Abstract
Understanding how African cities are governed requires a close look at how they are financed. From a fiscal and financial perspective, the chapter makes several important contributions to our understanding of urban governance in Africa. First, it shows that understanding public finance, in particular revenue, expenditures, and borrowing, is key to understanding urban governance. The design of sub-national fiscal systems, and the ways in which these systems are put into practice, shape how cities are governed, with direct implications for the daily operations and ongoing sustainability of urban areas. Second, the chapter argues that African cities require more dynamic financial tools, mobilising flexible, just and locally empowering sources of revenue. Land-based financing is a good place to begin to improve the revenue streams of city authorities, but must be accompanied by more creative expenditure models, to contend with the limitations of large-scale networked infrastructure and the potential for more hybrid approaches to service delivery.
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Notes
- 1.
See the World Bank’s City Creditworthiness programme: http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/brief/city-creditworthiness-initiative. Also see PwC: https://www.pwc.co.za/en/industries/public-sector/material-funding.html
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Acknowledgments
This chapter was completed with support from the PEAK Urban programme, funded by UKRI’s Global Challenge Research Fund, Grant Ref: ES/P011055/1. Additional support came from the Mistra Urban Futures programme, which is mainly funded by Mistra (Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.
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Cirolia, L.R. (2021). Financing African Cities: A Fiscal Lens on Urban Governance. In: Home, R. (eds) Land Issues for Urban Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa. Local and Urban Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52504-0_3
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