Lake Victoria is the world’s largest tropical lake and the third-largest water body, providingsignificant water resources for surrounding environments including the cultural, societal, andlivelihood needs of people in its basin and along the White Nile. The aim of this study was to usedecade-long time series of measured lake flow in the lake system and phosphorus deposition todevelop a suitable numerical model based on shallow water equations (SWE) for assessing waterquality in Lake Victoria, an increasingly important tool under climate variation. Different tech-niques were combined to identify a numerical model that included: i) a high-resolution SWEmodel to establish raindrop diffusion to trace pollutants; ii) a two-dimensional (2D) verticallyintegrated SWE model to establish lake surface flow and vertically transported wind speed flowacting on lake surface water by wind stress; and iii) a site-specific phosphorus deposition sub-model to calculate atmospheric deposition in the lake. A smooth (non-oscillatory) solution wasobtained by applying a high-resolution scheme for a raindrop diffusion model. Analysis with thevertically integrated SWE model generated depth averages for flow velocity and associatedchanges in water level profile in the lake system and showed unidirectional whole lake windblowing from the southwest to northeast. The atmospheric phosphorous deposition modelenabled water value assessment for mass balances with different magnitudes of both inflows andoutflows demonstrating annual total phosphorus at 13, 500 tons concentrating at mid-lakewestern and eastern parts. The model developed here is simple and suitable for use in assess-ing flow changes and lake level changes and can serve as a tool in studies of lake bathymetry andnutrient and pollution transport processes. Our study opens towards refining models of complexshallow-water systems

This paper examines how global climate mitigation policies articulate with urban political–ecological transformations. It focuses on South African waste-to-value projects as case studies, exploring how local processes of urban ecological modernization combine with global climate finance through the now largely defunct Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Whilst it is generally recognized that waste-related CDM projects in South Africa (and elsewhere) have been an unmitigated failure in terms of climate and socio-economic benefits, we demonstrate that landfillto-gas/energy projects have functioned effectively as geographical–discursive dispositifs through which particular knowledge systems are enrolled, specific ‘solutions’ are projected, and singular imaginaries of what is possible and desirable foregrounded, thereby crowding out alternative possibilities. This not only nurtures the commodification and marketization of non-human matter with an eye towards sustaining capital accumulation but, rather more importantly, successfully installs state-orchestrated private property relations around common resources, thereby deepening the dispossessing socio-ecological relations upon which expanded capitalist reproduction rests. We argue that whilst the formal outcome of the CDM is a failure, its success resides precisely in how it permitted local and global elites to create administrative and regulatory practices that solidify and naturalize a neoliberal market-based framework to approach the climate crisis.

In this article we portray and unpack the fabric of urban expansion in contemporary Luanda. In doing so, we examine interdependencies and complementarities between the organization of oil extraction off the coast of Angola, the emergence of particular modalities of modernist city planning for the expansion of its capital city, and the proliferation of cement blocks in the making of new urban forms throughout its burgeoning peripheries. By showing how urban development has unfolded through the interconnected realization of multiple kinds of systematizing blocks—namely oil blocks, city blocks and cement blocks—we analyse key material components in the production of new markets and urban spaces in the Angolan capital. By tracing forms of capitalism and modularity in the making of contemporary Luanda, we develop the concept of blocos urbanism to draw attention to modes of standardization and the production of legibility in contemporary processes of urbanization. Through this study, we aim to contribute to the conceptual apparatus for deciphering our global urban condition.

Kilamba, the first of the new centralities in Angola, is increasingly visible in recent urban scholarship about Luanda, further establishing it as the symbol of both this “new” post-war city and the “New Angola.” Within local discourses of progress, its emergence from within “petro-urbanism,” and its size and modern aesthetics are emphasized, while little attention has been directed towards understanding the actual contributions of its workers, particularly the women who spend a significant part of their day cleaning Kilamba’s apartments. In this paper, we combine a social reproduction framework with infrastructure studies to trace the labor of Kilamba’s female domestic workers, in order to demonstrate how their everyday practices uphold the status and materiality of this centrality, even as their work is invisibilized. In doing so, we understand their commentaries about this space, often refracted through descriptions of their homes, as critiques of the infrastructural priorities of the “New Angola.”

Decades after liberation in eThekwini-Durban, South Africa, the young woman Lindeka reads the book Malfeasance. In this essay, philosopher Michel Serres fleshes out the advent of the Anthropocene in his unique “French” manner. Serres does not trace the modern planetary present to the advent of agriculture, the industrial revolution, or even the postwar “great acceleration.” Rather, his narrative of the climate crisis starts with spitting in the soup—with tracing how humans of everyday and age used practices of pollution to own and create property, with industrial society following suit to appropriate land, rivers, and the skies through pollution. Lindeka is fascinated, but finds Serres’ narrative increasingly disturbing for what it omits: Where is eThekwini-Durban, or even Africa in this universalising history of our planet? Striking up a conversation with Michel, Lindeka decides to make her own study of historical difference and global connection. Using the camera and mobilising her city, Lindeka interviews people about ancestors, participates in rituals, walks the streets, and travels to mosques, temples, graveyards, sugarcane fields, and a slaughterhouse. Through this method of enrollment, and becoming enrolled, she reads the French philosopher against the grain of her body, her relations, and her location in the world.

