In the last ten years the wider agglomeration of Tangier (Morocco) has experienced unprecedented transport and economic infrastructure development, notably with the "Tanger Méditerranée" platform. The platform includes a huge container transhipment port, which has rapidly attained the first rank on the African continent. After further extension in near future, it will also become the first in the Mediterranean. Road and rail infrastructure in Tangier is also being expanded and integrates several large African and European transport corridors. The projects intend to open Tangier for foreign capital and to embed it into (trans-)regional and global trade and transport flows. The idea is to develop it into a major port city, profiting from its position at multiple (state and regional) borders, and to establish it as a transport hub between different parts of the world and a gateway both to Europe and to Africa.

The focus of the paper will be on the joint effect of the wide range of intersecting development visions coming from and addressing different - regional, national and local - scales and on their coactive and competing character. The analysis extends to the different, mostly "external" actors' involvement in urban development. Their interests and motives and the implications for political power and economic benefits on the local level are always at play. Finally, the outlook endeavours to highlight the urban repercussions of the new infrastructures, such as territorial exclusion and spatial fragmentation, which indicate uneven access to the new installations for several groups of local inhabitants.

Through an empirical investigation of a recent rehabilitation project of the self-claimed Republic of Somaliland's main airport, Hargeisa Egal International Airport (HEIA), this paper shows that the airport is used as a gateway to recognition. By actively deploying international standards of airport security, immigration control and runway reconstruction, HEIA is now connected to more international airports in the region. While Somaliland officially remains an internationally unrecognized state, the attempts to 'look like other airports', as the manager puts it, effectively enable Somaliland to become part of a larger aerial infrastructure that builds on internationally recognised standards. Based on these observations and ideas of 'degrees of statehood' (Clapham 1998) and 'degrees of legitimacy' (Caspersen 2015), I argue that recognition is not an on/off relationship. Rather, recognition should be analyzed in terms of degrees that can be sought in arenas outside formal government-to-government relations.

Africa has seen a boom in transport infrastructure investment, in particular in ports. In Tanzania alone, several major projects are under way, among them the World Bank, DFID and TradeMark East Africa-funded upgrade of the port of Dar es Salaam and a new megaport in Bagamoyo. The political geographies of ports - as part of the broader logistical infrastructure of the global economy - have recently received increasing attention (Cowen 2014, Chalfin 2010). And indeed, they raise old questions about economic infrastructure and political power anew. However, there has been a tendency to emphasis supposedly common transnational policies and practices. This paper uses controversies around infrastructure projects to dig deeper. We suggest that controversies over technical and managerial fixes reveal competing projects, claims and practices of governance. They also offer important insights into whether and how power and authority are reconfigured in new ways around large-scale infrastructure hubs. Based on secondary literature, and field research and document analysis in Tanzania, the paper will feature three controversies 1) delays in dwell time and how to fix them; 2) securitization of cargo and people; 3) 'speeding up' vs. 'scaling up' - the Bagamoyo vs. Dar controversy. The findings from Dar es Salaam will be compared with those on the so far best researched African port, the Ghanaian port of Tema.

The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of China in Lagos with special reference to the development of the megacity as a gateway to West Africa. This paper asks whether China's role in developing Lagos as gateway to Africa is limited to involvement in Lekki Free Trade Zone (LFTZ). LFTZ is part of China's strategy to use free trade zones for rapid economic development both at home and in Africa. Yet Lagos is more than an industrial hub, it is also Nigeria's financial, commercial and industrial hub, housing the Nigeria Stock Exchange, Central Bank of Nigeria and the Security and Exchange Commission. A few decades ago Lagos was not on the global map, it is now being positioned as a key node in global economic and capital systems. The new development of Eko Atlantic, built inside the Great Wall of Lagos which has create new urban space, is expected to underpin the metropolis' role as financial epicentre of West Africa. The argument being put forward is that the gateway strategy in Lagos is being driven at the regional/local level by the Lagos state.