African Urbanisms and Their Hinterlands Contemporary Cultural Imaginaries of Spatial Connections

Introduction: African urbanisms and their hinterlands: contemporary cultural imaginaries of spatial connections

Rebecca Fasselt, Femi Eromosele and Lwanga Songsore

1. “Johnny Just Come”: Lagos and the newcomer figure in Nigerian screen media

Femi Eromosele

2. Rural ritual, urban appropriation: night running as an examination of mobility in the city by night

Maureen Amimo

3. Notions of self and community in Kampala urban space in Ugandan poetry anthologies

Sophie Lakot Oyat, Susan Kiguli and Benge Okot

4. Harare muJoni: musicking, placemaking and everyday citizenship of Zimbabwean immigrants in Johannesburg, South Africa

Innocent Tinashe Mutero

5. Circular mobilities and health care seeking practices for perceived malaria illness among Nairobi residents in Kenya

Agnetta Adiedo Nyabundi

6. Ambivalent identities in Kampala city: an interrogation of the “grasshopper delicacy” in Ugandan press photographs

Ivan Nathanael Lukanda, Susan Nalugwa Kiguli and Sarah Nakijoba

7. “Yesu Adom (God’s grace)” chop bar: liminality and provisionality within Accra Airport City

Irene Appeaning Addo

8. Polyphony, instrumentality and the urban experience for migrants in Accra, Ghana

Dorothy Takyiakwaa

9. Understanding amapiano and the South African city through the music videos of Big Flexa and Bhebha

Albert Olatunde Oloruntoba

10. Reconfiguring Acholi cultural dance: a visual arts mediation of Bwola dance in a performative space of Kampala city

Mabafokeng Hoeane

Biography

Femi Eromosele is Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature at Utrecht University, Netherlands. His research interests include African literature and the health humanities, African popular culture and African urbanities. He is the author of Mad Fictions: Psychiatry, Disability, and the Politics of Mental Distress in African Literature (2025).

Rebecca Fasselt is Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Her research interests include intra-African migration and diasporic literatures, contemporary South African literature and women’s popular writing. She is co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Migration Literature (2025) and The Short Story in South Africa: Contemporary Trends and Perspectives (2022).

Lwanga Songsore holds an MA in African Studies. His PhD thesis, titled “Deconstructing the genealogy of sorghum beer (pito) production and use in rural and urban contexts in Ghana,” is currently being assessed for the award of a Doctoral Degree in African Studies at the University of Ghana. His research interests are in the material and consumer cultures of Black people, life writing and Black cosmologies and cosmogonies.