A new exhibition on African citymaking in uncertainty
Atlas of Uncertainty: Transforming African Cityscapes is a project of the Oxford/Wits Mobility Governance Lab (co-directed by Professor Loren Landau at ODID) and the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS). This new exhibition will launch at Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, in April.
This collaborative, interdisciplinary project brings together more than 40 writers, cartographers, and visual artists engaging with African migration and urban transformation. Through art, music, essays, data, poetry, and maps, it explores how people in fragmented and mobile urban environments — particularly in Accra, Nairobi, and Johannesburg — are shaping space and possibility. Spanning a book, exhibition, and digital platform, the project challenges dominant narratives of African cities and instead foregrounds complexity, creativity, and relational agency in city-making.
The Atlas of Uncertainty also challenges the common narrative that portrays African migrants as primarily heading to Europe or North America. In reality, the data show that most migration occurs within the continent itself – around 80% of African migrants move to other African cities. Most people relocate within their own countries. But their journeys are rarely linear or final. Cities like Nairobi, Accra, and Johannesburg serve not as endpoints but as gateways where people arrive, adapt, and actively reshape their spaces.
The Mobility Governance Lab (MGL) was launched in 2021 as a jointly managed partnership exploring the governance of mobility at multiple scales across the global South, co-directed by Jean Pierre Misago at Wits and Loren Landau at Oxford. The Oxford team also includes Danchen Xu, Helidah Ogude-Chambert and Caroline W Kihato at ODID, with other Oxford-based members including Mwangi Mwaura (doctoral student in Geography), Isaac Mwaura (doctoral student in Geography) and Nicole Stremlau (Centre for Socio-Legal Studies). Through collaborative research, the MGL offers original insight and perspectives to scholars, civil society, and practitioners while fostering the next generation of engaged researchers from Africa and beyond. Aside from academic outputs, it actively engages in non‑traditional forms of knowledge production such as photography, visual arts and filmmaking.
On the MGL’s launch in 2021, Professor Diego Sánchez-Ancochea (then ODID Head of Department) said, “This new collaboration provides a fantastic opportunity to build an equitable collaboration between two leading institutions in the UK and South Africa. We are particularly excited about the exchange of ideas and the research collaboration in one of the key challenges of our time: the governance of mobility across borders.”
The exhibition runs at the Origins Centre, Wits University, Johannesburg, from 18 April to 3 July 2026. Exhibitions in Accra, Nairobi, and Amsterdam are planned for 2027. The book, Atlas of Uncertainty: Transforming African Cityscapes (Actar/Wits Press), will be released in January 2027.