ABSTRACT
Everyday lived experiences and practices in the rapidly growing, densely populated urban spaces and regions of the African continent remain insufficiently noticed in the crafting of policy agendas at the global level. Instead, these agendas have assumed a universalised notion of the urban that disconnects African cities from their context-dependent practices.
This chapter discusses interpretations of the urbanisation of the African continent as they interact with global agendas. It interrogates the fuzziness of their normative terms in these agendas, noting factors that have limited Africa from being a generator and determinant of policy and development. The chapter is based on a literature review that forms a foundation for other chapters in Everyday urban practices in Africa: Disrupting global norms. It introduces the everyday, provides examples from the “Southern turn” in urban research, and discusses the origin of and debates about the everyday. This calls attention to the interaction between the local and the global and the challenges this poses, which in turn forms the rationale for the productive disruption of norms or buzzwords in global agendas rather than a mere localisation. Thus, the chapter calls for a review, refinement, and reconsideration of the adequacy and fit of “global norms.”
