Migration, Urbanisation and Conflict in Africa (MUCA)

Africa, the world's least urbanised region, is experiencing the fastest rates of urban growth on the globe. Although partly a consequence of natural population increase and reclassification of previously rural areas as urban, in many cities in-migration constitutes the dominant source of urbanisation. While this trend has potential to contribute to economic growth and dynamism, rapid urban population growth can leave already overstretched municipal authorities unable to catch up, leading to massive failures in infrastructure and service provision, proper tenure documentation, and regulated settlement patterns.

Africa's urban dwellers are increasingly vulnerable to risks relating to demographic pressure, impacts of climate and environmental change, and social, economic and political hazards. A significant proportion of Africa's urbanites are likely to settle in slums, with uncertain property rights and public services, and will struggle to secure a decent life in contexts of few employment opportunities. All too often these processes also produce increasing social tension, conflict and violence. These dynamics have direct and wide-ranging ramifications for the delivery of SDGs, most notably in terms of keeping up with service delivery demands and providing decent, well-paid jobs to a rapidly increasing urban population (SDG 8). This potentially translates into increasing vertical inequality (SDG 10), as well as difficulties in building sustainable cities (SDG 11) and ensuring peace, justice and the rule of law (SDG 16).

Yet despite the widespread consensus that urban sustainability and inclusion are now crucial for future stability and wellbeing in most African countries, the ways in which migration feeds into current urban challenges is poorly understood. Urban in-migration has complex and contradictory consequences in contemporary Africa, and is all too often associated with 'crisis narratives' and disorder in the absence of an adequate knowledge base on when and how migration leads to conflict. Some existing research has explored changing rural-urban migration dynamics, while other research examines the rise in different forms of urban violence - but very little research has explored the crucial inter-relationships between all three phenomena (urbanisation, migration and violent conflict) in a sustained and comparative way. These relationships are however only like to rise in importance in the context of population growth, increased pressure on land, and displacement related to climate change.

MUCA will address this gap, providing an evidence base to facilitate a better understanding of the conditions under which migration combines with other factors to worsen urban conflict - or indeed to alleviate it. This will be pursued through a structured comparative research design that involves nine cities covering three very different kinds of migration-affected cities spread across the three research countries of Ethiopia, Nigeria and Uganda. These countries are chosen to offer a spread of Eastern and Western African cases and different legacies of conflict and population movement. The three city types are i) large 'primate' cities affected by competition over high value land, high ethnic diversity and conflict over lucrative resources in the informal economy; ii) secondary cities affected by major industrial investments (historically or more recently) that are seeing new forms of in-migration and conflict relating to tensions around employment, land, and service delivery; and iii) cities experiencing a major influx of people displaced by regional or international conflicts.

Through an exploration of the migration-conflict-urbanisation nexus in these cities, guided by the aims and objectives set out in the section on 'objectives', MUCA will provide evidence for development agencies, urban planners, and policy makers to build a more peaceful urban Africa in the years to come.

This research aims to impact the following groups of direct beneficiaries:

a) Municipal and national government agencies in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Uganda
b) NGOs and local civil society organizations working on issues of urban development, conflict and forced displacement in the nine case study cities and nationally within the three countries
c) Intergovernmental agencies and donors including UN-HABITAT, The Intergovernmental Organization for Migration, UN OCHA, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, Economic Community of West African States, the African Union and the UK Department for International Development
d) International NGOs including the International Rescue Committee, Saferworld and Oxfam GB
Indirect beneficiaries include:
e) Rural-urban migrants in the case study cities and more broadly, through impacts on national-level policy, NGO programming and CSO practices
f) City-dwellers affected by urban conflict linked to in-migration within the case study cities and more broadly, through impacts on national-level policy, NGO programming and CSO practices

The direct beneficiaries will be impacted through the provision of a robust and detailed evidence base on comparative experiences of migration-related urban conflict (and attempts to mitigate it). This will enable policy and programming that is more sensitive to contextual differences and the range of perspectives foregrounded in our research. These beneficiaries will also benefit from engaging with each other, bridging policy silos and scales, through the national and regional/international impact events across the three years of the programme. By holding major policy events at the national level in Year 1 and Year 3, beneficiaries spanning governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental spheres will engage in dialogue from an early stage, benefiting from mutual learning as well as through being able to shape aspects of the research in line with their own concerns.
Meanwhile, bringing municipal government into conversation with CSOs to explore the migration-urbanisation-conflict nexus through our stakeholder dialogues in all nine cities in Years 1 and 2 will create a platform for deepened cross-sectoral engagement. The country research teams will also identify several rural-urban migrants and long-term city-dwellers in conflict-affected areas to invite to the second stakeholder dialogue in each city, facilitating in-depth discussions of the research and emerging findings. This will further impact all stakeholders by generating potential for enhanced mutual relations and communications channels.
We will further ensure impact on direct beneficiaries through widespread dissemination of policy briefing papers laying out the implications of the research findings in each city, along with a number of comparative and cross-cutting thematic briefing papers highlighting findings in key areas. These will be supported by the participation of team members in a side event at the UN-HABITAT World Urban Forum in 2022, as well as potentially any major international conference on migration that is arranged for that year. Additionally, municipal officials and relevant CSOs will be impacted by the 3-day training events to be held in each country in the third quarter of the final year of the project, including through the development of multi-stakeholder urban conflict mitigation strategies that can inform policymaking and programming at the city level. Indirect beneficiaries in the form of e) and f) above will be impacted both through any changes in policy and programming achieved through the impacts on direct beneficiaries, and through heightened awareness among state and societal actors of the challenges they face. Ultimately the project aims to impact these indirect beneficiaries as widely as possible through contributing to improved policies and practices to manage displacement and urban in-migration, leading to improved urban social relations and peace.