Exploring the role of party politics in the governance of African cities

This chapter is inspired by the gap we find in academic literature on the role, impact and place of party politics in urban governance, at both the metropolitan and neighbourhood levels. Much evidence in our fieldwork demonstrates the importance of political parties, their agents and party politics in the everyday lives of city residents, as well as in their discourses, practices, strategies of access to resources, hopes and sometimes fears. However, it seems that few academics, regardless of their discipline (e.g. political studies, urban ethnography, urban politics, urban studies, sociology of social movements), take the matter seriously..