Political Change in African Cities: Transforming State-Society Relations

African countries are undergoing a transformative urban transition that has profound implications for the continent and the globe. Given its importance, research has extensively explored the social and economic implications of both the shift from rural to urban modes of living and rapid growth of urban settlements. This article considers the political dimension of urbanization in African countries, which has been somewhat overlooked despite African cities becoming significant political territories and sites of social mobilisation and new political movements. It argues that the changing nature of how and where people live across the continent can reshape state-society relations and foster political change, but the specific ways it may do so remain unclear and under theorized. Further, we maintain that the ways in which urbanization shapes political outcomes is heterogenous, and relates to both the context of individual places and the specific process of urban change. To develop this, we review the nascent literature on how urban change and political change may co-emerge, and outline an analytical framework to understand the nature of urban and political change in African societies. We then show how such a framework can be applied to synthesise new research on urbanization and changing state-society relations at different scales, and identify implications for future research agendas on the changing politics of African cities.