Most of the rapidly urbanising Sub-Saharan African (SSA) cities face escalating urban flood risks, with devastating impacts on accumulated urban assets, socio-economic activities, public infrastructure, and the environment. Over the years, flood risk drivers such as explosive urban population increase, poor waste disposal, severe loss of wetlands, the habitation of flood plains, heavy precipitation, insufficient drainage infrastructure and climate change have been blamed for the recurrent and widespread floods experienced across SSA cities. In response, urban governments have invested in flood risk management regimes anchored on various theories and concepts from resilience, adaptation, governance rearrangement, institutional reforms, modern urbanism and global trends to engagement with multiple stakeholders. The effectiveness of these frameworks is debatable, considering the increase in urban floods across the region. Mitigating flood risks in SSA requires a precise understanding of the changing drivers of urban floods. However, flood drivers are largely overshadowed by ambiguity within urbanisation theories and climate change praxis, as reflected across the existing empirical research and policy landscape. Bridging this gap requires an in-depth interrogation of the evolving nature of urban flood risks in the SSA context: A precise alternative understanding of flood risk drivers, a thorough investigation of the changing flood risk policies over time, and an appreciation of the multiple forms of flood risk knowledge are all crucial for achieving this purpose. Accordingly, this research employs postcolonial urbanism lenses to better understand a) the multidimensionality of socio-spatial, context-specific flood risk influencers; b) the role of government policy in urban space modification and flood risk evolution; and c) the multiple forms of flood risk knowledge that inform the ever-changing urban flood risk policies in SSA cities. The current research uses Kampala as a case study: Kampala is one of the fastest-growing cities in East Africa and suffers widespread flooding. The study adopts a multi-method approach combining various research methods such as key informant semi-structured interviews, a web-based survey, document review, GIS and Landsat mapping. The findings of the study indicate that a) the historical legacies rooted in colonial urban planning practices account for the initial socio-spatial contextual urban conditions that are associated with widespread flood risks; b) the changing nature of urban flooding is dictated by the level of interaction between socioeconomic, institutional, environmental and infrastructural factors; c) ambiguity and inconsistency that characterise multiple forms of flood risk knowledge hinder effective flood risk policy formulation; and d) urban environments have become extremely difficult to configure using modern neo-liberalised approaches for effective urban flood risk policy. Overall, this research contributes to an in-depth understanding of the role of multidimensional context-specific drivers in urban flooding and reconciles multiple forms of flood risk knowledge, which are a fundamental prerequisite for designing robust approaches to flood risk policy.
- Slums
- Wetland loss
- Waste disposal
- Drainage masterplan
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Contextual factors
- Flood-risk knowledge
- Institutional responses
Understanding the evolving nature of urban flooding in Sub-Saharan Africa: Empirical evidence from Kampala city, Uganda
Arinabo, D. (Author). 1 Aug 2024
Student thesis: Phd