08 Mediating African urban complex systems towards sustainability transition

Chair: Nelson Odume

African urban systems are inherently complex. This complexity implies that addressing sustainability challenges within African urban centres requires a new way of mediating structures, power, actors, and agencies in ways that are systemic and engaged. Here, we interpret medialities as comprising of tools and ways of engaging stakeholders in specific contexts. We also interpret medialities as ways of representation, ways of interpreting and communicating, mediating between subject and their surroundings/contexts – in this case the actors and sustainability challenges, which we seek to address.  In our panel discussion, we will draw on case studies relating to multiple but interrelated and linked systems: water, food, energy, health, environment, climate in African urban centres to demonstrate how carefully mediating structures, power relations, actors and agencies could potentially lead to shifting these systems from unsustainable paths towards a more sustainable one. Our point of departure is that existing structures and power relations are not necessarily amenable to sustainability transitions, yet they are deeply rooted. This deep-rootedness implies the need for a careful and systemic mediation and engagement in ways that do not only contribute to practical and policy outcomes but also advance intellectual enterprise and theorisation.

Panelists:

• Prof Nelson Odume, Institute for Water Research/ African Studies Centre, Rhodes University
• Dr Akosua Amaka-Otchere -Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana)
• Dr Blessing Onyima - Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria
• Dr Sokhna Thiam - Institute for Health Research, Epidemiological Surveillance and Trainings, Dakar Senegal
• Dr Fati Aziz - Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology, Texas A&M University