RURBANAFRICA · African Rural-City Connections

The overall objective of the African Rural-City Connections (RurbanAfrica) project is to explore the connections between rural transformations, mobility, and urbanization processes and analyze how these contribute to an understanding of the scale, nature and location of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. The RurbanAfrica project will advance the research agenda on rural-city connections in sub-Saharan Africa by addressing a range of crucial components: agricultural transformations, rural livelihoods, city dynamics, and access to services in cities. In this respect the project will challenge a number of generally accepted ‘truths’ about rural and city development, and the importance and implication of migration in shaping these. It will thereby question the overall negative interpretations of the economic role of rural-urban mobility and migration in sub-Saharan Africa and generate new insights into the relationship between rural-city connections and poverty dynamics. The project will include nine partners; four European, one international, and four sub-Saharan African. RurbanAfrica focuses on four country cases: Rwanda, Tanzania, Cameroon and Ghana and examine in-depth two rural-city connections in each of the case countries. Research is organized into six work packages: Agricultural transformation, rural livelihoods, city dynamics, access to services, knowledge platform and policy dialogue, and synthesis, dissemination and management. Central to the approach is the on-going integration of policy research, policy dialogue, knowledge sharing and empirical research. Through ongoing collaboration between senior and junior researchers from European and sub-Saharan African partners, and co-supervising of PhD students, the project will contribute to capacity building and potentially impact curriculum development. The research and dissemination process will be supported by a scientific advisory board, with members from European and sub-Saharan African research institutions.