ABSTRACT
Since the early 2000s, infrastructure-led development has been at the forefront of the development cooperation discourse, and its key assumptions have been incorporated into policy agendas promoting sustainable development. Ethiopia and many other African governments have adopted such strategies to stimulate economic growth and steer urban development. The failure of infrastructure projects to deliver their intended developmental impacts and their potentially harmful effects are often understood as problems of implementation. However, this chapter argues that these unintended impacts can partly be traced back to development policy agendas that are internally inconsistent and inadequately tailored to the realities of urban Africa. Focusing on transport infrastructure, the chapter discusses the treatment of transport infrastructure in the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda, drawing on critical scholarship on sustainability strategies, academic work on the linkages between infrastructure and urban development, and relevant case studies from across Africa, particularly Ethiopia, as well as policy papers. The discussion is further informed by interviews with Ethiopian planners. The chapter identifies four main issues related to the nexus between economic growth and development, the beneficiaries of infrastructure provision, the institutional and sectoral contexts of infrastructure planning, and the understanding of urbanisation in Africa.
