Presentation of the African Cities Journal in Lomé (Togo)

Posted on 2024-08-20

On May 23, 2024, at the event entitled “Urban agriculture, health, architecture and spatial planning in Lomé”, organized by Akuto Akpedze Konou and Jérôme Chenal, we presented the new version of the African Cities Journal. This event brought together a wide range of players in the fields of urban planning and urban studies in Togo.

Objectives

We used this opportunity to learn more about the interests of the journal's target audience. The general objective of this presentation of the African Cities Journal was to discuss our proposal for a transdisciplinary journal with a sample of our target audience, i.e., researchers, university professors, doctoral students, practitioners and government agency representatives active in the fields of urban planning and urban studies. More specifically, we sought to answer the following questions with the active participation of the audience (17 people):

  1. What would be the priority themes concerning African cities?
  2. What types of communication (formats) would be preferred to learn about the challenges faced by African cities?
  3. Would there be any interest in training in scientific writing? (Question mainly addressed to the academic audience).

Structure of the meeting

First, Stéphane Tekouabou Koumetio and Vitor Pessoa Colombo (journal editors) delivered a 20-minute presentation on the journal and its various aspects, including the varied communication formats targeting both academic works and contributions from practitioners. The presentation was delivered in an interactive format, punctuated by polls conducted using the Mentimeter platform, which allows participants' responses to be viewed in real time. Following the presentation, Tekouabou Koumetio and Pessoa Colombo led a 40-minute discussion with participants, to gather more detailed views on the journal's ambitions and communication formats, as well as on practical aspects of article submission (evaluation process and costs involved).

Summary of the discussions

In terms of priority themes, 16 people responded to the survey. The two keywords mentioned most often were “sustainable cities” and “health”. While the notions of “sustainability” and “sustainable development” encompass a wide range of different themes and challenges, the notion of “health” in the context of African cities is relatively specific, focusing on the quality of life offered by the different environments shaped by communities. Thus, among the many sustainability issues that can be brought to the fore, urban health emerges as a key theme, at least in the Togolese context.

Regarding the different formats for communicating scientific results, 14 people responded, with the majority (n=9) opting for a “classic” format (text), followed by a significant number of votes (n=5) preferring multimedia formats (video or audio/podcast). This suggests that, in order to maximize the dissemination of scientific knowledge by breaking the academic “bubble”, it is important to vary communication formats and, why not, invest in scientific outreach. In fact, this is crucial to strengthen the bridges between academia and “practice”. In a survey of 15 participants, the overwhelming majority said that urban planning decisions were not made with all the necessary information. This confirms the need to promote transdisciplinary platforms for knowledge exchange.

Finally, with regard to scientific writing, we observed a real need for training on the side of young researchers, but not only. Among the 17 participants who answered the question “from 0 to 10, how comfortable are you with scientific writing?”, we obtained an average of 5.9 out of 10, a rather mediocre result. During the discussions, several doctoral students and post-doctoral assistants expressed their lack of fluency in scientific writing and the need for more in-depth supervision by experienced researchers. In particular, they communicated their frustration at having an article submission rejected without more precise explanations of the reason for rejection (e.g. precise indication of flaws and/or concrete advice on how to improve the article).

Conclusion and outlook

This transdisciplinary meeting in Lomé was very constructive and useful for the improvement of the African Cities Journal, enabling informed decision-making based on the preferences and concerns of the journal's target audience. In this sense, during this initial phase of relaunching/reconfiguring the journal (2024-2025), it would be important to organize more transdisciplinary meetings of this nature, aimed at both promoting and strengthening the journal in different African contexts.