UTA-Do Blog

By Mwangi Mwaura, 8 January 2023

“revolution, because of its creative and liberatory nature, is an act of love.” (Freire, 1970 as by K’eguro Macharia, Love, 2015 p. 68 )

In her speech at the recently concluded African Infrastructure Futures workshop, the warm and ever joyful Wangui Kimari jokingly stated that, amongst the many things born from the 2022 UTA-Do workshop, romances were initiated. While this might have been purely a joke in typical Wangui-style, I claim it literally and reflect on the intimacies and romances that the 2022 UTA-Do workshop brought and continue to nurture for (me), six months after. To do this I will use the three goals that Wangui, Prince and Liza had for the first workshop, as shared by Wangui in her speech (from 27:20). That is: to make the party bigger (so Nairobi street’s way, right?); fill each other’s libraries (romantic, right?) and to end the continued use of young Africans as native informants (Revolutionary!).

But first, what comes to mind after seeing the call for application earlier this year, UTA-Do? This phrase, ‘uta-do?’ - meaning ‘what are you going to do about it? - carries the playfulness, the daring, the revolutionary aspect of the workshop. For me the first image was of my mother’s side eye, in her African mum moment, when someone questioned a directive in her house. My second thought was the daring of most Nairobians while demanding and asking a big UTA-Do? to those in authority as they push against the colonial organising, planning and imagining of this city, through diversion, chants of freedom, post as KOT or, hustling on streets.

While the phrase ‘uta-do?’ means these things, and many more, on the streets of Nairobi, it also served as a fancy academic acronym: Urban Thinking Africa- Doing (beautiful, right?). In his paper “Notes on Southern Urbanism” Gautam Bhan, (who was one of the 2022 keynote speakers) calls urban scholars to root their theorization of cities in the global south with vocabularies of modes of practice in these cities, like UTA-Do!

The party continues to become bigger!

“i say no seed / can flourish on this ground once planted then forsaken” —Lucille Clifton, mulberry leaves

Attending a workshop with scholars you have been reading as a recent BA graduate can be daunting and nerve wrecking, this feeling showed up at UTA-Do but (I) was smoothly welcomed into the party. I can’t remember the exact moment I got comfortable to answer questions at the workshop. It might have been during the first break when I found myself sitting next to Liza and weirdly ended up sharing that I had read her paper with Idalina urging urban scholars towards anticipatory forms of scholarship through ingraining propositionality in their research and writing. This conversation beautifully moved to the writing process behind the paper. Or was it during the next break when I would nervously chat with Mary Lawhon, whose book “Making Urban Theory: Learning and Unlearning through Southern Cities” I was reading at the time? Or maybe it was on Tuesday, when, during lunch, I met the warm Eddie Ombagi, whose thesis on “Becoming Queer, Being African: Re-thinking an African Queer Epistemological Framework” (my mum better not read this) inspired me to set out on a mission to experience the ‘shot of whisky’ that is Nairobi as he described certain spaces in the chapter “Nairobi is a shot of whisky.” Anyway after all this digressing, (coz UTA-Do?), the point is we all smoothly got embraced into the party.

After the workshop the party continues to grow. A month later, I would join a five weeks reading group organised by Andrea Pollio and Liza Cirolia on fintech urbanism in Africa, during which we got to read, discuss and chart ways we would contribute to the area of study. During the same period several UTA-Doers would also be meeting at a two days workshop on “Pressure in the City”. These sessions continue to grow the participants with opportunities to share their research findings, connect for future and already embark collaborations which all grows the party that is scholarship on Urban Africa.

As UTA-Do 2022 offered intimate moments where vulnerability was possible, in my subsequent school applications, when in distress whether my personal statements, academic statement and research proposal are stellar enough to get me in and bring the funding (twice beaten with admission to Cambrdige and Cape Town only to secure partial funding) party members (UTA-Doers) have become a great asset. Andrea Pollio, for example, read through and offered critical comments on my application documents that have now successfully secured me a full scholarship to the University of Oxford.

