Across African cities, movement is often narrated through crisis: migration as rupture, informality as failure, rapid urban growth as disorder. Atlas of Uncertainty begins from a different position. Bringing together more than sixty social scientists, architects, cartographers, writers and artists, the transdisciplinary project examines how mobility shapes urban life across Accra, Nairobi and Johannesburg, asking what becomes visible when African cities are approached not as problems awaiting correction, but as complex sites of knowledge, adaptation and future-making. Built from surveys and focus groups in nine gateway neighbourhoods—including Madina, Old Fadama and Jamestown in Accra; Kayole, Ongata Rongai and Kawangware in Nairobi; and Berea, Katlehong and Diepsloot in Johannesburg—the project moves deliberately “from the census to the senses.”
Its opening exhibition, Atlas of Uncertainty: Transforming African Cityscapes, has been on view at the Origins Centre at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg since 18 April and closes on 11 July 2026. Across three gallery spaces, research, survey data, maps, essays and experimental cartographies enter into conversation with film, photography, sculpture, tapestry, sound, installation and speculative forms. Rather than asking artists simply to illustrate findings, the project invited them to consider where the research resonated with their own practices and lived experiences. The resulting exhibition brings together 29 artists, from emerging voices to established practitioners, creating what curator Carina Tenewaa Kanbi describes as a multi-sensory encounter with the contradictions, aspirations, infrastructures and movements that shape contemporary urban life.
Kanbi is a spatial practitioner and researcher working across urbanism, mobility and creative practice, with a particular focus on West African cities. Her doctoral research at the African Centre for Migration & Society examines the lifeworlds of young creative professionals in Accra and Lagos, while her wider practice spans teaching, research and experimental cultural infrastructure. Africans Column spoke with Kanbi about the long research history behind the Atlas, misconceptions surrounding African migration, the challenge of moving artworks between African cities, the exhibition’s evolving curatorial process, and why uncertainty itself might offer a way to rethink the future of cities. The conversation below has been lightly edited for clarity and length from the recorded interview.
Africans Column: The Atlas of Uncertainty begins with a striking proposition: that African cities are not behind the curve, but ahead of it. What prompted this reframing, and what felt limiting or insufficient about dominant narratives surrounding African urbanism?
Carina Tenewaa Kanbi: The research actually came first and the title came later. Atlases are traditionally designed around certainty, and the whole notion of this project was about unpicking that. African cities are changing at a rapid pace, and yet we do not actually have that much data about what is happening within them.
This research became an opportunity to challenge our understandings of how cities are growing and what they look like by focusing on areas that are changing demographically over relatively short periods of time. If we look at Jamestown, for example, it was predominantly a Ga community, but over the last ten to fifteen years that has changed quite dramatically as people have migrated into Accra. The question becomes: how do we understand the social and economic changes within these spaces from the perspective of the people who actually live there?
Africans Column: The project is rooted in Accra, Nairobi and Johannesburg, with surveys and focus groups across specific neighbourhoods. What were you trying to understand through that research, particularly in relation to mobility?
Carina Tenewaa Kanbi: The wider project has been developing since around 2017 or 2018, and my involvement is primarily on the creative side. The research looks at African urban mobility and governance across Johannesburg, Nairobi and Accra, focusing on three neighbourhoods within each city.
Roughly 500 surveys were conducted in each city, alongside focus groups. The intention was to understand how people in spaces shaped by mobility are living: what kinds of authorities they use, how they relate to space, how they relate to their neighbours, and what their future aspirations are.
One of the central aims is to dispel some of the myths and rumours surrounding African migration and mobility. There is an understanding that everyone is leaving the continent, which is fundamentally wrong. The majority of people moving into cities are moving either within their own country or from neighbouring areas.
The maps show that people often undertake multiple journeys, and those journeys are not necessarily linear. In a Ghanaian context, someone might move from Tamale to Kumasi and then from Kumasi to Accra over four or five years. That is a more likely trajectory than simply moving from Accra to London. Mobility on the continent is often much more regional and localised than dominant narratives suggest.
Africans Column: The project brings together research, data, mapping and artistic practices across multiple mediums. How did you approach translating such an interdisciplinary body of work into an exhibition that could be experienced spatially and sensorially?
Carina Tenewaa Kanbi: I think the beauty of the project is that it provided a question to the artists and gave them the fluidity to answer it in whatever way spoke to them. In many ways, we provided the data and they gave us their own answers.
