Africa’s rapidly expanding peri-urban zones have become critical sites of urban transformation, yet dominant narratives continue to frame these spaces through poverty-centred understandings of informality. This paper challenges these framings by systematically examining the emerging role of the African Middle class in driving self-help housing developments on customary land. It draws on a systematic literature review of 32 peer reviewed studies published between 1994 and 2025, and interrogates the intersection of middle-class investment practices, neo-customary land tenure, hybrid governance arrangements, and the implications of these dynamics for urban resilience. The review reveals four core patterns reshaping the African periphery: the commercialisation and reconfiguration of traditional authority; the emergence of institutional multiplicity and fragmented planning legitimacy; the strategic but spatially fragmented logic of middle-class self-help; and the production of ecological and infrastrucutural vulnerabilities that undermine collective urban resilience. The paper argues for a reconceptualisation of informality that recognizes class-mediated urbanisation as a structurally significant mode of African city-making. It concludes by proposing a resilience-oriented planning paradigm grounded in engaged tenure pluralism, metagovernance, ecological protection and differentiated housing policy responses.
Matshika et al. (2026) studied this question.