Responding to Contextual Challenges in Urban Africa: A Collaborative Postgraduate Approach for Sustainable Development Through Urban Management—The Wits-TUB-UNILAG Urban Lab

The African continent has been witnessing one of the highest rates of urbanisation globally, albeit uneven. While rapid urbanisation creates opportunities, it poses seemingly insurmountable challenges exacerbated by global threats such as climate change. This chapter discusses how an international North-South and South-South collaboration sought to respond to the African urban conundrum. This German-funded collaboration as of 2016 has been between the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (Wits), South Africa and the Technical University Berlin (TUB), Germany, with the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Nigeria, joining as of 2021. The chapter discusses both phases of what became the Wits-TUB-UNILAG Urban Lab and the introduction of masters degrees in urban management at Wits and UNILAG. From a review of urban change on the African continent, the chapter discusses critiques of how the urban Sustainable Development Goal and the New Urban Agenda respond. It sets out how inequalities in knowledge production and capacity in the context of the legacy of colonial planning, with the field of urban management having emerged in this context. Against this backdrop, the paper presents the long-term gains of the approaches adopted, including core themes for the curriculum.