According a recent column by Africa correspondent Koert Lindijer, hell is in Africa and it's a city. But Bridges with Africa editor Bram Posthumus says hell has its attractive, positive sides as well. One example is his favourite African city, Dakar in Senegal.

Stories from African cities are usually a litany of misery and horror: ugly architecture, intermittent electricity, hordes of beggars, muggings, street violence, chaotic traffic, the noise, the filth, the stench, the list goes on and on.

Koert Lindijer writes, correctly, that it will certainly not get any better. But African cities are growing at an alarming and unstoppable pace, which of course leads to the question, why? If African cities are indeed a hell on earth, why does everybody want to go and live in one?

Money
There are three parts to the answer. Firstly, people move to cities because life in the countryside it is usually much, much worse. In the city one can do something unique; earn money. And people earn a living in the most inventive ways: early in the morning, youths join the queues outside official government offices in Harare and then sell their place to the highest bidder. Take the woman in Nairobi who was fed up with selling bread in the market and started a textile company that now employs 50 people. Then there are the moneychangers in Luanda and the mobile telephone repair people that you find across the continent. They're all businesses that do not exist outside an urban environment.

Living in a city grants access to a whole range of services that is extremely varied and often very personal. In my neighbourhood in Dakar, which is certainly not an ex-pat neighbourhood, I have everything I need within walking distance. In the morning my newspaper seller is around the corner, the internet cafe is open all day and you can eat and drink until the wee hours of the morning. It's a complete, and local, service economy that provides employment and money for lots of people. It's a situation that almost impossible to find outside a city.

Creativity
The second part of the answer is that there are at least three generations who have been born in cities and have no place else to go and certainly do not want to go and live anywhere else. They are part of a culture that is very distinct from the culture in the countryside. It's a creative culture alive with music, film, fashion, dance, literature and theatre. It is no exaggeration to say that the possibilities in an urban environment are endless.

A few examples: Dakar is a fashion centre thanks to designer Oumou Sy. A photography collective is working in Lagos and making dynamic images of the city. Even though you have to wear a surgical mask because of the pollution in the city, musicians from all over the world travel to the Malinese capital Bamako; nowhere else in the world is producing such rich and interesting music. In the Ivory Coast, two young women from Abidjan, Nash and Priss K, are packing concert venues with their top-notch rap show in Nouchy, a local street language. That sort of creativity is only possible in an urban environment and you can earn a living doing it.

Ideas
And finally, the third part: the best ideas are born in the cities, not only cultural innovations but come economic and political ones as well. The entrenched African elites fear city dwellers and quite rightly so. In recent times, all the peaceful political movements, such as those in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia, started in cities. But cities are also breeding grounds for less peaceful movements for change including rebellions and riots.

There are two tried and trusted methods of keeping urban populations calm and docile: bribery and violence. The bribery method utilised by governments across the continent was a cheap supply of foodstuffs. It was disastrous for the food-producing countryside; for decades farmers were underpaid and so gave up farming and moved to cities and joined the urban underclass. This created a vicious circle.

Every government knows where 'people power' lives: in the slums and the poorer parts of cities. That was the reason the Mugabe government launched Operation Murambatsvina - or "drive out the rubbish" - in 2005. The government used bulldozers to flatten the homes of hundreds of thousands of urban dwellers and literally drove opposition supporters from the cities.

It is undeniable that life in an African city is hard; life is short, nasty and often violent. But it is also bursting with ideas, opportunities, possibilities and vitality. The rapid tempo of urban growth across the continent makes one believe that Africans have not given up hope of a better future. It's better to live in hell today and hope a better future tomorrow than not to have any hope at all.

RNW Translation (jc)

Photo by Daveness 98 at Flickr