Chronicles Abuja's development and the influence of global geopolitical and economic happenings since the 1970s.

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Cities
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City profile
New capital cities: The influence of global geo-political economy on Abuja's
development
Chiahemba J. Nora,⁎,1
, Sherif Razaka
, Zainab T. Gajigab
a
Abuja Metropolitan Management Council, Number 2 Juba Street, Wuse Zone 6, Abuja, Nigeria
b
Taraba State University, Department of Geography, Jalingo, Nigeria
1. Introduction
New capital cities, their planning and development are reflective of
the nature of the internal and external factors driving the phenomenon.
Generally, the building of new capital cities has been driven by eco-
nomic, geographic, military and strategic factors. Others include the
quest for nation building to promote a common national identity in a
diverse ethnic society; build modern and prestigious capitals; and re-
dress colonial and historical imbalance that characterized the devel-
opment of past capitals. Many other reasons abound why states desire
to undertake the building of new capital cities, depending on the un-
iqueness of each context and the driving factors underpinning such a
need (Wolfel, 2002; Vale, 2008; Elleh, 2016).
But a unique feature among new capital cities has been the master
planning of the cities - producing comprehensive plans to guide the
development of the cities. Brasilia in Brazil, Astana in Kazakhstan,
Islamabad in Pakistan, Gaborone in Botswana, Lilongwe in Malawi,
Dodoma in Tanzania, Yamoussoukro in Ivory Coast, Abuja in Nigeria,
and the most recent new capital city of Equatorial Guinea - Oyala, have
all been master planned (Holston, 1989; Vale, 2008; BBC, 2017). Fur-
thermore, the implementation of the master plans and the eventual
development of these cities have substantially been driven by states.
State actors - especially presidents and the ruling class have tended to
provide the political drive to achieve this. This is most obvious in the
context of Brasilia, Lilongwe, Abuja and many others where the influ-
ence of strong leaders in the development of capital cities has been
documented (Elleh, 2016; Holston, 1989; Potts, 1985; Schatz, 2003;
Vale, 2008). Despite this, Perera (2004) draws our attention to the fact
that the development of these cities cannot just be limited to the in-
fluence of these state actors. Rather, he points out that many actors
influence the development of new capital cities and not necessarily
limited to the very notion of strong leaders or heroes driving the de-
velopment of new capital cities.
But beyond this, the development of new capital cities has also been
observed to be influenced by geo-political and economic happenings in
the global arena. In other words, their development extends beyond
internal factors of strong state actors and/or multiplicity of actors; but
that external factors with connection to global geo-political economy
tend to influence the development of new capital cities. Of particular
concern to post-colonial capital cities in Africa has been the influence of
the OPEC oil crisis of the 1970s and the continual oil crisis at the in-
ternational arena. In the 1970s, the global OPEC oil crisis led to an
increase in the price of oil at the international market thereby affecting
revenue generations and high energy costs. For instance, with high oil
prices a ‘ton of African sugar [which] exchanged at the international
market for 6.3 tons of oil in 1960 could only be exchanged for 0.7 tons
of oil’ in the early 1980s (Thomson, 2010, p. 194). Most states were
affected by this and this in turn affected the development of infra-
structure and cities - as revenues could not be buoyant enough for states
to undertake the interventionist roles of developing cities (Ward, 2004;
Nor, 2017b).
A second influence has been the Washington Consensus Policies that
were introduced into the global south by the IMF and World in the
1970s and1980s, referred to as the Structural Adjustment Programme
(SAP). SAP was introduced in the south primarily to roll back the role of
the state in economic affairs and encourage a more private sector driven
economy. The receding role of the state tended to affect the develop-
ment of cities whether in terms of funding of city development, and
other engagements as more states could no longer play such interven-
tionist roles. Even the private sector in most cases had not matured
enough to play this role (Nor, 2017b; Osaghae, 1998; Thomson, 2010).
Thirdly, has been the influence of economic globalization on the
development of cities in Africa including new capital cities. Through
economic globalization, there has been dispersal of global flows from
the older economies (metropolitan) to the developing economies in
search of prime locations of commerce and engagement. Some of these
flows have moved overseas in the form of large urban projects, also
referred to as global urban mega projects or simply labeled as smart or
eco-cities or what Watson (2014) refers to as fantasy projects in Africa.
These have been driven by transnational capitalist class driving such
developments in cities of the south including national capital cities.
Putrajaya in Malaysia and many others are cases in point (Sklair, 2006;
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.102566
Received 6 September 2019; Received in revised form 21 November 2019; Accepted 5 December 2019
⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: Jesse8897@gmail.com (C.J. Nor).
1
Benue State Polytechnique, Department of Estate Management, Ogbokolo, Benue, Nigeria.
Cities 98 (2020) 102566
Available online 14 January 2020
0264-2751/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
T