There are technical, administrative, organizational, political, social and financial issues to consider. It is a site of capitalist production and expansion and is constitutive of social relations of inequality (Larkin 2013 McFarlane and Rutherford 2008). However, amidst the growing demand and policy interventions, infrastructure development is complex and highly politicized. Like their counterparts across the globe, city governments in Africa are seeking to bridge the deficit through private capital (Freund 2010). As observed, cities in developing countries require far more financing for infrastructure than can be provided by domestic public institutions (Pessoa 2008).
MITCHELL ON DEMAND 2015 FULL MEGA INSTALL
There is a pressing need to install new infrastructure in cities in the South in addition to maintaining old ones but finance is a major problem (Pieterse and Hyman 2014 Pessoa 2008 Kirkpatrick and Parker 2004). Infrastructures are inadequate and failing across the globe but the problem is more acute in cities in the South and especially in Africa which has witnessed decades of underinvestment due to ill-conceived privatization, increasing debt burden and administrative inefficiencies among others (Pieterse and Hyman 2014).
There is little doubt that many of the mega cities in the global South face an increasing crisis in the provision of basic infrastructure (Gandy 2006). Mega projects are increasingly becoming popular in African cities where current imaginaries reflect internationally circulating ideals that prioritize economic growth (Freund 2010) and the provision of infrastructure is intimately caught up with the sense of shaping modern society and realizing the future (Larkin 2013). Mega projects have been widespread in Europe and the US in the last two decades where many cities have responded to the pressures of globalization by embarking on big, mixed-used development to attract multinational businesses (Fainstein 2008). The provision of efficient infrastructure services is therefore seen as not only crucial to local economic growth but is intimately linked to the dream that the modern city promises its inhabitants (Ali and Rieker 2008). It is also worth noting that contemporary urban infrastructure is also a prerequisite to modern civilization and embodiment of Western Enlightenment ideas (Graham 2011). In this context, large-scale urban development or mega projects have been described as some of “the most visible and ubiquitous urban revitalization strategies” initiated by city elites in search of economic growth and market competitiveness (Swyngedouw et al. Infrastructure development has emerged as a popular strategy for attracting private capital. In today’s globalized world, places compete with each other for their share of businesses, investments and capital (Anhold 2006 cited in Cleave and Arku 2015). The drive by governments to reposition cities on the competitive landscape in response to global economic forces continues to generate interest among urban scholars. At the broadest level, the paper points to how modernist projects are fractured or undermined by specific ideologies and practices. The paper noted a host of problems but crucially there is a preference for elite projects, a practice that is reinforcing socio-spatial exclusion and confirms the persistent inequalities that accompany neoliberal and modernist projects. Furthermore, the LMCP signalled a renewed drive by the LSG to attract private investments through public–private partnership. A history of opposition politics and a highly politicized resource allocation system further made cooperation between the two particularly difficult. Under the LMCP, disputes emerged between the federal government and the Lagos State Government (LSG) over who was responsible for what. The paper observed that the alliance formed between the federal, Lagos and Ogun state governments to mobilize public funds quickly unraveled largely due to disputes traceable to the apportioning of fiscal and political responsibilities and the distribution of functions between the different tiers of government. Special attention is given to how capital is mobilized, the kinds of alliances or networks found and what gets prioritized. Using the LMCP as a case study, the paper examined the challenges facing the funding of mega infrastructure projects. The Lagos Megacity Project (LMCP) was launched to address a longstanding infrastructure crisis and to reinvent Lagos as a modern megacity. In today’s globalized world, mega infrastructure projects have emerged as one of the most popular strategies for attracting private capital and repositioning cities on the competitive landscape.
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