Kerwin Datu argues that the global urban development community has lost sight of its own agenda, and perhaps even deserves to lose its funding until it can reclaim a focus on urban employment and income levels alongside its obsession with housing and services.
The world's biggest logistics company maintains its largest African hub in Lagos. Kerwin Datu take a tour and learn how logistics operators and local authorities are learning to make the industry more sustainable.
The Economist conference 'Future Cities: managing Africa's urban transformation' was held in Lagos last month. A rosy picture for foreign investors, but what kind of future is being offered the ordinary African?
It is common knowledge that sub-Saharan Africa is urbanising faster than anywhere else in the world ... but what if we're wrong?!
While there is a strong relationship between increasing urbanisation and increasing prosperity, it cannot be assumed that inequalities such as gender are reduced at the same time.
Vijay Govindarajan's proposal to design a $300 one-room shed to solve the world's housing problems is riddled with stereotypes and prejudices.
Several months after residents of Kibera's 'Soweto East' settlement were decanted into temporary housing, the process of returning them to permanent housing is stalled by legal battles over ownership of the sites.
It has been alarming to watch over the past two years how so many urban organisations have made the fashionable subject of climate change the focus of their work, dropping the ball on the many other profound urban challenges such as housing and livelihoods along the way.
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The Global Urbanist is an online magazine reviewing urban affairs and urban development issues in cities throughout the developed and developing world.
Its readers are drawn from the urban policy and international development sectors, and include urban planners, officers in local, national or international government agencies, civil society leaders, and researchers.
