ABSTRACT
Globalization has become an increasingly powerful force that affects all socioeconomic systems and political life at both national and local levels around the world. Urban development and city growth, which has been accelerating in Africa, has been caught up in the simultaneously complemen-tary and contentious nexus between global influence and local traditions. From a global perspective, the ideas and practices in urban development related to planning, design, and governance have crossed national and city boundaries and triggered imitative policies and practices (Zukin, this vol-ume), whereas entrenched local conditions can continue to hamper them. Today many African cities are adopting participatory budgeting in a man-ner aligned with a larger global trend. Participatory budgeting is a social accountability mechanism that has its origins in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, but has since spread to Europe, Asia, and Africa over the last two decades or so (Sintomer et al. 2010: 9).