UTA-Do (ers) continue to fill each other’s library and lives

“A seed is a nexus of possibility. It is a composite of being and becoming…” Guérin Kairu, Emergent

Papers behind paywalls, as baffling as it sounds, are a norm here. During my undergraduate studies I remember one of my favourite lecturers sharing another university’s library details that would enable us to access papers. After UTA-Do, getting new journal articles that are behind paywall has become a ride in the park. We now email those with institutional access for papers.

Libraries also continue to be built through social media platforms like Twitter. My TL, for example, is no longer dry and full of corrupt and paid Kenyan political content. From the one week at UTA-Do I follow amazing UTA-Doers whose critical thoughts and posts bring to my attention papers and interesting debates in the field of urban studies and beyond. Further we also have the google mail group where amazing opportunities are shared and conversation on interesting urban aspects initiated.

In Nairobi, UTA-Doers have been overdoing it. I recently attended The GoDown Arts Centre open day where Mbugua MK was proudly showing the GoDown art centre streets designs that were partially funded by one of the UTA-Do 2022 grants. Two weeks before this, Mbugua and Brenda had exhibited the design at JKUAT, where she is a lecturer, filling each other's libraries and of the student and us on twitter.

No more native informant

“Fights against injustice are also fights against the lovelessness” (K’eguro Macharia, Love 2015, p. 68)

From this then we can see that the goal of no more native informants is being achieved. A number of UTA-Doers have secured amazing scholarships, co-authored critical pieces that we all can’t wait to see out soon. Those inbetween graduate schools expanded their academic networks that I'm sure will go a long way in their careers. To be an UTA-Do alumni is to know that wherever you are in the world there is an UTA-Do that you can reach out to for a wholesome experience.

Like our African aunties’ goodbyes that start from inside the house to outside, through the many repeated hugs, talks over the car windows before and after the prayers blessing the ‘cars made by hands of humans.’ I am afraid to attempt a conclusion here will be futile. All I will say is apply for UTA-Do 2023! Join this community of people who hold space so gently for all of us.

And if you are reading this and you are in capacity to fund, Fund UTA-Do!

By Alicia Fortuin, 4 August 2022

The first UTA-Do African Cities workshop was an emerging southern urban scholar/researcher’s dream. Hosted by the African Centre for Cities and the British Institute in Eastern Africa in Kilileshwa, Nairobi, a true reflection of a vibrant and energetic African City. It offered emerging scholars, early career practitioners and artists the opportunity to truly see themselves as thinkers and writers of and in their own cities.

To begin with, I now understand why so many scholars have based their work in Nairobi, for me, a truly African city. Perhaps because this was my first time abroad and perhaps because I’ve lived my whole life in Cape Town; and my intellectual work, thinking, theorising and writing have all been based in Cape Town, coming to a city like Nairobi presented many novel experiences.

The UTA-Do workshop, equally, was significant to me. It reinvigorated in me the importance of collaboration, getting together in person, and networking. It brought together scholars, activists, artists, and practitioners in their respective fields, working in the urban. Many scholars, surprisingly, were based at academic institutions outside of the continent but were led to the workshop via their PhD or Postdoctoral work in African cities. And many of them have lived and grew up in the cities of their research sites. All of this offered a near perfect blend of experiences, backgrounds, expertise, skills, knowledge, perceptions, and prior constructs about how participants viewed themselves, their work, and others in the room. However, perceptions and constructs were quickly dispelled when we realised, we all had a common goal; to learn what it means to theorise from the south and to learn the tools to do so in our own work. We realised we had much to learn from one another and our respective contexts, and that each brought a unique perspective. We learnt we had a significant opportunity to come together in one space for an entire week; to think, learn and unlearn about work that is important to us. Work that made us pack our bags and get on a flight in a world that is still grappling with what it means to be post-COVID-19 society. And it was worth it!

