Urbanization in African countries entails substantial growth in the urban population and economic development. The interdependent progress of the population and economy significantly impacts the sustainable development of these nations. By constructi...
African cities are growing rapidly into inefficient, unsustainable, resource-starved ecosystems that negatively affect the local economy and food production. Food as a critical resource needs to be produced and managed more efficiently by local commu...
Africa’s unprecedented, uncontrolled and unplanned urbanization has put many African cities under constant ecological and environmental threat. One of the critical ecological impacts of urbanization likely to adversely affect Africa’s urban dwellers...
Exploring the urban spatial pattern and expansion characteristics of African countries under shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) is crucial to optimizing urban development in Africa and ensuring ecological sustainability. We use land and socioeconom...
Farmers’ training through experiential learning plays a crucial role in the success of their farming businesses. Aspiring farmers seek crucial skill sets, including financial management, marketing strategies, pricing, budgeting, whole-farm plan...
While many studies have used Earth observations to quantify urbanization in Africa, there is still a lack of empirical evidence on the role of secondary cities in the fastest urbanizing region in the world. Moreover, the diversity of urbanization pro...
13 March 2019
Ecological evidence suggests that neighborhoods with more tax foreclosures also have more adverse birth outcomes. However, whether neighborhood-level tax foreclosures impact individual-level risk for adverse birth outcomes is unknown. We assessed whe...
This study evaluates the impact of unemployment and government financial assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic on the working-age population’s mental health and further examines the differential impacts between urban and non-urban groups, as...
In recent years, a new era of interventionism has emerged targeting the development of African cities, manifested in ‘fantasy’ urban plans, surging infrastructure investments and global policy agendas. What the implications of this new er...
The faith leaders of North American cities actively engage in the civic affairs of their urban communities. Religious leadership, charismatic preaching, and, possibly, reputation of prophetic powers, continue to play important roles especially in th...
University–community partnerships have long sought to develop interventions to empower historically marginalized community members. However, there is limited critical attention to tensions faced when community engaged courses support urban plan...
João António de Aguiar was one of the most prolific Portuguese architect-planners of the twentieth century, producing an extensive body of work within the framework of the 1934 legislative reform. He employed Urban Development Plans as...
Traffic source emission inventories for the rapidly growing West African urban cities are necessary for better characterization of local vehicle emissions released into the atmosphere of these cities. This study is based on local field measurements i...
22 January 2015
Underweight and overweight are adverse effects of malnutrition and both are associated with negative health consequences in children and adolescents. In South Africa, the burden of economic and social disparity coexists with malnutrition in children....
Despite the growing interest in implementing sponge cities (SPC), their potential is not yet being tapped in many fast-growing Sub-Saharan African cities. This is remarkable because SPC interventions can contribute considerably to increasing water sa...
The tropical urbanism of coastal East Africa has a thousand-year-long history, making it a recognized example of sustainable urbanism. Although economically dependent on trade, the precolonial Islamic towns of the so-called Swahili coast did not feat...
The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by SARS-CoV-2, disrupted work and life patterns worldwide, underscoring the urgency of addressing climate change. Despite contributing minimally to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, Africa faces disproportionate vul...
Built cultural heritage in East Africa is often interpreted and taught through monument-based, stylistic, or externally derived frameworks that insufficiently account for the region’s overlapping environmental, cultural, historical, and socio-s...
6 September 2021
Africa’s PM2.5 pollution has become a security hazard, but the understanding of the varying effects of urbanization on driven mechanisms of PM2.5 concentrations under the rapid urbanization remains largely insufficient. Compared with the direct impac...
Greater Casablanca, one of Africa’s largest metropolitan regions, is undergoing significant spatial and demographic transformation. Yet, the underlying patterns of these dynamics remain poorly understood. This study investigates population dyna...
Digital connectivity depends not only on infrastructure, but also on the material devices used to access networks. This study examines electronic devices’ availability and prices in Saint-Louis, a mid-sized Senegalese city, to address the lack...
The global population is experiencing a remarkable demographic shift. The population pyramid of African countries looks very different from that of the West, with a youthful population forming the base of the African population, while the population...
Rapid urbanization and inadequate sanitation infrastructure threaten water security in many sub-Saharan African cities. This study aimed to provide an integrated assessment of groundwater, surface water, and wastewater quality in Bangui by characteri...
10 November 2017
The multifactorial causes of obesity require multilevel and multicomponent solutions, but such combined strategies have not been tested to improve the community food environment. We evaluated the impact of a multilevel (operating at different levels...
This paper analyzes the mobility disruptions experienced by urban residents in relation to heavy precipitation and flooding of roads. The empirical focus is Accra, Ghana, a rapidly growing African city with discernible challenges in its transport sys...
