Griet Steel

Scholars argue that the rise of neoliberal mining and outsourcing has created a more fragmented working class and precarious working environment for mineworkers in the global South. Less examined is how climate change and the decarbonisation process have further restructured the labour dynamics. In the late 2000s, with the surge in global commodity prices, Tete province in Mozambique emerged as a coal frontier. However, long-established multinational mining companies gradually divested from their coal ventures, partly responding to international calls for decarbonisation. Since then, Indian companies have entered the frontier. The shifts in ownership have restructured the projects and their labour dynamics in Tete. Drawing on ethnographic research, this article argues that Indian investors have further fragmented the existing class relations and worsened already precarious labour conditions in Tete. As the coal economy persists, the authors expect to see more variations in the nexus between shifting investors and changing labour dynamics across coal-producing countries.

Incremental housing drives urbanization worldwide, and is recognized as the basis for socially relevant solutions to housing shortages in the global South. However, scholarship on incremental housing continues to focus largely on tenure, building materials and housing conditions at a local level, while incremental housing is embedded in – and dependent on – larger urban and regional systems and flows. We argue that a further reconceptualization of incremental housing is needed that acknowledges the embeddedness of local incremental building practices within broader industries, markets and practices of city-making. Starting from this observation, we suggest an extended framework for understanding the city-wide industries and flows around incremental housing, in relation to five dimensions: 1) land, 2) finance, 3) infrastructure, 4) building materials and 5) labour. Mapping these dynamics is necessary to understand fundamental questions of where, how and why initiatives aimed at improving or developing incremental housing advance or get stuck.

The New Urban Agenda and SDG 11 promote inclusive urban development, but limited empirical knowledge exists on how such global rhetoric plays out on the ground. This paper contributes to the inclusive city debate by focusing on the case of Soba, a peri‐urban area at the fringes of the capital of Sudan. Based on an explorative study of secondary material, semi‐structured interviews and structured observations it aims to systematically analyse the dynamics of peri‐urban development. Findings show how the rising pressure on land results in commoditisation, (informal) land‐use changes and a multitude of other land transformations. The paper concludes that the mismatch of urban land policies has resulted in increasing fragmentation of urban space and socio‐spatial discrepancies between those who can afford to buy land or transform it into urban uses and those who cannot. It sheds fresh light on the challenges of the inclusive urban transition agenda.

This paper presents the results of a short-term research project conducted in 2017/2018 on the various ways in which migration and land dynamics in West Africa are intertwined. Contrary to much conventional (policy) thinking in the European Union (EU) today, our point of departure is not that migration is the problem to be solved – nor that (access to) land is the straightforward means to discouraging migration. Drawing on local case studies in four West African countries, this research aims to shed light on the various relationships between migration and land, and to analyze to what extent they may contribute to or obstruct (local) inclusive and sustainable development in Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Benin. In doing so, we aim to offer food for thought concerning possible ways for making the connection between migration and land more fruitful and productive for as many people as possible, especially in relation to the opportunities and constraints facing different categories of West African youth.

Intensified and competing claims over land are crucial to understanding current urban transformations in Africa. This paper aims to highlight the role of transnational migrants in urban land investments and claim making on urban land. While the relationship between urbanization in Africa and migration has long been a focus of research and policy, attention had mainly focused on the intertwinement between rising urbanization and the in flux of rural migrants, internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees struggling to survive and gain access to urban space and services. More recently, the African city has gained a more positive image as a consequence of Africa's economic boom and has come to be seen as a pillar of development, rather than a place of chaos and poverty. In this 'urban turn' in development thinking and concomitant technocratic and infrastructural policy approaches, the link between urbanization and migration has been largely overlooked. We argue, however, that transnational migrants in particular are an important category in claim-making processes over urban land and real estate and add to these in specific ways. Using case studies in Khartoum and Dakar, we investigate the ways in which transnational migrants contribute to speculation, rising land values and processes of socio-spatial inclusion and exclusion. Rather than making a comparative analysis, we use two concrete cases to gain an empirical understanding of the processes associated with these diaspora investments, including the question of whether these transnational migrants can be considered as contributing to urban 'land grabs' or not.

Africa is rapidly urbanizing. New dynamics of investments and mobilities ensure expansive urbanization, transforming the continent's urban land and built environment. These changes also impact future prospects for sustainable living conditions for African urban dwellers. This issue of Built Environment has collected articles that observe these changes, in order to explore whether they are indeed leading to 'urban land grabs', which take place in new forms of commodification and speculation of land and properties. We recognize that the trend of commodification and speculation is likely to intensify, as the new modernization agenda is propagated in the name of pursuing urban sustainability and resilience, corresponding to the New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, inclusive urban development is also debated in these international agendas, as ordinary citizens increasingly confront livelihood and land-use changes, spatial alteration and social segregation, or physical displacement. In this context, we know little about how African urban dwellers' experiences could be understood and used to envision genuinely sustainable and inclusive urban development. In this editorial, we give an overview of various emerging urban land investments and how they are experienced by urban dwellers. As shown in all the articles of this issue, we argue that the far-reaching impact of increased investments and mobilities, leading to commodification and land speculation as well as the urban dwellers' agency to navigate the impact, deserve more attention in discussions on sustainable and inclusive urban development in Africa.