Background

An Anthropology of Secondary cities in Africa

In 2006 and 2007 Frederik Lamote (°1982) did field research in Dakar (Senegal) and Brussels (Belgium) in the context of his master in Social and Cultural Anthropology. Situated in a Dakarois bus station and a Brussels neighborhood of African car-dealers, his field research aimed at analyzing the multiple ways in which the urban space of Dakar is connected to the world at large. Lamote’s work is situated in the intersection of urban anthropology, transnational anthropology and anthropology of space and place.

In October 2007 Frederik Lamote has joined the IARA research project An Anthropology of Secondary Cities in Africa: A (Comparative) Regional Analysis, a project funded by a KULeuven Research Grant and directed by Professors Filip de Boeck (promotor), Ann Cassiman and Steven Van Wolputte (co-promotors). This project is about small cities off the map of the global cities research agenda. It aims at bridging research focused on world cities and that on smaller cities in less developed countries in Africa. Arguing against the view of smaller Third World cities as mere towns, as “not yet cities”, and therefore irrelevant to world city theorizing, An Anthropology of Secondary Cities in Africa intends to develop an alternative analytical approach to think differently about these small cities in the South. The research agenda set by this project is to understand the role of secondary cities across Africa in social, cultural and political development. The project argues that these secondary cities are fully urban in that they generate networks and practices that extend far beyond the local limits of these cities and their immediate rural hinterlands, and that they often manage to do so more successfully than their larger counterparts. At the same time these secondary cities are sites in which new and different forms of urban life and imagination are being shaped, offering the perspective of an alternative African urban future.

Concretely, the research will focus on secondary cities in West Africa, Central Africa and Southern Africa (in a later stage). In 2008 and 2009 Frederik Lamote will cary out fieldwork in the West Africa country Ghana under the supervision of Prof. Ann Cassiman. The Ghanaian cities of Techiman and Bawku are selected as possible research fields. Techiman is an emerging market city in Brong Ahafo. Bawku is a mushrooming and bustling border city where Ghana, Togo and Burkina Faso meet. This Upper East city is (dis)reputable for its intensive cross border trade. In the research particular attention will be given to the (in)visible criss-crossing lines that connect and shape urban lives on a multitude of levels.