Suchergebnisse

In Freetown, Sierra Leone, despite the progress in the official response to the COVID-19 outbreak, there remain concerns about the limited involvement of local communities and the use of bottom-up participatory approaches in the response. While the official response has been characterised by restrictive public health measures such as partial lockdowns and the declaration of a state of a public health emergency, for the urban poor, the implications have been wide-ranging including the deepening of inequalities, especially among residents in slum-like informal settlements who already suffer from pre-COVID-19 structural challenges and vulnerabilities. This includes challenges linked to health systems fragility, environmental risks and uncertainties around livelihoods in the informal economy, which forces many to live from hand to mouth. Ultimately, these vulnerabilities challenge the acceptance and compliance of the restrictive state-led health measures, which puts them at risk of infections. To address these structural inequalities and foster an inclusive dialogue, a City Learning Platform, comprising the Freetown City Council, local community residents and their groups, and a few non-governmental organisations have been working creatively to respond to the COVID-19 challenges faced by the urban poor. But, while this alternative bottom-up approach has allowed the coordination of response to address community-level priorities more effectively, how well the platform has been able to successfully sustain the interest and commitments of vulnerable groups and to build their capacities, co-create knowledge and explore new opportunities has yet to be understood. This article highlights the strategic value of Community Learning Platforms in sustaining local responses to the pandemic. It also explores how social protection measures are shaped into the local response and help tackle deeply entrenched inequalities in the communities. The article additionally reflects on the challenges and opportunities for using the Community Learning Platforms in the COVID-19 response.

Residents of informal settlements in urban centres in Africa are known to suffer disproportionate burdens of environmental and socio-economic inequalities and are often excluded from macro-level visions and policies that seek to make cities safer and prosperous (Birkmann, 2007; da Silva & Braulio, 2014; Dodman et al., 2013). This tension undermines the validity of orthodox, 'expert-led' visions, policies and measures of prosperity that are distant from the lived-experience of marginalised urban residents. Based on new empirical work with communities in three informal settlements in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, this article argues that novel methodological and theoretical approaches to co-producing context-specific policy-relevant knowledge about pathways to prosperity (translated by the communities as maisha bora, 'the good life') creates inclusive spaces for both community participation in processes of urban knowledge production and critical social enquiry that can lead to grounded theory building. By co-producing both an agreed and relevant methodological approach for the study, and its subsequent documentation and analysis, this work contributes valuable empirical insights about the capacities and capabilities of local communities to shape and influence urban policy-making and in this way speaks to calls for a global urbanism (Ong, 2011; Robinson, 2016) that brings diverse voices and geographies to urban theory to better account for the diversity of urban experiences and processes found in twenty-first century cities.

This article aims to understand grassroots responses to COVID-19 and how they impacted the well-being of low-income informal communities in Dar es Salaam. An exploratory qualitative research design, using semi-structured questionnaires, was adopted for use in Ubungo Kisiwani and Hanna Nassif settlements. Focus group discussions with select members of the community, including women's groups, and mtaa (sub-ward) and ten-cell leaders, were held. The selection of respondents took into account the socio-economic and spatial characteristics of the two communities. Although Tanzania's response to COVID-19 was based on a partial lockdown, these measures led to decline in income and loss of livelihoods among the poor. Likewise, several low-income persons, particularly those working in the hospitality industry, were temporarily retrenched owing to the poor business environment, severely undermining their ability to pay for basic services. The largely collective but limited social capital deployed by grassroots actors were crucial safety nets for the most vulnerable. These have to be acknowledged and coordinated. Mixed land use in informal settlements also proved useful in providing convenient access to the basic needs of households; reducing the need to travel outside one's neighbourhood, thus enhancing the resilience of the communities.