READING NOTE "Capital Cities in Africa: Power and Powerlessness" The book "Capital cities in Africa: Power and Powerlessness" has been published in 2011 is a joint work of several authors. It consists of Introduction and Conclusion written by the editors of the book Simmon Bekker and Goran Therborn and nine case studies (chapters), written by various authors with different professions connected to urbanism: historians, political scientist, urban geographers, demographer, architects, sociologists. Each of the nine chapters is devoted to a sub-Saharan African city that is currently or has been until recently a capital city. The cities covered by the book are Conakry, Dakar, Lome, Lagos, Abuja, Brazzaville, Nairobi, Maputo and Luanda, Pretoria. The main focus of the book is how capital cities "express, represent or misrepresent national unity in Africa" . All chapters reflect upon this through provision of: historical overview on the development of the respective city from pre-colonial times through colonialism to post-independence and deal also with such crucial urban topics as continuous urban segregation; housing delivery policies or their lacking; ethnic diversity as s source of post-independence political clashes, rivalries and polarization of the urban space; urban sites and expressions of power and counter-power; the influence and involvement of the national government into the urban policies of the capital city, "the post-independence growth of African capital (which) has no historical equivalent" . When reading through the chapters, keywords such as gangs, strongholds, traffic, military, slums, violence, hawkers, corruption, densification pop up in every chapter and invoke a feeling of frustration as to how a better future for the African capitals is possible when these capital cities are on one hand arenas of continuous political battles and on the other, centers of physical manifestations of nationalism. Between these two, where can urban planning be accommodated? As it can be seen in all chapters, the national governments are strongly involved in the management of the capital cities and the city authorities have little or sometimes no say on the city's development. Striking is the case of Luanda where there are clear anti-urban policies as the "Government's attitude to urban redevelopment is based on social exclusion as the government assumes that the urban majority are war refugees and should 'return' to their places of origin ....Current urban development in the capital is large scale, top-down and private sector oriented (e.g. new housing developments, major infrastructure, new economic services such as shopping malls etc.)" The inadequate government policy is noticed in other cities as well. For example, in the case of Lagos where we have "the priority given to the development of cars for individuals over any other means of public transport in the context of the 1970s oil boom...Whereas housing policy and public transport were totally neglected, expensive, prestigious infrastructure was built" . In the case of Nairobi, on the other hand, there is a what can be called "over-bureaucratic involvement" with the city as there are Ministry of Nairobi Metropolitan Development (created in 2008), Ministry of local development and Nairobi city council. How these institutions interact is not the focus of the case study but the question of how exactly government and city institutions work together and is there a need for so many layers of power in managing a capital city certainly is an issue that can be discussed. Another important topic in the book is the question of informality and its multiple faces. The informality as a fence "against state interference in the informal settlements" , as an economic tool (or as one author puts it "a flourishing informal sector as the only economic sector capable of providing work for the semi-skilled and unskilled" ) or as services that are provided to the society by informal groups, which services in other contexts are usually provided by the state. With regard to the last one, if taking again Nairobi as an example, we see that the government is supporting non-conventional housing delivery system provided by such organizations as National Cooperative Housing Union (NCHU). An idea which in itself is good but if one looks in the NCHU website one sees only 1-storey 2 or 3-room houses with an area of respectively 30 or 50 sq.m, which are located in settlements 30km away from Nairobi. And here issues like urban sprawl and the associated with it increased transport costs and expropriation of more and more space are to be considered. This problem is pointed also in the Lome case study where the author states "The absence of upward densification ...and the large size of plots ... make for high consumption of space and disproportionate spatial growth in relation to population growth". Another problem with regard to the urban sprawl is the cost of transportation, which in the cases of Conakry and Pretoria have led to a "de-schooling phenomenon linked to an increase in transport costs" . But this informality is also described in the book as reliance on "daily ingenuity" in the case of Conakry, "proliferation of pockets of collectivity and privately owned vegetable gardens" in the case of Brazzaville, "self-help efforts and community-led management initiatives as a means of accessing such services as sanitation, water supply, refuse collection and security in their neighborhoods" in the case of Nairobi, "widespread 'exit' strategies as opposed to 'voice'" with regard to citizen's involvement with the government's policies in the case of Luanda . All these examples point to the alienation and lack of confidence of the poorer population, in the government and its urban policies. In addition, one can probably argue that the urban planning (to the extent to which it exists in the African capitals) and even the taking into consideration of the aspect of informality by these governments stem more or less from their powerlessness to manage population growth, employment, housing and the urgent need to act ad-hoc rather than from actual understanding of the urban context and its stakes. The book "Capital cities in Africa: power and powerlessness" presents a very interesting overview on the similarities faced by several sub-Saharan capitals in terms of their urban development, the suffocating involvement of the national governments and their emphasis on the cities' symbolic representations rather than on their populations' well being. The book shows also that these capitals are places of opportunities but also of great contrasts and battles. And here one question arises: can South Africa with its three capitals (not the mention the importance of Johannesburg) be taken as a model to be considered by other countries the capitals of which are plagued by ethnic rivalries both in terms of coping with these rivalries and in terms of reducing the burden of population growth and other urban challenges in single capitals. As one author argues "population growth can be explained by classic factors - the accumulation of administrative, economic and cultural functions" Then what would be the cost and can diffusion of political and economic power be a solution? Can the South African case be defined in a way as "postmodern" and can it be a solution applicable elsewhere in Africa? In conclusion, when reading the book one cannot help but think of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas who in his exploration of Lagos introduces the term "aesthetic of chaos" and claims that "despite a total lack of infrastructure, systems, organization and management, the city is 'working'" . And this is what we see in all chapters: all these capitals are 'working' despite all their inherited or newly arisen dysphunctions. The question is until when? What seems to be needed as a first step towards coping with these dysphunctions is a clear definition of "urban" in the African context, a definition that is not taken from the European experience and a definition based on which some relatively realistic urban planning to be done. REFERENCES 1. Simon Bekker, Göran Therborn, eds.,( 2011) Capital cities in Africa: Power and Powerlessness, Cape Town: HSRC Press 2. http://nachu.or.ke/community-housing-projects/ 3. http://lagos.submarinechannel.com/