Researchers are crafting a new ‘African urban science’, rooted in local realities and embedded in collaborative practice. By Desmond Thompson (Nature Africa reporter)

In 2025, infrahub.africa partners held workshops across South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria, using the platform’s examples to reimagine just and sustainable urban futures.

The infrahub.africa database of infrastructure innovations are making their way into the classrooms and assignments of South African Universities. Students interested in sustainable and just urban transitions are now able to learn and be inspired directly by communities and innovators that are plugging infrastructure and service delivery gaps across the continent in new and suprising ways.

‍As Africa undergoes a monumental demographic shift, the Urban2063 Coalition has emerged as a critical voice advocating for sustainable urbanisation as the cornerstone of the continent's structural transformation. Led by the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, this coalition is aligning the development of African cities with the ambitious vision of the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

This is the first in our series "Faces behind the Cases", which examines the people who build this archive, the philosophies guiding them, and the relational work that makes this knowledge accessible.‍ We spoke with Dr Dingha Chrispo, a postdoctoral fellow and researcher who has substantially contributed to infrahub.africa’s portfolio of nature-based solutions. For Dingha, research is an extension of his own life, as we learnt through interviewing him on his work on infrahub.africa…

At policy and conceptual level there is considerable agreement across society on the need for spatial integration, but the details of how to effect integrated service delivery that can also attend to the profound legacy of spatial inequality still need to be ironed out. Consequently, since 2009, the African Centre for Cities (ACC) has been engaged in several speculative research projects, including the Integration Syndicate and the Density Syndicate, which seek to harness the possibilities for social integration across the city of Cape Town in South Africa.

“There is an urgent need for African perspectives and stories to redefine the terms of our development,” said Cameroonian community engagement strategist and researcher, Chrispo Balila Dingha. With colleagues from the CST, ACC and UFS, Dingha joined a diverse group—from engineers and economists to futurists and social scientists—at a year-end workshop in South Africa, to start articulating what an agenda for more sustainable and just urban infrastructure for the continent could look like.

Moderating a session titled ‘Sustainable Infrastructure and innovative approaches to service delivery in African cities’, Prof. Pieterse made the case for focusing sustainable infrastructure efforts on what makes the most sense in the contexts of Africa’s cities, including initiatives such as those featured on infrahub.africa.

On 25 May (Africa Day) 2023, the African Centre for Cities and Urban Futures Studio launched the infrahub.africa website during a webinar at RISE Africa 2023.

In November 2022, the African Centre for Cities, along with its hosting partners, convened the African Infrastructure Futures Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

The African Urban Futures project was officially launched at a webinar entitled “Shifting systems: infrastructure innovation for sustainable African cities” during ICLEI’s third annual Rise Africa online event in May 2022.