How the East African Corridor Spanning the Indian Ocean from Somalia to South Africa Is Being Radically Re-Shaped

SUMMER 2017 A PUBLICATION OF THE MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGIOUS AND ETHNIC DIVERSITY IN ASSOCIATION WITH CITYSCAPES MAGAZINE HOW THE EAST AFRICAN CORRIDOR SPANNING THE INDIAN OCEAN FROM SOMALIA TO SOUTH AFRICA IS BEING RADICALLY RE-SHAPED EDITED BY: TAU TAVENGWA & LÉONIE NEWHOUSE CORRIDORS_Design_v1.indd 1 2017/08/17 8:00 AM OUR GOAL WITH ‘THINKING ALONG THE CORRIDOR’ IS TO THEORIZE GENERALLY ABOUT THE URBAN IN EAST AFRICA, BUT ALSO TO PROVOKE THE SORT OF LATERAL OR OBLIQUE COMPARISON ADVOCATED BY JENNY ROBINSON—COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE SPECIFIC CITIES, BUT ALSO BETWEEN HINTERLANDS, TOWNS AND URBAN CENTERS LOCATED IN THIS CORRIDOR SHAPED BY A RISING INDIAN OCEAN ECONOMY LÉONIE S. NEWHOUSE & ABDOUMALIQ SIMONE CORRIDORS_Design_v1.indd 2 2017/08/17 8:00 AM 03 AN INTRODUCTION Inhabiting the corridor: surging resource economies and urban life in East Africa LÉONIE S. NEWHOUSE & ABDOUMALIQ SIMONE he East African of the region as a substantial intersecting changes—in land use corridor that spans node in the enhancement of the and ownership, in the mechanisms the Indian Ocean Indian Ocean as an economic of infrastructural investment, and from Somalia to powerhouse. in the physical remaking of cities. South Africa is Moreover, the reformatting of T in the process In this series of essays, we probe policy and legal frameworks taking of being radically re-shaped. the on-going transformations in place in the region’s primary urban The area has become one of the East African corridor, paying centres—Nairobi, Kampala, Dar es the world’s new epicentres for particular attention how these are Salaam, Addis Ababa and Maputo— investment in resource extraction, mediated in and through social has allowed financial flows to corporate agriculture and life. We do so by considering ideas be directed into transforming infrastructure development. Yet of circulations and crossings— large tracts of existing urban as this infusion of material and between hinterlands and urban built environments, ready for financial investment is reshaping centres, as well as within a rising appropriation. Taken together, economies, its effects are much Indian Ocean economy. these processes are spurring new broader. They extend to residents’ forms of internecine conflict, cultural imaginaries, everyday The Indian Ocean littoral has been urban inequality and population meanings and the organization the object of increasing volumes displacement. of social life along this coastal of inward investment, occurring region. Images of a near future of across different temporalities Yet these new, high-end suburbs smooth and easy transport from and scales. It is not yet clear, and satellite cities are also port to city inspire some actors’ though, how the distinct nations often oriented to a variety of attempts to grab hold of the reigns making up the corridor, fraught elsewhere. They look outward of urban restructuring, to steer it with the difficult colonial toward new resource frontiers to their advantage. While others inheritances and post-colonial open to consolidation, or toward look to revitalize memories of conflicts, might consolidate these burgeoning markets ready for long-standing trade relations investments for broader social capture—as the next generation of with Asia in order to emphasize and economic gains. One of the Africans leapfrog into the future. and historically root the potential challenges is the speed of these As such, these investments signal CITYSCAPES|CORRIDORS CORRIDORS_Design_v1.indd 3 2017/08/17 8:00 AM 04 not only a re-making of the city, As these questions make clear, but of the relations that connect corridors are not simply economic urban life to its material, social fabrications. They are conduits and imaginary hinterlands. of force. As they reach between hubs—of generation and exchange, How do such rapid transformations of sea and shore, of city and intersect with enduring problems hinterland—corridors organize of underdevelopment, shrinking economies, politics and social volumes of arable land, a highly life around particular directional mobile population composed of priorities. In this way, corridors both speculative sojourners and produce certain alignments, which political refugees, high rates of may mean disconnection as often unemployment and reliance upon as it does connection. Corridors makeshift economies? As the are also strange non-places, Indian Ocean region becomes an meant for passage, for movement- epicenter of new formations of through rather than inhabitation. investment that draw it further In our call to think about what within Asian financial, technical it means to inhabit the corridor, and cultural circuits, how will then, we want to consider