The workshop expanded the concept of an academic. It extended and offered new meanings to being a global south, southern urbanist scholar. From the beginning it offered me a provocation that said: ‘when we change ourselves, we change the city’. I found this useful as of course the point of doing ‘the work’ is so that we can transform our cities to being more liveable and dignified, equitable and safe. But how can we do this important work if we aren’t transformed ourselves? I’d like to extend that provocation further: How can we know the city if we don’t know ourselves? Although the workshop was not meant to “tie our academic shoelaces” as pointed out by our keynote speaker, Jethron Ayumbah Akallah, on day one. It emboldened within me, ideas of how to be a better academic; to look inward first; to be an activist in academia when speaking about rights of marginalised people. The seminars, speakers and my peers encouraged me to learn from my own experiences; to be rigorous and relentless in telling my stories, in writing up and sharing my findings. I was reminded that in the global south there are many centres.

I was encouraged to add and contribute to the lexicon and vocabularies of southern urbanism and to stretch our collective understanding of what it means to be ‘urban’.

The learning in the workshop extended beyond academic learning. Rather it stretched towards personal lessons, which in turn, offers new opportunities to be a better academic. Through attending the workshop, I understand the value of visiting the cities that I often hear and read about. Such that when they come up in discussions again, I have a point of reference grounded in reality. 5D impressions resurface in my memory. I remember the sounds, engines from the boda- bodas, the constant flow of vehicles in traffic, the many people on the street. I remember what it felt like to be there. The feel of the place, the sense I got that that people are hustling. The sense of urgency of devising their livelihoods.

Through visiting locales, you don’t only fall in love with images, or journal papers or the scholars who write them; you fall in love with the people in the city. The movement, the ebbs and flows, the way the city makes you feel. Walking around in Nairobi made me feel safe. I was excited to jump on to a boda-boda to get to the workshop every morning, and everyone would tell me how brave I was. Visitors and locals alike. But I didn’t feel brave, getting on a boda-boda was a means of transport, a way to avoid the traffic and to get to the next place I needed to be in the quickest amount of time. Upon reflection I’m reminded not to romanticise or vilify a concept or phenomenon, the people, or a place. Rather to constantly interrogate taken for granted assumptions. To get closer to the truth and reality, or the many truths and many realities that exist in African cities.

By Elizabeth Dessie, Miriam Maina and Smith Ouma

Undoing the city

“What are you going to do about it?” This was the question located at the heart of the UTA-Do African Cities Workshop, held in Nairobi between 23 and 27 May at the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA).

Drawing on the sheng (Kiswahili-English slang) expression “UTA-Do” in its title, the week-long workshop set out to instigate a movement towards doing research on African cities differently. The mission of the workshop resonated strongly with the ACRC’s core principles, and was focused on mutual exchange, learning, and setting grounds for the creation of future theoretical advancement on African cities, through their embodied experience and existence.

This is the first of a three-part blog series reflecting on our encounters and experiences during the workshop.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF SPACE

The UTA-Do workshop offered space for a diverse range of urban thinkers and practitioners from Africa to meet, reflect and engage in dialogue and ideas from multiple positionalities and perspectives. There were at least 40 attendees from Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, the UK and the USA, of varying ages, personal and professional backgrounds, disciplines and careers. A key achievement for the workshop was in creating a space and a forum for these African urban theorists to meet, learn, exchange and draw from these personal frameworks to contribute and enrich the programme. As participants, we were gifted with an unprecedented opportunity to bring our ideas, work, energy and experiences into connection with fellow thinkers and doers from across the continent – in fun and stimulating engagements – to grow from this encounter, and to forge connections for future collaboration.

The UTA-Do programme was structured to blend formal and informal interactions to enable co-learning, dialogue, fun, exchange, and to stimulate as well as challenge theoretical and methodological processes – highlighting the importance of generating new ways of thinking about and doing research on the African city. The programme included exclusive keynote presentations, guest speaker lectures, interactive hybrid sessions, thought-provoking working group discussions, field visits, reflection sessions, lunch and dinner events around the city, and a closing night party with Sound of Nairobi DJs.

UNDOING THE AFRICAN CITY

Beginning with a thought-provoking keynote presentation by Jethron Ayumbah Akallah, lecturer at the Department of History and Archaeology at Maseno University, the workshop situated the principles of UTA-Do within discussions on the right to the city, who owns the city and how the city is experienced and perceived. Describing the roots of the UTA-Do concept – set in city dwellers’ resistance to the challenges posed by everyday urban life – Jethron described the temporality of cityness in many African contexts, where home often resides outside of the city, in rural areas as places of origin and de facto belonging.

