FEATURE // What the world’s future cities can learn from Africa

CWC  //  CWC Notes

FEATURE

What the world's future cities can learn from Africa

African cities demonstrate that innovation flourishes when local knowledge, resilience, cultural authenticity, and systems thinking are harnessed to solve complex challenges, says Professor Edgar Pieterse of UCT's African Centre for Cities

A visitor spending a week in Johannesburg’s innovation districts, Nairobi’s fintech ecosystem, or Lagos’s creative economy is witnessing new models of work, enterprise, and cultural production emerge in real time. To better understand what drives the growth and evolution of African cities, we spoke to Professor Edgar Pieterse, founder and director of UCT’s African Centre for Cities. As one of Africa’s leading urban scholars, Pieterse has spent decades researching the forces shaping cities across the continent – from rapid urbanisation and informal economies to climate resilience, governance, and sustainable development. His work explores how African cities can become more inclusive, liveable, and economically resilient, making him well placed to unpack the trends, challenges, and opportunities defining the continent’s urban future.

Pieterse argues that cities thrive when they build on their own cultural assets rather than imitate global models, adding that Africa’s creative economy represents a significant and underutilised source of future growth. Authenticity, expressed through local food, architecture, culture, and identity, is increasingly becoming a competitive advantage. It is this idea that Africa’s greatest urban opportunities lie in embracing what makes its cities distinct that underpins our conversation.

Cities built through innovation, not imitation

According to Pieterse, innovation in African cities emerges from local realities rather than imported models. Pieterse points to waste economies as an example. Long before concepts such as the circular economy entered mainstream discourse, informal networks across African cities were already recycling, repurposing, and upcycling materials at scale. Waste becomes a resource, illustrating how necessity drives innovation.

At the heart of this innovation is constraint. Unlike innovation hubs such as Boston, Cambridge, or Silicon Valley, where capital and infrastructure are abundant, many African cities operate under conditions of scarcity. Pieterse notes that scarcity often becomes the catalyst for inventive responses. 
 

“African cities innovate because they must solve problems at scale and often with limited resources,” he says.

Rethinking informality as economic intelligence

For Pieterse, informality is not a marginal feature of African economies, it is often the dominant one. Across much of sub-Saharan Africa excluding South Africa, informal businesses account for most economic activity, with the informal economy contributing between 50% and 70% of GDP in many countries.

A recent OECD report, entitled Africa's Urbanisation Dynamics 2025, similarly argues that informality is central to how African cities function and cannot be treated as a temporary anomaly. The report projects that Africa’s urban population will double from 704 million in 2020 to 1.4 billion by 2050, with cities absorbing 80% of the continent’s population growth. Much of the urban landscape of the future has yet to be built, creating a rare opportunity to experiment with new approaches to planning, governance and sustainability.

While he cautions against romanticising informality, Pieterse argues that business leaders and policymakers have much to learn from it. Operating with limited capital and high uncertainty, informal entrepreneurs have developed remarkable resilience, adaptability and responsiveness to local markets. Their survival depends on a deep understanding of the communities they serve and the social and cultural dynamics that shape demand. Pieterse also highlights the significant role women play in the informal economy. Research from Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) suggests that up to 80% of informal businesses are led by women, often despite structural barriers and discriminatory systems. Informality is not simply a challenge to be solved, it is a source of economic intelligence.

Fintech as urban infrastructure

Fintech is reshaping how cities function socially and economically, extending far beyond financial inclusion. Pieterse argues that digital finance has become a critical layer of urban infrastructure, strengthening trust networks, supporting entrepreneurship and expanding access to services, capital, and opportunity.

GSMA research across Ghana, Kenya, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, and Tanzania found that mobile money adoption contributed to GDP gains of between 8% and 10% in 2023, with Kenya alone seeing an estimated USD24 billion economic impact.

For Pieterse, the success of digital innovation lies in its ability to work with existing social and economic systems rather than replace them. Informal traders, workers and entrepreneurs have adapted rapidly to digital payments, record-keeping and remittance platforms, strengthening livelihoods and enterprise growth. These tools also create digital identities and transaction histories that can improve access to working capital and other services.

In Nairobi, digital platforms have layered ride-hailing functionality onto informal boda-boda networks, improving mobility while generating valuable data to optimise routes and services. A boda boda is a motorcycle taxi and one of the most important forms of urban transport in East Africa, particularly in Kenya. Underpinning much of this ecosystem is M-Pesa, whose widespread adoption demonstrates how socially embedded technologies can scale rapidly. Across cities such as Nairobi and Accra, fintech is reshaping how urban economies grow and connect.

Rethinking work: Africa’s entrepreneurial future

Future-of-work debates in Europe and North America often assume labour markets anchored by stable employers, with flexibility added at the margins. Pieterse argues that African cities are charting a different course - one where entrepreneurship, informal work and networked economic participation play a far more central role.

The World Economic Forum has identified sub-Saharan Africa’s expanding workforce as a potential global talent advantage. Pieterse suggests that future employment growth is unlikely to come primarily from large corporations. Instead, opportunity is increasingly emerging through co-working ecosystems, innovation hubs, digital platforms and founder communities that connect people to projects, capital and markets. In this environment, portfolio careers, hybrid work models, and flexible entrepreneurship may become the norm rather than the exception.

Rather than treating informality as a temporary condition to be eliminated, Pieterse argues that the challenge is to improve productivity, income generation and pathways to advancement within it. The future of work in African cities may be more about building ecosystems that enable people to participate, adapt, and create value. This approach is likely to accelerate growth in local services and creative industries, from fashion and design to gaming and digital content. For Pieterse, Africa’s competitive advantage lies in its youthful dynamism and its ability to build entrepreneurial ecosystems that allow people to move fluidly between learning, creating, and earning.

From tourist to participant

The next generation of urban tourism will be defined by participation. African cities have an opportunity to position visitors not simply as tourists, but as learners, collaborators, investors, and potential partners.

This shift reflects the growing influence of innovation ecosystems and the creative economy. Research on Nairobi’s start-up landscape highlights the role of accelerators, founder networks and innovation districts in shaping urban identity, while UNESCO has identified culture, design and entrepreneurship as increasingly important drivers of economic value. In Lagos, Nairobi, Cape Town, and Johannesburg, visitors can engage directly with the entrepreneurs, designers, artists, technologists, and chefs who are shaping the future of their cities.

For Pieterse, this is where Africa’s competitive advantage lies. Authenticity, creativity, and innovation are increasingly intertwined, creating opportunities for experiences built around culinary entrepreneurship, design districts, creative hubs, and innovation tours rather than conventional sightseeing alone. The most compelling tourism proposition is not consuming African cities from the outside but participating in their evolution from within.

The world often looks to Africa’s cities as indicators of future growth. Pieterse argues they should also be seen as laboratories for the future. As urban populations expand globally, the lessons emerging from African cities – adaptability, entrepreneurship, informality, and authenticity – may prove less exceptional than essential.

by Denise Mhlanga