Dr Prosper Issahaku Korah

New cities in Ghana: emerging actors, urban governance, and strategies of the urban poor

Funding period: 17 January 2023 – 16 June 2023
Type of funding: International Fellowship

Prosper Issahaku Korah is a Lecturer at the Department of Planning at SD Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies, Ghana. He holds Ph.D. in Urban Studies and Planning from Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia; MSc Environmental and Infrastructure Planning from University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands; and BSc Human Settlement Planning from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. His research interests include urban transformation and questions related to inclusive spatial planning, health, access to urban services, urban governance, and resilient cities.

Prosper’s work mainly focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa, which is experiencing unprecedented urban growth and is beset with stark inequalities. He has been researching the emergence and implications of new cities, spatial and temporal evolution of urban form, self-organization and civic initiatives in informal settlements, urban resilience, and livelihoods transformations in peri-urban Ghana. He has published in reputable urban studies and planning journals such as Cities, Urban Geography, Habitat International, Land Use Policy, Planning Practice and Research among others. In November 2021, Prosper was invited to be part of the OECD’s Working Group on “Accelerating Africa’s built environment towards a sustainable and resilient future”. This working group brought together thought leaders and specialists to discuss the causes of unsustainable urban forms in West African cities and potential options to accelerate the built environment towards a sustainable and resilient future. As an expert in urban issues, Prosper was part of the Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Development Project (GARID) as an Urban Specialist and a World Bank Africa Fellow.

As a USF International Fellow, Dr Prosper Issahaku Korah will spend six months working with Dr. Patrick Brandful Cobbinah in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, School of Design at the University of Melbourne.

Profile | ResearchGate | LinkedIn | prosperkorah@gmail.com