how specific national and local they channel city life in relation interests act to direct these flows? to materialities and imaginaries What are the critical institutions of connection, but also how they and mechanisms leveraging these are themselves transformed and transformations, and what cultural directed (or diverted) through contestations underlie them? people’s discrete and multiple What kinds of cosmopolitan acts habitation. Contrary to an imaginaries—in terms of image of unimpeded connection, anticipatory cultural, aesthetic then, the corridor is economically, and bodily practices—do they politically and socially productive elicit? precisely because of such accretions of habits of circulation, of stopping to catch one’s breath, or racing to get a leg up. The channelling effects of corridors are not merely evident in the physical transformations Corridors produce of the built environment. They certain allignments are also reflected in the ways that people attune themselves which may mean to the new or anticipated opportunities that go along disconnection as often with these transformations, the they do connection ways that people’s attention is drawn into the grand narratives of development and how they attempt to inhabit these imagined spaces and make them their own. From the substantial writings about affect in recent years, As a plurality of fault lines and we know how such collective alliances emerge in the efforts to affective atmospheres propel shape the control of resources, alliances that exert force— how do the region’s cities things leap over, circumvent, recompose social and economic leak through, spread out, ramify arrangements? As the region’s beyond household, nation, kin, cities are increasingly imagined citizenship and class. But if we as the nexus for substantially are to avoid turning this focus on expanded transnational affect into some kind of protean interchanges, what kinds of vitalism, it is important to keep social complexities are likely in mind the way that people, in to ensue? Are there new modes their multiplicity of interests, of urban development that do capacities, and commitments not simply mirror standardized instantiate themselves in formats inherited from elsewhere, structuring manoeuvres, the but rather emerge from long- way they extend themselves honed practices of inhabitation as available to be inserted into on the part of the region’s urban structures and plans not of their majority? own making as a way of proffering CITYSCAPES|CORRIDORS CORRIDORS_Design_v1.indd 4 2017/08/17 8:00 AM CITYSCAPES|CORRIDORS a certain claim, or of maximizing What kinds of values are What kinds of modes of the scope and efficacy of actions generated—how, and by whom— conveyance, media, aesthetic and events. Inhabiting the in the production of rapid turn- performances and mappings are corridor, then, means holding on around-times, pauses, bottlenecks deployed to organize senses of to histories that might otherwise and other forms of in/efficiencies? the region, as well as ideas and be jettisoned, or attempting to viewpoints about what courses of concretize openings and gains as How do new imaginations of action are possible, profitable, and the ground on which these have regional coherence along the valuable? been built slips away with the East African coast relate to the next tide of investment, policy specificities of internecine How do inhabitants acquire innovation, formalization or cooperation and conflict on the a working knowledge about strategic abandonment. ground, and the emergence of where to go, how to create and new scales of contestation or mobilize assets, forge itineraries In this diverse collection of collaboration? of circulation, put together essays, our goal is to explore what legitimate claims on places and it means to inhabit the corridor. How are imaginaries of the city resources? We consider the myriad ways made use of as urban inhabitants that people connect to, move re-shape their material As cities are wedged in the through and inhabit these spaces- surroundings? interstices between land and sea, in-transformation. Grounded in how are changing configurations various urban and urbanizing In what ways are the acts of on the disposition of land and the nodes along the East African collecting and arranging the navigational framework of the sea corridor, we respond, in our own material requisites for dwelling reworking urban socialities? ways and in combination, to a embroiled in, or disarticulated set of concerns that intersect from broader social and political How do new modalities of with an East African turn toward struggles? extraction, occupancy and Asia. While much is new in these displacement conjoin with the oceanic connections, we must How do urban inhabitants weigh growth cities and urban ways of also attend

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