Abstract
By 2050, Africa's population is expected to reach 2.2 billion, and two out of every three Africans will reside in cities, accounting for 80% of this development[1]. Particularly in Eastern Africa, following the economic boom, cities are also growing. There are several studies on this city and urban area growth, from socioeconomic shifts and gravitational pull toward cities to transformational policy changes that have occurred across the continent.
The webinar focused on how rapid urbanization affects young spatial planners in Eastern Africa, with particular attention to Ethiopia, where a nationwide urban transformation is underway. It aimed to raise awareness and spark meaningful discussion among the next generation of practitioners in the region.
To that end, the panel was assembled to give participants a comprehensive picture of the field, bringing together an expert in urban governance at the macro level, a senior urban practitioner with firsthand experience on the ground, and a lecturer-researcher with published work in spatial planning, urban governance, and resilient city development in East Africa.
[1] OECD et al. (2025), Africa's Urbanisation Dynamics 2025: Planning for Urban Expansion, West African Studies, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/2a47845c-en
1. Governing urbanization: actors, challenges and opportunities
The first presentation was delivered by Dr. Sina Schlimmer, Team Lead, "Urbanization, Cities and Infrastructure," OECD/SWAC, in two parts. The first part covered the Africapolis database, and the second part was titled Making cities in Africa: actors and institutions focused on urban governance.
Dr. Sina explained that the Africapolis database tracks historical population shifts from 1950 through 2020, combining this data with spatial footprints recorded in 2015 and 2020. Built from detailed census reports and satellite imagery, the database serves as a valuable tool for mapping urban transformations such as city expansions, metropolisation, and the emergence of new agglomerations, while also offering population and spatial projections at five-year intervals up to 2050. These capabilities make it a practical resource for policy makers, young researchers, and spatial planners, equipping them with the data needed to better understand urban growth trends across the continent and to inform their own research and planning work. Dr. Sina also highlighted fusion as one of the key ways cities are growing, in which smaller agglomerations gradually merge to form larger, more expansive settlements.
The second part of the presentation focused on Making cities in Africa: actors & institutions. In this section, Dr. Sina grounded the presentation in a discussion of the formal versus informal narratives that often shape outdated perceptions of African cities. She argued that these narratives are rooted in Eurocentric frameworks that judge African urban life against Western planning standards, producing assumptions of dysfunction and informality. These narratives tend to portray African urban life through a binary lens standardizing and organizing the "chaotic" city when, in reality, there is an overlap between formal and informal systems. Urban governance, in practice, involves a multitude of stakeholders from the private and public sectors, as well as associations, operating across different scales. There is also a high level of movement between urban and rural livelihoods; therefore, classifying urban life into a strict binary is not the reality Instead, there is a "grey area." Dr. Sina also noted that the "African city" should not be treated as a fixed object of study, but rather as a complex ecosystem through which broader social, economic, and political phenomena can be examined, and called for new analytical approaches that better reflect the diversity of African urban realities.
In conclusion, Dr. Sina provided participants with an overview of data visualization in African cities with the Africapolis project and current research in urban governance, offering young spatial planners on the continent a clearer and more grounded understanding of the urban landscape they will be working in.
2. Shaping the Future: Corridor Development Spatial Planning in Addis Ababa
The second panellist, Samrawit Yohannes, presented with the title: Shaping the Future: Corridor Development Spatial Planning in Addis Ababa. She gave the webinar participant the first-hand insight into the urban transformation that took place in Addis Ababa and continues to happen nationwide in Ethiopia.
Setting the background behind the waves of urban transformation that occurred in the city from its inception, and the ten master plans created over time. Samrawit focused on recent phenomena of drastic transformation in Addis Ababa through the Addis Ababa Central Corridor Development Project, launched in 2022.
The project includes large-scale road widening, streetscape improvements, and redevelopment along major corridors. Over 132 km of corridor length is covered in the first major phases, including multiple sub-corridors (e.g., Kasanchis–Estifanos–Mexico–Churchill–Arat Kilo, approximately 40.4 km), with Road widening and surface improvements
New pedestrian walkways, bike lanes, and Non-Motorized Transport -friendly streetscapes, parks, green spaces, libraries, and mixed-use housing along the corridors
However, the project also demolished substantial business, historical structures, and residential areas. Many lower-income residents were forced to relocate to the outskirts of the city, making travel from their homes to the city centre more difficult and more costly, raising additional concerns.
At the same time, this restructuring enabled a non-motorized landscape by deploying a robust Non-Motorized Transport (NMT) framework, including extensive bicycle networks and walkable pedestrian corridors. While these provisions improved mobility and created space for more leisurely activities raising the city's profile as an African diplomatic hub—the project also led to a national plan to adopt the corridor development approach in 75 cities across the country.
