Localising the SDGs in African Cities: A Grounded Methodology

Abstract

   This article’s starting point is the recognition that urban Africa faces a set of economic, social, political and infrastructural challenges sufficiently specific to its context to warrant its own (hitherto modest) repertoire of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) localisation roadmaps. Drawing on field-based comparative research across Cairo and Dar es Salaam, and focusing on SDG 6 (water and sanitation) and SDG 11.2 (mobility), the article develops a research methodology that helps to detect fissures between the general SDG framework and microscopic realities on the ground in African cities. Although each of the two cities has a specific set of urban realities and development paradigms, the paper develops a localisation process that is applicable across both geographies (and beyond) based on the similar prevalence of urban informality in African cities, which the current SDG framework insufficiently, or at times inaccurately, factors in. The methodology comprises three key components: 1) a top-down policy analysis of SDG responses at national and city levels; 2) grounded field research of local practices at a neighbourhood level; and 3) revising the SDG targets and indicators through a proposed ‘Toolkit for Localising’.