African Cities: Defining a Paradox

African cities have been catalysing great attention in the past decades, the narratives referring to them oscillating similarly to those of their continent: from alarmism to overoptimism. Literature has turned to the subject and a great number of publications about African cities have contributed to push forward the debate about their features and dynamics. At the same time, the very definition of the subject has been blurry. This paper aims to investigate the concept of African cities through the analysis of some of the most recent and relevant works that have been written on the subject, and the words of its authors. Our goal is to illustrate the common trends and the differences in their discourse when it comes to African Cities, and ultimately understand whether it can still be useful to utilize this concept or whether it is time to move on to more refined categorisations.