This raises the question: how is the expansion framed nationally? The government presents it not only as "beautification," but as an economic driver aimed at bridging infrastructure gaps, upgrading utilities (water and telecom), and rapidly expanding housing. This, in turn, raises concerns about whether a template approach is being implemented without sufficient contextual sensitivity.
Samrawit also noted that the fast implementation of Addis Ababa's restructuring was indeed rapid. She suggested that, when it comes to coordination, a top-down approach made it possible to bypass some of the normal urban transformation processes that are typically followed.
At the end of the presentation, Samrawit raised the following question:
"When political urgency overrides long-term statutory structure plans, how do we ensure institutional continuity?"
She added: "As urban professionals, our task now is to navigate this reality. We must find a way to harness immense political energy and speed of execution while ensuring that our cities remain grounded in evidence-based planning, institutional checks, and spatial equity. This project has proven we can build at the speed of political will; now, we must ensure we are building for long-term resilience."
3. "Transforming Urban Spaces: Everyday Urbanism."
Dr. Genet Alem delivered an insightful presentation. She began by sharing a quotation from a resident living in Addis Ababa, whose personal reflection highlighted the municipal government's rapid removal of street vendors. Through this perspective, she argued that such forceful clearance not only dismantles vendors' livelihoods, but more importantly, tears apart the social fabric and the city's character.
Afterward, she discussed critical urban theory and Marxist urban theories, focusing on an understanding of spaces of everyday urbanism. Dr. Alem also framed space as something actively produced, rather than simply existing. Central to this approach is the triad of space, which includes spatial practice (everyday use and routines in space), representations of space (the conceived, planned, and designed dimension), and representational space (the lived, experienced, and symbolic dimension).
Following this, she presented a comparative look at Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and Kumasi (Ghana), examining how the making of cities—particularly social order and land/resource management—changed before and after British occupation/campaigns in Kumasi. In Addis Ababa, she also addressed the layout produced during the Italian occupation, including the colonial master plan by Guidi and Valle. She then traced the evolution of planning and contestation of urban space, including development/modernization policies, with an exploration of "before and after" British planning in Kumasi, and similarly, the comparison of Addis Ketema under Italian planning.
When examining everyday urbanism in Addis Ababa, we see how the city evolves through private and communal activities, and how it develops in relation to communal practices, paralleling Kumasi's modifications to access roads to accommodate communal needs and income generation.
In particular, Dr. Alem challenged the language we use to describe urban populations, asserting that no resident or person should ever be labelled as "illegal." She emphasized that "illegality" is not an intrinsic status of people themselves, but rather a reflection of how urban governance chooses to perceive and police its citizens.
Post webinar survey
While the invited speakers highlighted structural and theoretical challenges in Africa and East African planning, the subsequent post-webinar survey sought to test these perspectives against the practical experiences of the attending audience.
The post-webinar survey revealed the importance of discussions on urban governance and related topics in rapidly urbanizing African cities. Participants found the webinar highly informative, insightful, and valuable, particularly due to the diversity and expertise of the panellists. The core takeaway from the webinar was that governance and institutions emerged as the central challenge in the rapidly urbanizing African cities. Multiple respondents independently identified that effective urban planning in Africa is not primarily a technical problem, but requires strengthening institutional coordination, addressing fragmented governance, and reducing political dominance over planning processes.
African and Ethiopian urban contexts demand context-specific approaches. Participants stressed the need for new methodological lenses to read and understand African cities, moving away from imported planning frameworks toward approaches grounded in local realities, particularly in peri-urban and fast-growing areas.
Spatial planning is inherently complex and political. The tension between ambitious planning visions and weak implementation capacity was a recurring theme, with "space-making," regional collaboration, and sustainable development flagged as areas needing deeper attention.
Several respondents, particularly students and early-career professionals, noted a meaningful shift in perspective, gaining new frameworks for understanding Ethiopian and East African urban development that they intend to carry into their academic and professional work.
Effective spatial planning in African cities requires not just better technical tools, but stronger governance, context-sensitive methodologies, and genuine institutional collaboration.
To conclude, the webinar and the insightful discussion that followed showed the need for more open dialogue in response to the rapid urbanization of African cities. It also highlighted the importance of creating platforms for discussing this topic among academics, practitioners, and urban governance bodies, so they can coordinate efforts and involve citizens in these conversations. As the moderator of the webinar, I would like to express my gratitude to the expert panel and the participants for enriching the discussion.
Author
Megdelawit Yohannes Yoseph is an architect, urban researcher, and independent scholar specializing in urban morphology, heritage conservation, and spatial planning. She completed her PhD at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, where her research focused on the morphological evolution of historic urban environments. Her work explores the transformation of Ethiopian cities, applying urban morphological methods to support sustainable conservation and planning strategies. As the AESOP Young Academics Regional Ambassador for Ethiopia, she actively promotes knowledge exchange and collaboration on urban development and spatial planning across Eastern Africa.