Jethron referenced the works of David Harvey and Jennifer Robinson, among others, raising questions around the ways that the phrase UTA-Do can manifest: when doing becomes undoing, or doing differently; as a form of protest or defiance; or as a surrender to unchanging conditions. With many challenges in the lives of marginalised urban groups relating to a lack of service provision, Jethron emphasised the need to acknowledge existing, informal provisions of water or transport as a form of UTA-Do – of making and re-making the city – despite being off the grid. Informality as a type of cityness, then, becomes essential to the UTA-Do mentality and its perseverance.

Building on these reflections and contemplations, Wangui Kimari – social justice activist, anthropologist / participatory action research coordinator for the Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC), and part of ACRC’s safety and security domain team in Nairobi – led the first interactive session of the workshop around conceptualisations of southern urbanism. This saw participants discussing the meaning behind southern urbanism in relation to the Eurocentric vision of urbanity – exploring the different ways of framing what the city is and how where we are situated theoretically shapes how we see African cities. A key takeaway was the need to “write from within UTA-Do contexts”, rather than writing about them.

A lecture led by Liza Rose Cirolia, senior researcher at the African Centre for Cities and part of ACRC’s land and connectivity domain, delved into the material fabric of the urban, exploring the fundamental importance of infrastructure in understanding the present, as well as the future, of the African city. Drawing on a variety of examples, and contextualising the narrative within the SDGs and Agenda 2063 framework of developmental objectives, Liza’s lecture took a deep dive into unravelling how “writing and narrating a moment from infrastructure” can contribute to challenging, from outside the box, ideas of a single, fixed network of thinking about African cities.

Building on this conversation, Zhengli Huang, post-doctorate researcher at Tongji University, Shanghai, further advanced the discussion on infrastructure as the development project of many African cities through the lens of large-scale Chinese interventions. Drawing on examples such as the Nairobi Expressway and the Addis Ababa light rail transit system, Zhengli’s lecture elaborated on the impact of Chinese infrastructural investment in Africa’s urban development, while also touching on how these initiatives contribute to increasing debts among many recipient nations.

The discussion around China’s role in the infrastructural development of Africa continued with presentations by Andrea Pollio, research fellow at the African Centre for Cities and Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning (DIST), Polytechnic of Turin, who also focused on the separate theme of the digital African city. Andrea presented his approach to viewing the city through a digital lens and shared some of the research challenges faced in researching a growing and increasingly digitalising African urbanity, including the visible–invisible nexus of data accessibility and reproduction.

Exploring the smart African city through the social implications of adopting ICT for basic service provision, Prince Guma, researcher in cities, infrastructures and technologies at the BIEA, shared his research into water infrastructures and technologies in Nairobi: a case study of Jisomee Mita (“read your meter”). This was a project designed to reconfigure water supply in the city by integrating low- to middle-income neighbourhoods in Nairobi, including Soweto-Kayole, into extended digitalised networks. Through his empirical findings, Prince highlighted how low-income communities mobilised in diverse ways to resist digitalised processes which had disempowering economic consequences. The research pointed to the nuances and complexities emerging from the rapid digitalisation of service provision in cities in Kenya and beyond.

UTA-Do | 2022 | Nairobi

The inaugural UTA-Do African Cities Workshop was hosted in Nairobi at the British Institute in Eastern Africa. UTA-Do 2022 was conceptualised and convened by Wangui Kimari, Prince Guma and Liza Rose Cirolia.

The 2022 programme was made possible by the generous support of the African Centre for Cities (University of Cape Town), the British Institute in Eastern Africa, the Mathare Social Justice Centre, the University of Basel, the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, under the project “Examining nature–society relations through urban infrastructure” (project number: P19-0286:1), and the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations, under the MAC programme.

For more information see:

• Event page

• Programme

For information on future UTA-Do events, please contact Wangui (kuikimari@gmail.com) or Liza (liza.cirolia@uct.ac.za).