City Regionalism in the Global South: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Wilson Kodwo McWilson and Yi Sun

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2025, vol. 115, issue 1, 1-18

Abstract: This study investigates city regionalism within the context of state restructuring in postcolonial Ghana. To understand Ghana’s emerging city regionalism, first, we argue that planning is marshaled as an institutional instrument to materialize the state’s vision of remaking national territory and internationalizing the state. Second, city regionalism is a political process leveraged by a unique power geometry. The study adopts Ghana’s Northern Savannah Ecological Zone (NSEZ) regional plan to elucidate city regionalism in the Global South. Our findings reveal the central government’s inclination toward endogenous territorial restructuring, by which city region development is centrally orchestrated and state guided. In addition, city regionalism is influenced by the geostrategic ambitions of international capital, especially Chinese capital, which seeks to draw investment into the built environment and infrastructure. The central government’s customization of a regional governance agency, the Northern Development Authority (NDA), and the decentralization of land resources give rise to a “dumbbell” power structure. The concentration of legal and cohesive power in the central government and an overly privatized land ownership regime characterize this dumbbell power structure. The operation of the NDA is thus a scaffolding with no substantial power. The central government exercises restrictive fiscal regulation over regional and local states in the NSEZ. These two dimensions hamper the effective implementation of the regional plan. Collaboration between different levels of state administration, traditional authorities, and civil society actors is imperative to address the complexities of city regionalism in postcolonial Ghana.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2024.2388820

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