Comparative Learning Through Community Exchange
From Kampala to Nairobi and Lagos, hear how communities share knowledge across borders to challenge urban inequality and push for change.
In this episode - recorded on location in Kampala, Uganda during an African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) workshop in late April - we delve into questions of how urban communities in informal settlements can build power through their own forms of knowledge and data collection, and how two-way exchanges between cities can strengthen this process.
For the main discussion, Tom was there in person with two of the research programme’s ‘City Manager’s - Jack Makau (City Manager for Nairobi) and Temilade Sesan (City Manager for Lagos). The discussion is first introduced by Beth and Tom who set the scene and provide some background, and following the main conversation they also offer concluding reflections.
In this episode, we explore:
- How can community-led data collection and analysis help to shift the levers of urban power?
- What role can action research play in changing the attitudes of governments towards the urban poor?
- How can we move from individual to collective solutions through community action and transnational learning?
Along the way, we consider how co-produced urban research with communities changes the kinds of questions we ask as researchers; the challenges of bringing government to the table to take community priorities seriously; and the role of civil society organizations and universities as intermediaries in this process.Those interested in the issues and processes discussed here can delve further into the history through our discussion with Diana Mitlin in'.
