The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) publishes a report each year that highlights a specific theme. Industrial Policy in Africa was the theme, for example, in 2014 was Industrial Policy for Africa. The theme for 2016 is Green Industrialization. This is significant because it flows from a resolution on greening African economies adopted at the African Union Conference of Ministers of Economy and Finance in March 2014 (an event that I attended). It also relates closely to the Green Economy Toolkit that we have developed for UNEP that will be applied in five African countries: Rwanda, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia and Mozambique. I have now been commissioned by UNECA to write a position paper on Green Industrialization and Cities in Africa that will be an input into the 2016 UNECA Report. I am excited about this because it will force me to integrate a lot of recent work and talks where I have attempted to connect ‘structural transformation’ and ‘urbanization’ in Africa, including the framing of the African urbanization component of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2016 that I am co-curating with Edgar Pieterse. Not easy because macro-economists ignore urbanization, and urbanists tend not to connect urbanisation to macro-economic processes and policies. The core message is clear: the ‘where’ of economic development (green or not) can no longer be ignored. Economic development always happens ‘somewhere’, and if those spaces are structurally and functionally dysfunctional, economic development will be severely constrained.
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