When African countries gained independence, most of their cities still looked like what colonisers had left behind—European-style centres built for the privileged, surrounded by neglected areas for everyone else. Instead of breaking that pattern, post-independence governments mostly just reinforced it. Untangling African cities from that legacy remains one of the continent’s hardest challenges. Governments are still struggling to fund or design policies that actually shift the trajectory.
The first episode of The City Show’s third season unpacks why this persists—and the new momentum that’s becoming impossible to ignore across the continent. We speak to South African urbanist Edgar Pieterse, Ghanaian analyst Bright Simons, Kenyan anthropologist Wangui Kimari, and Gambian mayor Talib Ahmed Bensouda.
