The current global development agendas provide relatively little guidance on how the incredible challenge of sustainable urban development in Africa can and should be financed. This paper makes the case for understanding this development challenge at the nexus of urban governance and city infrastructure. Tracing African urban development trends over the post-colonial period, the paper makes three arguments. First, African cities experience fractured fiscal authority. Decentralization reforms have resulted in contested and complex city governance arrangements. Second, large scale infrastructure investments have been the focus of donors and investors. This has resulted in fragmented networks and systems. Finally, these two processes together have created fertile ground for the emergence of hybrid systems of service delivery in cities. This has implications for both how urban services are governed and their material arrangements. This reality, and the underlying processes which contributed to its production, are under-accounted for within global development discourses. In conclusion, it is crucial that new models of infrastructure finance are developed to respond to the fractured fiscal authority, fragmented infrastructure networks, and hybrid service delivery patterns which characterise African cities.

当前的全球发展议程对于如何以及应该如何为非洲的可持续城市发展带来不可思议的挑战提供很少的指导。本文为理解这一在城市治理和城市基础设施之间的发展挑战提供了理由。追溯后殖民时期非洲城市发展趋势，本文提出了三个论点。首先，非洲城市的财政权力破裂。分权改革导致存在争议和复杂的城市治理安排。第二，大规模的基础设施投资一直是捐助者和投资者关注的重点。这导致网络和系统分散。最后，这两个过程共同为城市服务交付混合系统的出现创造了沃土。这对城市服务的管理方式及其物质安排都有影响。在全球发展理论中，对这一现实及其促成生产的基本过程的解释不足。总之，至关重要的是，要开发新的基础设施融资模式，以应对破裂的财政权力，分散的基础设施网络和非洲城市的混合服务提供模式。