Spaghetti, hieroglyphics and what’s bubbling under Africa’s urban map
- Tanya Pampalone
The Atlas of Uncertainty illuminates ‘ecologies of trust’ as well as previously untold complexities about migration.
The resilient aquatic life that inhabits estuaries, where freshwater rivers meet saltwater oceans in ever-changing environments, has no choice but to go with the flow of the river and the mood of tides.
Loren B Landau, Research Professor at the and Co-Founder of the µÚÒ»³Ô¹ÏÍø-Oxford Mobility Lab, says that African cities work a bit like that.
Landau, who studies migration and sociopolitical communities across the Global South, calls gateway neighbourhoods – where people arrive from elsewhere and get their first foothold into a city – urban estuaries.
It is what sits at the centre of the , co-created by Landau. A collaborative knowledge project, The Atlas challenges how we understand and interpret migration and African cities.
Using essay, visual and sonic arts and new forms of cartography, The Atlas – a book, interactive website and exhibition - is built on survey data from nine gateway neighbourhoods in Johannesburg, Nairobi and Accra.
“The project is driven by the need to break out of the narrative of poverty and decline, to “fix” what’s “wrong” about these spaces, to understand better how people are living, improvising and adapting in uncertain environments,” says Landau.
The Atlas of Uncertainty has been a complex, years-long undertaking pulling together over 60 contributors, including cartographers, social scientists, artists and urban planners. The project required trust across diverse disciplines and an ability to sit with the uncertainty around the unwieldy data that it produced.
Mapping the mood
Making sense of survey data from the 1 644 respondents was left to Kabiri Bule, ACMS researcher and data analyst for the Atlas. Questions included where people were born, where they moved and why, where their families lived, where they hoped to retire, their plans for saving money, religious affiliations, civic engagement, familial commitments and social networks as well as their views about the police, counsellors, neighbours, religious leaders and service providers.
Bule, whose research lies in ecologies of trust, says that responses can tell us much about how people experience social and institutional life.
“I don't treat trust as a mood, I treat it more as a governance signal,” says Bule. “It enables us to better understand residents as they encounter different forms of authority...which crosses into questions around migration status and experiences with safety, crime and discrimination.”
These are not always yes or no questions, explains Bule, so the survey had to accommodate mixed responses.
“It's frustrating for a stats person. You just want to report your percentages and move on but the data fought back. I had to sit with complexity and be comfortable with it. You just have to report honestly what the data is telling you.”
Baked-in ambiguity
Bule worked closely with cartographers from Columbia’s Center for Spatial Research who used the data to plot hundreds of maps that told a story not just of place but of dreams, money, trust and belonging. Accustomed to precise coordinates, they too had to embrace the ambiguity baked into the data. For example, different people named the same village but linked it to different “nearest cities”. Spellings of locations varied and places locally referred to as villages were considered urban clusters by international bodies like the United Nations.
Among other findings, the maps clearly show how 80% of migration happens within countries or is contained on the continent and that African migrants are not streaming into Europe or the United States.
When the maps started rolling in, Landau likened them to hieroglyphics. For Bule, it was more like spaghetti.
“They are not clean, linear lines, and I love that. It shows that migration is not just a simple journey from A to B. There are many stops along the way. There's also immobility, where people get stuck in a place for all sorts of reasons, despite indicating a desire to move along,” explains Bule.
Shongile Myeza, a research assistant who worked on The Atlas as part of her internship for her Master’s in social and psychological research, found that being able to play with the data once it was configured on the website was illuminating.
“You just keep diving into it and jumping around the different points,” she says. “It helps you understand how people have to jump around between different locations. It made me think, if I had to do the same thing, would I be okay?”
Not a policy blueprint
That’s exactly what Caroline Kihato, a research associate at ACMS and co-creator of The Atlas with Landau, was hoping to achieve.
“Through these hidden maps, through the spiritual world, through the church, we start to see these generative spaces. Cracks open, fissures bubble out and bubble over the static map, showing us ways in which we might tap into some of these energies and resources, to create a much more inclusive urban space,” says Kihato.
The result, she says, is not a policy blueprint.
“What we offer is this space for opening up the way we see things, a methodology through counter cartography, allowing multiple perspectives to come into play. We have to admit that maybe we don't know the full story. We need to be a bit humbler in understanding these other aspects of the story so that we can intervene in a way that might be sustainable and done in a way that people want us to intervene.”
The messy data, corralling dozens of essays and tracking down artwork delayed in the continent’s unreliable transit systems, added to the complexity.
For Myeza, improvisation summed up the entire process. Eventually, she just got out the popcorn.
“It's like watching a movie,” she says. “You have to trust that the director knows how to tie this whole thing together, and it's going to line up in a way that makes sense, that it's going to come alive in a way that's interesting and dynamic. That's what I've found so far. It's like, ah, now I'm getting it and now it's all making sense.”
In art we trust
If you came seeking a salve in this bruising era of uncertainty, the is not for you.
Here, the streets of Johannesburg, Nairobi and Accra chatter and spirits linger. A tyre shop emerges, a taxi runs roughshod, and maps of yarn and copper insist there is something lurking beneath the surface. The Atlas is a travelling exhibition, interactive website and a book (January 2027, µÚÒ»³Ô¹ÏÍø University Press/Actar) built on µÚÒ»³Ô¹ÏÍø-Oxford Mobility Lab data and new forms of cartography. The collaboration of over 60 social scientists, architects, activists, and artists places creative outputs on par with data in a deliberate move from “the census to the senses”.
- Tanya Pampalone is a freelance writer.
- This article first appeared in CURIOS.TY, a research magazine produced by  and the .
- Read more in the 21st issue, themed #Trust — the invisible glue binding society, science and technology.