What do place names reveal about people? An ethnography of urbanization and toponyms in West Africa

Abstract (English)

Many African cities – some more successfully than others – have conceived and implemented urban planning schemes as an effort to meet the needs of urban dwellers and to organise the growing flux of populations. Several names and expressions (sometimes pejorative) are used by urban dwellers to designate and categorise neighbourhoods’ formation. Few studies link the image that urban dwellers have of their cities to urban planning and land tenure (Scott, 1998). Yet, a closer look at the populations’ understanding of what their neighbourhood aspire to be is relevant to the analysis of the intertwined links between autochthony and land tenure in urban settings. The settings in the process of urbanisation are oftentimes characterized by their multiculturality. Taking the example of several neighbourhoods in Bouaké, Côte d’Ivoire and Bamako, Mali, this paper examines how urban dwellers practices are inherently parts of the urban spaces’ formation as well as land governance. The case studies on Toponyms in West Africa are relevant contributions to understanding African presence and de-/postcolonial thoughts under various changing circumstances.