Mediating Knowledge Co‑Production for Inclusive Governance and Delivery of Food, Water and Energy Services in African Cities

Abstract

Rising rates of urbanisation in Africa, without attendant improvements in criti cal infrastructure, have occasioned gaps in the provision of basic services in cities across the continent. Diferent systems and scales of service delivery — decen tralised and centralised, public and private — coexist and often compete in urban spaces but rarely connect in ways that ensure the needs of the poorest are met. Our paper interrogates the value of transdisciplinary research for bringing actors in these systems together to co-produce knowledge for inclusive and sustainable outcomes. Drawing on empirical data from two complementary projects in four African cities, we demonstrate the possibilities for facilitating this kind of knowledge co-produc tion among system actors in the food, water and energy domains. We show, through a comparative approach, elements of the co-production process that enable more responsive engagement by traditionally detached policy actors. From our fndings, we generate a framework that local researchers serving as ‘knowledge intermediar ies’ can use to stimulate research-policy-society interactions aimed at fostering sus tainable and inclusive service delivery across Africa. By synthesising the fndings from local case studies into a widely applicable framework, our analysis informs both the theory and practice of transdisciplinary sustainability research in the Afri can context where the imperative to bridge gaps in methodological innovation and service delivery is high.