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Finance, infrastructure and urban capital: the political economy of African ‘gap-filling’

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  • Tom Goodfellow

Abstract

Financial flows into Africa are being reoriented through the pervasive discourse of the ‘infrastructure gap’. The article argues that the generation of new infrastructures identified as ‘alternative assets’ by global finance is also creating landscapes of opportunity for urban capital accumulation by more locally embedded actors. Thus, as international financial flows are becoming ‘infrastructuralised’, domestic capital is increasingly ‘real-estatised’. The conceptualisation of African urban economies in terms of deficits has obscured the extent to which they are also characterised by surfeits, including of certain kinds of property development and speculation, with important implications for the politics of urban accumulation, dispossession and violence.

Suggested Citation

  • Tom Goodfellow, 2020. "Finance, infrastructure and urban capital: the political economy of African ‘gap-filling’," Review of African Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(164), pages 256-274, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:revape:v:47:y:2020:i:164:p:256-274
    DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2020.1722088
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    Cited by:

    1. Prince K Guma & Jethron Ayumbah Akallah & Jack Ong’iro Odeo, 2023. "Plug-in urbanism: City building and the parodic guise of new infrastructure in Africa," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(13), pages 2550-2563, October.
    2. Tom Goodfellow & Zhengli Huang, 2021. "Contingent infrastructure and the dilution of ‘Chineseness’: Reframing roads and rail in Kampala and Addis Ababa," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(4), pages 655-674, June.
    3. Liza Rose Cirolia & Rike Sitas & Andrea Pollio & Alexis Gatoni Sebarenzi & Prince K Guma, 2023. "Silicon Savannahs and motorcycle taxis: A Southern perspective on the frontiers of platform urbanism," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(8), pages 1989-2008, November.
    4. Enora Robin & Vanesa Castán Broto, 2021. "Towards A Postcolonial Perspective On Climate Urbanism," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(5), pages 869-878, September.
    5. J Miguel Kanai & Seth Schindler, 2022. "Infrastructure-led development and the peri-urban question: Furthering crossover comparisons," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(8), pages 1597-1617, June.

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