ABSTRACT
Politics in urban Africa are prominent in the lives of many townsmen, profoundly influencing their economic and social affairs. The impact of urban politics sometimes extends beyond the locality to the country in which it is located, and occasionally even to intra-African affairs and international relations. Initial research on the relationship between urbanization and political participation revealed a high correlation between these two variables when countries were used as the units of analysis. The patterns of political conflict in African towns are highly complex and constantly in flux. In the political arena, responses of African townsmen are clearly oriented to coethnics. Polyethnic political conflicts have, considered from the perspective of a government’s performance, positive and negative consequences. Political factions probably exist in all the smallest political systems, whether one-party, two-party, or multiparty. The literature on urban Africa contains many statements about the existence of factionalism.
