African Cities, Grasping the Unknowable

Africa has the fastest rate of urbanisation compared to all other regions. According to UN
Projections Africa will more than double its urban population over the next two decades, from
400 million presently to a staggering 750 million in 2030 and 1.2 billion by 2050! The rapidity
and scale of this demographic and social transition is almost unimaginable especially if one
considers that the vast majority of existing urbanites make do in utterly miserable living
conditions due in part to state neglect, skewed economic development patterns, limited
resources and administrative incompetence; dynamics that are of course in one way or
another tangible legacies of the savage colonial experiments we have been subjected to for
most of the Enlightenment. However, tonight I am less interested in spending all my time on
painting the visible demographic drama that will remake the Continent in an irrevocable way,
but rather want to explore what it means when we are bereft of a philosophical-social
theoretical vocabulary to make sense of these transitions in the specificities of our African soil,
spirit and phenomenologies.