Scholars usually conceptualize civil society as both a discursive and an associational space. In the former, focus is on communicative practices; in the latter, attention shifts to the actors that cooperate or clash about the identification and production of collective goods. In this chapter, we sketch the contours of an approach to civil society that treats both dimensions in an integrated way. Looking at the role of food issues in urban settings as diverse as Cape Town, Bristol, and Glasgow, we borrow from social network analysis to explore first, how civic organizations combine an interest in food-related issues with attention to other themes, thus defining different, specific agendas; next, we ask if and how interest in food identifies specific clusters of cooperation within broader civil society networks.

Kampala has a complex set of regulations describing actors, rules and procedures for collection and transportation of waste, and requires waste to be disposed of at the landfill. Yet little of the city’s waste moves through this “formal system”. Building on wider scholarship on urban infrastructure and calls to theorize from southern cities, we examine recycling in Kampala as a heterogeneous infrastructure configuration. Kampala’s lively recycling sector is socially and materi- ally diverse: it is comprised of entrepreneurs, public-private partner- ships and non-governmental organizations, as well as a range of materials with different properties and value. We articulate how actors assert claims, obtain permissions, build and maintain relation- ships as they rework flows away from the landfill. We argue that recognizing socio-material heterogeneity throughout the waste con- figuration enables a clearer analysis of contested processes of claim- ing value from waste. We also demonstrate how these efforts have pressured the state to reconsider the merits of the modern infra- structure ideal as a model for what (good) infrastructure is and ought to be. Various actors assert more heterogeneous alternatives, raising the possibility of alternative modes of infrastructure which might generate better incomes and improve service provision.

Private-sector and civil society groups significantly contributed to raising awareness about Covid-19 in Kampala by using several creative strategies that can usefully complement official risk communication strategies.  • An array of non-state actors – including community health volunteers (CHVs), private firms, youth, women’s, faith-based and refugee-led organisations – were also key in assisting marginalised residents, but these efforts would benefit considerably from additional governmental support and recognition.  • Collaborations between state and non-state actors took various forms but were typically emergency responses (for example, providing cash or food assistance), which did not necessarily adopt a strategic, longer-term approach to address urban poverty and deprivation.  • Other emerging interventions – such as to enhance health systems, counter police brutality, support multisectoral upgrading, and engage constructively with informality – may open newfound possibilities of more lasting, equitable change.

In this paper, we explore the Covid-19 pandemic’s evolving impacts and wide-ranging local initiatives in Mogadishu, Kampala, and Nairobi. Low-income residents often experienced Covid-19 less as a health crisis (especially in its early waves) and more in terms of its devastating socioeconomic, political and violent impacts. Although there were widespread misconceptions about the virus and vaccine, private sector and civil society groups also raised awareness about Covid-19 via several creative initiatives  that can usefully complement official risk communication strategies. Moreover, we found a range of Covid-19 responses at different scales, including national taskforces; philanthropic and private sector initiatives; aid agency initiatives; and grassroots and other civil society interventions. Some new collaborations and constructive  engagements emerged between state and non-state groups. An array of non-state actors – including community health volunteers (CHVs), private firms, youth, women’s, faith-based and refugee-led organisations – were key in assisting marginalised residents, but these efforts would benefit considerably from additional government  support and recognition. We develop a typology of responses that ranges from quite top-down coalitions to increasingly bottom-up community solidarity networks. The typology encompasses efforts around emergency relief distribution, risk communication, service delivery, livelihoods strengthening and data collection.  Collaborations between state and non-state actors took various forms but were typically emergency responses, which did not necessarily adopt a strategic, longerterm approach to addressing urban poverty and deprivation. Other interventions – such as enhancing health systems, countering police brutality, supporting multi-sectoral  upgrading and engaging constructively with informality – may open newfound  possibilities of more lasting, equitable change.

• Private-sector and civil society groups significantly contributed to raising awareness about Covid-19 in Mogadishu by using several creative strategies that can usefully complement official risk communication strategies.
• An array of non-state actors – including community health volunteers (CHVs), private firms, youth, women’s, faith-based and refugee-led organisations – were also key in assisting marginalised residents, but these efforts would benefit considerably from additional governmental support and recognition.
• Collaborations between state and non-state actors took various forms but were typically emergency responses (for example, providing cash or food assistance), which did not necessarily adopt a strategic, longer-term approach to address urban poverty and deprivation.
• Other emerging interventions – such as to enhance health systems, counter police brutality, support multisectoral upgrading, and engage constructively with informality – may open newfound possibilities of more lasting, equitable change.