An investigation into globalization and uneven urbanization in Africa

Santosh Kumar Mishra, Population Education Resource Centre (PERC)

A striking feature of globalization is the very fact of social change expressed in a “multiplicity of transitions” occurring simultaneously at several and in some cases mutually contradictory levels. These multiplicities of changes occur in different ways for different economies, different cities and different agents within them. This paper will examine how globalization has affected the provision of public good - water, sanitation and infrastructure - services in Africa that were the domain of governments until recently. The paper concludes that spatial and social fragmentations have serious implications for urban growth and competitiveness. The lack of foreign investment, negligible involvement in international trade, and the steep decline in export revenues coupled with limited domestic savings and investments that Bond has identified in his paper imply that the African region cannot share the same technological advances attained in modern era which are mostly urban based.