Lindsey B. Green-Simms, Postcolonial Automobility: car culture in West Africa. Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press (pb US$28 – 978 1 5179 0114 1). 2017, 280 pp.

Abstract

capture. Formed out of existing daladala operators, the company chosen by the government to operate the BRT appears to be linked to powerful figures. Without proper accountability over revenues, service has declined, triggering recent protests by residents who initially benefited from better services. This constant repressive extraction and negotiation by political actors is a problem for change that might have been addressed more in both books. Overall, it is hardly surprising to see both political capture and bottom-up resistance to top-down foreign projects such as the BRT. Popular transport has deep roots and involves many sunk costs by owners. The sector provides large numbers of jobs for artists, mechanics, sign painters, cleaners, vendors, terminal managers, touts and drivers, as aptly described by Rizzo and Mutongi, people who might be among those left out of the benefits of this approach to needed change. There remains an open and important question for further research: how and with what impacts will transport users, labour, minibus owners and national and city governments in Africa negotiate both among themselves and with the diverse global forces coalescing around public transport reform on the continent? Internal societal demands are growing for better, safer services, especially for women and children and people with disabilities, and international concern is mounting with regard to the kind of cities Africa will build and their human and environmental impacts. Change is needed. Key questions are: who should lead this change? How should it happen? And what might it look like in different places? Both books contribute to pushing forward much-needed critical debate by helping us rethink and reimagine alternative public transport futures for African cities, futures that should start with the lived realities and aspirations of the majority of citizens, including the poor and middle classes, who currently – for better or worse – rely fundamentally on these deeply rooted and complex minibus systems.