ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines transspecies urban theory as grounded in animal agency and the concept of encounter. It highlights the role and significance of livestock in African cities, drawing on the re-animation of urban scholarship. African cities are sites of interspecies encounters and mingling that shape urban form, function and dynamics, and that transform the capacities and potential of the human and nonhuman animal dwellers that reside there. In particular, domesticated livestock animals such as chickens, goats, sheep, donkeys and cattle, serve as pivotal actors in urban and peri-urban areas given their vital role in people's everyday lives and national development agendas. The chapter focuses on animal geography to offer new perspectives on urban theory that incorporate animal actors. It examines the case of chickens and people in Greater Gaborone, Botswana, offering insights on how urbanization processes are inextricably wrapped up in human-animal relations, and revealing the dialectical relationships between chickens, people, and the city.
