African Cities and the Development Conundrum

This volume explores some of the complex development challenges associated with the recent and rapid pace of urbanisation across Africa. The transition from a predominantly rural to urban population over the next decade may prompt new approaches and policy responses from the international development community.

Carole Ammann is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Geography at the University of Bern and at the Institute of Sociology, University of Fribourg. She recently completed her dissertation—entitled Silent Politics. Gender, Imagination and the State in Kankan, Guinea—at the University of Basel. Carole Ammann is interested in questions of urbanity, secondary cities, transformations of the state, political participation, everyday life, and gender in West Africa and France.

Till Forster is an anthropologist. He holds a PhD from the Freie Universitat Berlin. Since 2001 he has been Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Till Forster has specialised in art, visual culture and political transformations in West and Central Africa. Since 1979, he has conducted field research in Cote d’Ivoire and Cameroon. His recent publications focus on visual culture, social creativity and the postcolonial state, as well as on politics and governance in African cities.