The politics of Africa’s urban–industrialisation: authoritarian centralisation and policy integration

A growing body of literature addresses the implications of the ongoing rapid state-led, export-oriented industrialisation in African cities for a range of development concerns – e.g. labour relations, value chain development, gender relations and China’s involvement in infrastructural development. This study focuses on another important implication of Africa’s rapid industrialisation that has not been sufficiently explored – urban–industrial integration. Recent scholarship that looks at the interaction of urban and industrial development in Africa identifies challenges emerging at the nexus caused by lack of policy integration (PI). However, this literature does not address why this disconnect between the policy spheres arises or why it continues to persist. Based on thematic analysis of over a hundred qualitative interviews with key policy actors in the urban–industrial sphere, I argue policy fragmentation in the African urban–industrial nexus is driven by processes of ‘authoritarian centralisation’ that foster adverse political conditions for PI – more specifically conceptual integration, policy coordination and infrastructural integration. The study illustrates the relationship between authoritarian centralisation and PI and discusses the ways in which authoritarianism has shaped urban policy, planning and development and its integration into industrial and economic development strategies. The paper contributes to the nascent literature on the politics of urban–industrialisation in a broader range of developmental authoritarian African states. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .