Panel 64: A Prosocial Approach to Brokers and Fixers in Urban Africa

African cities are still growing at considerable speed. Yet for many urban dwellers making do in the city is a struggle for daily survival based on socio-economic fluidity and informality. Uncertainty and structural violence shape a platform for life of the majority. Commonplace urbanites are rarely protected by the state but instead have to congregate in local and parallel structures for protection and prosperity leading to patched and temporary solutions rather than urban stability. Urban justice is infringed upon through flawed legal systems and corrupt civil servants and thus parallel institutions for legal matters are formed on a local basis. African cities are thus organisms of constant and rapid changes, cities in flux, creating not solely difficulties but also opportunities for individuals. African cities have the capacity of keeping things moving and developing, perhaps not in the most orthodox ways, with possibilities of mixing old and new, local and global, urban and rural, formal and informal, legal and extralegal going well beyond the official inert procedures. Although one can say that no single body is clearly in charge of matters in most urban space this is also opening up room for a myriad of actors, for instance remarkably able handed brokers and fixers, dealing with all aspects of urban life.

Scholars with a research interest in the prosperity of broker and fixer figures in systems of informal functionality in urban Africa are invited to this session.