Mobility is redefining the geographic and temporal scale of political community and representation. As African cities become more populous than ever, their socio-politically generative power remain poorly understood. Where cities of the industrial revolution were progenitors of modern nationalisms, Africa’s urban centres lack both the markets and institutions to bond their populations or to territorially extend their disciplines. Yet these are also not sites of chaos: rather they are amalgams of evolving modes of local and translocal regulation.