networks intersect.

Infrastructure and the built environment are central political actors in urban Africa.

4. The memorialization of the past

In cities like Addis Ababa, city-making is erasing history. This opens up questions about who the city is really for. But scholars, heritage experts, and residents are memorializing the past. For example, The Addis Memories Project collects photos of everyday life in Ethiopia’s capital before the ongoing wave of urban renewal, under the motto “Every corner has a story – help us save what matters.” In Accra, a heritage project tries to archive the social practices of the populations on the cities’ coast. This article explores urban history in Kumase, Ghana through the archives, while memory-making in Kumase’s Jackson Park is featured in a new study.

While Mogadishu gets a fresh start, architect Omar Degan worries that Mogadishu is losing its aesthetic identity. He writes, “Today, Mogadishu is one of the fastest-growing urban centres in Africa, yet this growth comes at a significant cost. The lack of urban planning has resulted in an architectural landscape that often disregards the city’s history and climate. Traditional homes, once defined by shaded courtyards, wide balconies, and natural ventilation, have been replaced by high-rise buildings that are poorly adapted to the coastal environment.” In response, African architects will “tell a story under their own terms” at the first Pan-African Biennale of Architecture in Nairobi in 2026. Delela Ndlela suggests that we need new African architecture that considers the histories and cultures of Africans.

Heba Elhanafy argues that we need to look back at pre-colonial African city-states in order to move forward. Ambe Njoh’s Africa in Urban History is one place to start. Make sure to read Isaac Samuel’s African History Extra. He examines Mozambique’s medieval towns, dives into the historic architecture of Ethiopia and Eritrea, features the foundations of Africa’s ancient kingdoms, examines early industrialization and modernization in 19^th century Africa, and explores ancient cities and pre-colonial African urbanism. And so much more.

Before building cities of tomorrow, we need to learn from and memorialize its past.

5. Integrating cities into the natural environment

Cities are part of its natural environment. African cities creatively adapt to the environment and the threat of climate change. Some use nature-based solutions to build sustainable cities. Cool examples include the urban food gardens of Khayelitsha, revitalizing rivers in Kigali, Kinshasa, and Kumasi, creative solutions from Kounkey Design Initiatives in Nairobi, climate preconstruction in coastal Africa, green mobility and wetland regeneration in Kigali, and aquatic architecture in Lagos.

Chris Gore and his colleagues demonstrate how cities develop resilience through grassroots engagement. This article focuses on nature-based solutions in upgrading informal settlements, while this one focuses on empowering cities globally. Carina Tenewaa Kanbi and Kabiri Bule argue that it is time to learn from Africa’s adaptation.

African cities do not hover above the natural environment. They are part of it.

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For more on African cities, check our trends from 2022, 2023, 2025 (which are still relevant!), as well as these 12 books about urban Africa from 2025.