Dear Urban Ancestors, What will we be remembered for?

In many African cultures, we hold deep reverence for our ancestors. We speak of ancestral lands with awe and belonging. We value our rural homes, where lineage, spirit, and identity intertwine and anchor us.

What if we extended that same reverence to our cities?

As African urban life becomes the defining experience of our century, I invite us to embrace a powerful idea: urban ancestorship.

We are the future ancestors of Kinshasa, Lagos, Lomé, Masaka, or eThekwini. We are shaping these places now through our choices, our creativity, our struggles and dreams. The question is: What kind of ancestors will we be?

In Nairobi, we often wear our survivalist spirit like a badge of honour, summed up in the Swahili slang “Nairobi si ya nyanya yako” to mean “Nairobi is not your grandmother’s.” It’s a phrase that distances us from responsibility and belonging, a streetwise shrug that says: this city isn’t yours to love or care for.

But, I’m here to flip that script: “Nairobi ni ya nyanya yako.”

Nairobi is your grandmother's city. Our grandchildren should be able to say that proudly.

Nairobi is ours to shape, belong to, and love. Just as we cherish the lands of our forebears, let’s begin to see our cities as sacred ground worthy of care.

From Inheritance to Intention

So how do we walk the path of becoming good ancestors to our cities? Let me share a few ideas I’ve been reflecting on:

Turning beats to proverbs: Our cities are bursting with creativity - Afrobeat studios, matatu art, Instagram poetry, digital fashion. These are beautiful, powerful expressions of now. How often do these expressions connect back to the ancestral wisdom that shaped us? Let’s curate this cultural growth with care. Let our graffiti echo folklore. Let tech hubs learn from indigenous knowledge to make innovation more grounded, as it is forward-thinking. Let urban festivals become rituals of memory and movement.

Beyond masterplans: Top-down masterplans often miss the heartbeat of a place. They can erase more than they build. Instead, I propose we grow regenerative neighbourhoods as living systems that meet their own needs for energy, food, mobility, and care. Neighbourhoods that are self-sustaining but also connected to the rest of the city in modular, supportive ways. Imagine each neighbourhood block as a breathing organ in a larger, resilient city.

Cities as living platforms: Let’s see our cities as open, living platforms for imagination and experimentation. Like any good platform, a city should be adaptive and participatory. We can dream of crowdsourced street makeovers, Afro-urban farms that blend culture and sustainability, solar punk neighborhoods powered by green tech, co-living eco-hubs with shared resources, and upcycled art districts that transform waste into community masterpieces.

Enter the unbound agent: An unbound, hybrid professional is a powerful force in co-building a regenerative city platform. They move fluidly between academia, grassroots innovation, governance, international development, and the arts, transcending borders and bridging diverse worlds. By holding contradictions and translating between different spheres of knowledge, unbound agents spark the creativity needed to shape resilient cities. If more of us embrace this unbound agency, we can weave together fragmented knowledge systems and experiences across African cities. We will carry the wisdom of the past while boldly shaping the African cities of tomorrow.

Dear Future Descendants:

When you inherit these cities,

Will you walk these streets with reverence?

Will you say, “Our ancestors built this with care”?

Will you find nourishment here, not just a place to survive?

That’s our charge. That’s our legacy. We are your urban ancestors.