Connecting and Bypassing: Building Infrastructure Amid Urbanization in East Africa

Location: Zoom
Language: English

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Segment of Kenyan Standard Gauge Railway that goes through Nairobi National Park. (Photo: Zhengli Huang).

This event is a part of Smart City Cluster Seminar Series by City University of Hong Kong. Smart City provides a cross-cutting theme among diverse disciplines and programmes, leading to innovative solutions to address regional and global concerns about sustainable economic development, high quality of life, and harmony of the built environment with nature.

The presentation will examine three infrastructure projects in the East Africa Region sharing a similar narrative: railways and highways built with global infrastructure finance in recent years. The study analyzes the financing model and power dynamics involved in realizing these projects, with a particular focus on the imbalanced power structure in the development of these infrastructure projects, resulting in enclaving and bypassing in Urban Africa.

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"The USF has played a crucial role in creating space for urban research that not only moves beyond academic spheres but also values embodied, decolonial, and insurgent ways of knowing. As a queer geographer working in and through the messy, affective terrains of urban India, this Fellowship didn’t just fund my research — it affirmed it. It gave me the courage and capacity to experiment with form, to centre marginal voices, and to hold space for joy, pain, memory, and resistance in my work. I remain in awe of the nurturing, and genuinely transformative support USF continues to offer its Fellows — during, and far beyond, the fellowship period."

Dr Dhiren Borisa, International Fellowship

Urban Studies Foundation is a registered Scottish charity. Registration number SC039937.

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