|
|
AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
Suburbia imagined? Colonial planning and post-colonial appropriation of an urbanised space. The case of Maidguri/Nigeria
| Panel |
43. Making the African Suburbia
|
| Paper ID | 155 |
| Author(s) |
Platte, Editha
|
| Paper |
No paper submitted
|
| Abstract | Unlike most colonial towns, Maiduguri was founded by the British in 1907 in the ‘middle of nowhere’: close to a colonial military post (Mafoni) and a well established market-place (Maiduguri). Having been chosen as the capital of the North-Eastern State in 1967 and with its present status as the capital of Borno State and Borno Emirate, the town Maiduguri changed into a modern multiethnic city with approx. 800,000 inhabitants in the year 2000. People from all over Nigeria came to Maiduguri and involved themselves in different aspects of commerce, whereas administrative jobs were mainly carried out by indigenous Borno people. While the colonial administrators took residence in the so-called “GRA” (Governmental Reserved Residential Area) established as a separate part of the town with wide roads and woody streets, today’s civil servants reside in the periphery of the town in small, well developed ‘ribbon’ buildings.
Considering the concept of suburbia not only as a physical space but also as an ideology of a specific lifestyle, the paper aims to investigate into the history, the material features and social aspects of a “good life” and its material realisation of an African middle class.
|
|