Moving Beyond Colonialism

The architectural state of affairs for town halls across postcolonial Sub-Saharan Africa is richly symbolic of colonial and national government relationships to municipalities in the region. Colonial-era town halls or city halls have often been disregarded or demolished, while postcolonial regimes in most cases have spent as little money renovating the old municipal buildings as they have constructing new ones. The second colonial occupation, a term for the postwar European investments in Africa aimed at shaping allies out of colonies clamoring for independence – and then independence itself – did initiate construction of some new town halls across the continent between the 1950s and early 1970s. Most notable among these were the town halls built for the new capitals that a number of countries established, such as in Lilongwe, Malawi. ¹ New municipal buildings also appeared in older cities – Nairobi, Kenya gained an impressive city council building in the 1950s, while Lusaka, Zambia, had a new one built after independence. But besides these and a few other cases, the general terms one might use to describe the state of most African town halls would be peripheralization and disrepair.