Edible green infrastructure provides a pathway to enhancing food security and advancing sustainability in underprivileged Sub-Saharan communities. This study explores the potential of modular living wall systems (LWSs) with African Vegetables (AVs) t...
Decent, affordable housing and secure housing tenure remain elusive for Africa’s urban majority. The urban majority is expected to live in self-help housing, reflected in the fact that 62% of African urban dwellers live in urban informal settle...
Urban settlements range from small villages in rural areas to large metropoles with densely packed infrastructures. Urbanization presents many challenges to the maintenance of freshwater quality and conservation of freshwater biota, especially in Afr...
This study is based on the evidence collected during the “Technical e-Learning Course on Wastewater Treatment”, an international training project developed in 2020 in Italy by the Hydroaid Association, in collaboration with Turin Polytechnic. This wo...
Urbanization has placed considerable constraints on the preservation and maintenance of formal green spaces in African cities. This situation has given attention to the potentials of informal green spaces (IGS). While studies on IGS in African cities...
This article is based on field research in two South African host cities of the Men’s Football World Cup 2010 (eThekwini and Johannesburg). The discussed work is part of the research project “Festivalisation” of Urban Governance: The Production of So...
A growing awareness that highly intensified agricultural systems have made a substantial worldwide contribution to the worsening of the resilience capacity of natural ecosystems has, over the last twenty years, brought general attention to agroecolog...
Combining multivariable statistics and geostatistics with landscape metrics, we attempted to quantify the spatial pattern of urbanization in the city of Niamey, Niger. Landscape metrics provided local quantification of both landscape composition and...
The population of Africa is expected to rise to 2.5 billion by 2050, with more than 80% of this increase concentrated in cities. Africa’s anticipated population growth has serious implications for urban resource utilization and management, nece...
The degradation of rivers in urban landscapes is alarming and impaired their ecological functions and the services they provide to society. In African cities, urban rivers are among the most degraded ecosystems, yet ecologically sustainable utilisati...
Following population growth and rapid urbanization, West African cities have become major sources of anthropogenic pollution. Additionally, Saharan dust has had a significant impact, representing a potentially toxic mix of sources for the population....
Background: While cardiovascular diseases (CVD) manifest in adulthood, vascular changes may begin in childhood. Early markers of CVD, such as carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT), have not been well studied in children in the African setting. The po...
This study evaluates urban growth and access to drinking water in Bukavu from 1980 to 2024, combining diachronic Landsat image analysis, demographic and geospatial data, and household surveys. Bukavu’s population rose from 280,000 to over 2 mil...
Rapid urbanization in developing countries has been observed to be relatively high in the last two decades, especially in the Asian and African regions. Although many researchers have made efforts to improve the understanding of the urbanization tren...
Maternal pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) and subsequent gestational weight gain (GWG) are strong predictors of maternal and infant outcomes; however the influence of dietary patterns on BMI-specific GWG is unclear. This study identifies patterns...
Introduction: To determine dietary intake of 19 to 64 years old urban Africans in Cape Town in 2009 and examine the changes between 1990 and 2009. Methods: A representative cross-sectional sample (n = 544), stratified by gender and age was randomly s...
Urban gardening, particularly through food-producing green spaces, is increasingly recognized as a key strategy for addressing the complex challenges of climate change, food insecurity, biodiversity loss, and social inequity in African cities. This s...
For most sub-Saharan African (SSA) cities, in order to control the historically unplanned urban growth and stimulate sustainable future urban development, there is a need for accurate identification of the past and present urban land use (ULU). Howev...
6 March 2020
Aluminium (Al) is a non-essential neurotoxicant and there is limited information regarding exposure to Al in utero. This study sought to evaluate the in utero exposure to Al in urban South African women, its effects on birth outcomes and possible syn...
Obesity and hypertension are among the major contributors to the prevalence of non-communicable diseases in South Africa. The link between obesity and hypertension poses a major risk for mortality due to cardiovascular disease. This scoping review st...
The aim of this study was to investigate differences/similarities in dietary habits and eating practices between younger and older, rural and urban South African adolescents in specific environments (home, community and school) and their associations...
In the West African Monetary and Economic Union (UEMOA), information on the characteristics of the users and patterns of electricity end-uses remains hard to find. This study aims to contribute to reducing the gap in research on domestic electricity...
Diet quality may be a unique target for preventing and managing obesity-related osteoarthritis (OA). Using the Healthy Eating Index-2010 (HEI-2010), this study examined the nutrient intake and diet quality of 400 urban overweight and obese primarily...
The idea that food insecurity can be resolved by increasing the presence of supermarkets has been gaining traction in African cities and has recently gained political traction in Africa. This paper interrogates the potential value and risks associate...
Health disparities have been associated with diet quality inequalities. Study objectives were to determine if race and/or income were associated with the diet quality of White and African American urban women and to compare core food and beverage cat...
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