Unveiling episodes of everyday informal politics in internationally funded slum upgrading programs

Politics permeates all facets of urban life in African cities. Yet research advancing inclusive slum redevelopment has not adequately illuminated its everyday intricacies and implications. This is particularly important, as supranational institutions are becoming central players through large-scale infrastructure investments. Consequently, this paper introduces the concept of ‘everyday informal politics’ to unpack the quotidian interactions among actors in two World Bank- and UN-Habitat-funded upgrading programs in Accra, Ghana's capital, and a politically significant swing-voting city. It asks: i) At what spatio-institutional scales did politics emerge? ii) How was power exercised in such politics? And iii) What inclusionary and exclusionary outcomes did they engender? To answer these questions, the article draws on rich empirical data (i.e., 40 semi-structured interviews and three focus group discussions). Results reveal three scales of everyday informal politics: a spatial scale of jurisdictional conflations and institutional scales involving state governance actors (e.g., Mayors) and non-state actors who simultaneously work alongside and parallel to the state planning apparatus (e.g., traditional authorities). A Foucauldian reading of such politics showed that, in some instances, state and non-state actors exercised power to exclusively capture resources and benefits, while residents exercised collective power productively and strategically to claim inclusion. The paper's findings establish the need for slum redevelopment programs to embed internal and external measures from the outset to curtail the exclusionary outcomes of everyday informal politics. Some recommendations are offered to advance a politically adaptive approach to slum upgrading.