Human mobility is the defining feature of an era marked by political instability, economic precarity, and environmental insecurity. These movements are reshaping urban landscapes and Africa’s cities stand at the forefront of this transformation. They are now among the world’s largest and most diverse urban centres, serving as focal points for a youthful, rapidly growing population. Yet, this is occurring without the traditional pathways of industrialization, job creation, and service provision. Urban life now blurs the line between lottery and life-making. It is a life of uncertainty. The complexities of material marginalization and mobile place-making demand novel ways of understanding community, politics, and the city itself. It requires novel forms of analysis that avoid oversimplified narratives and instead embrace the ambiguities characterising African urban life.
Atlas of Uncertainty: Transforming African Cityscapes is a multi-media research project by the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) at the University of the Witwatersrand, and the Mobility Governance Lab at the University of Oxford. The Atlas of Uncertainty unsettles the racialised tropes of danger, desperation, and deprivation informing the manic mapping of contemporary migration and urbanisation in Africa. Where such classic cartography typically projects scientific certainty, the Atlas elevates emotion, ambiguity, and contributors’ positionality. Rather than definitive knowledge, it offers reflections to elicit the senses. It aims to unsettle and inform, to generate — not foreclose. Drawing on surveys, qualitative research, and artistic engagements in gateway neighbourhoods across Accra, Nairobi, and Johannesburg, the Atlas builds on decades of interdisciplinary research. First realised as a pilot installation at the 2023 architectural Biennale in Venice, our goal is to cultivate a human understanding of time, travel, and urban politics. In doing so, the research team aims to understand urban life in an era of uncertainty. For more on the research team click here.
What is the Atlas of Uncertainty?
The Atlas of Uncertainty is a publication, an exhibit, and a digital platform. It integrates written essays, visual art, sound, and critical cartography. Created dialogically, it offers layered and nuanced understandings of transforming urban spaces and the moral and material economies that bind them. It is at once a tool of knowledge communication and a reflection on what we believe and how we know it. The Atlas aims to move from the ‘census’ to the ‘senses’ evoking sensorial and embodied experiences of the material, in ways that challenge traditional ways of representing African cities.
Book
The book is comprised of twenty eight 2500-3000 word essays, reflections, or mixed media piece. These range from accessible scholar treatises to poetic reflections produced by experts and activists deeply engaged in the project’s themes and research sites. Each reflects on one or more cities or transversal themes. These texts will be intertwined in an art and prose folio with artistic media, visual illustrations or maps, and statistical and narrative vignettes drawn from original research in Accra, Nairobi, and Johannesburg.
Exhibit
Intended to travel across the research sites, the initial Johannesburg exhibition will feature original visual and sonic works produced by artists from each of the research sites. Working in response to quantitative and qualitative data, their works will instantiate themes of mobility and urban future making amidst uncertainty. The works will be displayed alongside interactive displays where visitors can ‘map’ journeys or ask questions of the data. The exhibits will run for a minimum of four weeks accompanied by an active programme of speakers and tours. You can read more on our contributors here.
Digital
Through an immersive online experience across a dedicated website, the text, visuals, and maps will come alive and be accessible to a wider public. Targeted social media will enhance visibility and provide additional distribution channels to audiences in academia, the policy world, and the general public. For more information on the research and how to get involved visit the Atlas of Uncertainty website: https://atlasofuncertainty.com/
