Ibadan, Nigeria, has been an outlier in the ranking of world-class cities. But in the past eight years, amidst the circulating Africa Rising narrative, Ibadan has embarked on what I call an Afropolitan Imagineering project of owambe urbanism. Afropolitan Imagineering refers to the production of new images/narratives of Africa and Africans as world-class and cosmopolitan. Owambe urbanism is a spatio-temporal neoliberal project concerning destination, arrival and place-making, which promises a shared and happy future for all urban dwellers. In this presentation, I compare the effects of owambe urbanism on low-income adult women and youth. Concerning the low-income women, I argue that they challenge the promise of happiness because they are cognizant that a shared and happy future is impossible when little effort is made to address social inequality in the present. They thus refuse to be ‘good’ citizens and invoke an alternative urban futurity through their embodied and imagined resistance. Concerning the youth, I argue that owambe urbanism presents new opportunities in terms of work and leisure. I examine the types of subjectivities that are being produced and performed as a result of these new opportunities and the types of investments and sacrifices being made to secure a happier future.
As part of the African Studies Brown Bag Series