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This work is the product of comparative research on governance and urban waste in Africa carried out by four teams of researchers in four major cities in Africa: Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, in francophone West Africa; Ibadan, Nigeria, in anglophone West Africa; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in East Africa; and Johannesburg, South Africa, in southern Africa. The study was funded with a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), of Canada. The coordinators of the research are members of the African Research Network for Urban Management, which has for more than 10 years embraced most of the leading urban researchers and urban-research institutions on the African continent.

This book attempts to characterize waste-management systems in Africa within the framework of governance. It pursues the governance debate and how it helps us to deepen our understanding of urban problems in Africa. It has six chapters. Chapter 1 is an overview of the governance debate in Africa, focusing on the various ways governance is conceptualized. It concludes that to move the debate forward, we need to operationalize the concepts by applying them to a specific aspect of urban management in Africa — in this case, urban waste. This chapter also discusses the scope and the objectives of the studies carried out in the selected African cities and the methodology adopted by the research teams. Chapters 2–5 contain analyses of the waste-management systems and approaches in the four key African cities. Chapter 6 is a

synthesis chapter, presenting an analytical overview of the key governance themes raised in Chapter 1. Chapter 6 assesses the efficiency and effectiveness of different modes and modalities (for example, public, private, and community sectors) of managing urban waste, as typified by the selected cities, in political, sociological, economic, and environmental terms. The chapter also recommends policy options for waste management in urban Africa on the basis of what worked or did not work in the four cities.

Many people, too numerous to list, contributed to the research for this book. I am immensely grateful to Dr Koffi Attahi, Mark Swilling, and Lusugga Kironde, who worked with me to coordinate the research. They ably responded to constant demands for review meetings, updates of data, and revisions of draft reports. Special mention must be made of IDRC, which supported the research and is publishing this book. IDRC has had a tremendous impact on human-resource development and capacity-building in Africa through its research-support activities. The Centre for African Settlement Studies and Development is a living example. IDRC’s support for this and other initiatives is highly appreciated. I am also grateful to Richard Stren of the University of Toronto, who is the Coordinator of the Global Urban Research Initiative. Professor Stren made useful comments on the study methodology and arranged for the presentation of the first draft of this work in Mexico City and in Istanbul before wider audiences of researchers, policymakers, and donor agencies.

This work is meant to spur concerted action on the endemic problem of urban-waste management in Africa. It is our hope that this publication will further our understanding of the issues and help us achieve a more liveable urban environment in Africa.

A.G. Onibokun

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