Social capital and community-driven development: A multi-group analysis of migrant and indigenous informal settlements in Greater Accra, Ghana

Beatrice Eyram Afi Ziorklui, Seth Asare Okyere, Matthew Abunyewah, Stephen Leonard Mensah, Louis Kusi Frimpong

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)
36 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

In sub-Saharan African cities, community-driven development has emerged as a collective response to entrenched socio-spatial inequalities and inappropriate local development planning responses to the challenges of informal settlements. Social capital is considered to stimulate such community-driven initiatives. There are also claims that social capital can impede the sustainable development of informal settlements. Yet, none of these streams pay due attention to what forms of social capital and what urban social context social capital influences community-led informal settlement improvement. This paper sought to examine the influential role of bonding and bridging social capital on community-driven development (CDD) by comparing indigenous and migrant urban informal settlements in Accra, Ghana. Drawing on a quantitative study with 300 participants in two informal settlements and using a robust multi-group analysis, the findings revealed that bonding social capital had a positive effect on CDD (β = 0.27, p = 0.05) in the indigenous informal settlement (Abese Quarter) but insignificant relationship (β = -0.33, p = 0.36) in the migrant informal settlement (Old-Tulaku). Contrarily, bridging social capital had a positive effect on the migrant (β = 0.87, p = 0.05) but not on indigenous informal settlements (β = 0.07, p = 0.09). The paper concludes that the exploitation of social capital in bottom-up informal settlement improvement is more nuanced, and context-specific applications are imperative for research and practice. For policymakers and built environment professionals, the paper suggests leveraging social capital as a means (not ends) for building formal-informal collaborations through the co-production of bottom-up initiatives for inclusive and sustainable improvements to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives.

Original languageEnglish
Article number103016
Pages (from-to)1-11
Number of pages11
JournalHabitat International
Volume145
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2024

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The first author acknowledges support from the Japanese Government through JICA scholar program for her master's degree studies which informed the conceptualisation of this paper. We also appreciate Charles Darwin University for making this paper open access. Finally, special thanks to the study particpations, especially the informal residents for their time and knowledge and practices.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors

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