That created an incredible diversity of reflection. We have established artists, newer artists, artists who live within the communities that were studied, and artists looking at those spaces from very different perspectives. We did not define what should be created. We asked a question and invited people to respond.
The maps themselves are interpretations of the data and were developed with Columbia University in New York. They were then shared with the artists as material for reflection. The artists produced their own responses, which in turn ask further questions of our audiences. That is why we say the artistic practices are in conversation with the data and the maps rather than simply illustrating them.
Africans Column: Can you take us deeper into some of those artistic responses? Which works particularly reveal what the data alone could not?
Carina Tenewaa Kanbi: There are so many. Dela Anyah, for example, recreated a vulcaniser shop within the exhibition space. These are the kinds of tyre-repair spaces you see on street corners in Accra. His wider practice already engages with the material and social networks around tyres and repair, so the work creates another way of thinking about infrastructure and everyday urban life.
Nana Danso Awuah-Asante created a work connected to Jamestown that considers inner spirituality and aspects of neighbourhood life that are often unseen. Billie McTernan produced a large tapestry around people’s dreams and future aspirations, playing with what is legible and illegible, alongside an audio component carrying different experiences.
Sean Kweifio-Okai’s photographic work looks at Okada culture through the experience of a rider. It considers how motorcycle transport has become essential as the city grows, but also how the culture of the city changes through it. ASK’s work looks at young kayayei and the relationship between the body, hometown, family and memory—how these connections can become imprinted on the body.
Angelina Kusi Hori created intricate forms through her Japanese-Ghanaian perspective. Her Beaded Atlas brings together pieces connected to the three Accra communities. Elsewhere in the exhibition, there is a life-size papier-mâché boat made from roadside advertisements promising travel to places such as Dubai, New York and London. The contradiction is that the boat can never float because of its material. You are on the way somewhere, but perhaps also nowhere.
That is only Accra. Once you move through the exhibition, you encounter many other experiences from Nairobi and Johannesburg.
Africans Column: How were the artists selected, and what were you looking for across such different practices and cities?
Carina Tenewaa Kanbi: We worked with partners in each country to reach creative communities, and the applications were assessed by panels of roughly five people against different criteria. One consideration was how strongly the proposed work spoke to the cities, but we were also interested in diversity of medium.
We wanted a multi-sensory approach. There are paintings on canvas, tapestry, sculpture, photography, sound, installations and works such as the papier-mâché boat. We wanted people to feel embodied within the exhibition. One of the responses we have heard repeatedly is: “I can see myself in the data,” even from visitors who are not necessarily from these cities.
We originally intended to select fewer artists, but the response was phenomenal, so the project expanded. The Atlas is also becoming a book, and some of the book’s contributors produced work that entered the exhibition. We ended up with a larger group because of the quality of what we received.
Africans Column: Your own practice sits at the intersection of urbanism, mobility and creative research. How did that shape the curatorial process, particularly while working across three countries?
Carina Tenewaa Kanbi: The curatorial process was very much a team effort. I led much of the artistic production before the works arrived in Johannesburg, working with the wider team and partners across the cities.
It was not easy. The artists were phenomenal, but working across three African cities was challenging from both a funding and logistical perspective. Moving the works to Johannesburg was incredibly difficult and exceptionally expensive. In some ways, I think it might have been easier if these works had been travelling to Europe, and that raises an important question within a project about African mobility: why is it so difficult to move artistic work between cities on the continent?
It was very important that the works were shown on the continent, but the infrastructure does not always support that kind of artistic activity—particularly for a non-commercial, educational exhibition where the works are not being moved in order to be sold.
There were also surprises. We gave the artists significant freedom, provided stipends for the commissions, and some people created works four times the size of what they initially proposed. That created challenges in finding a suitable space in Johannesburg, but it is also part of what made the exhibition exciting.
Africans Column: How did the installation itself evolve once the works finally arrived in Johannesburg?
Carina Tenewaa Kanbi: We re-hung the exhibition three or four times. Initially, we thought the exhibition would follow the structure of the book, but once we hung the works, they did not speak to one another in the way we had imagined.
We spent around ten days playing with the installation and the floor plan. It was exceptionally important that the exhibition worked as a journey for people entering the space. We had to interweave texts from the book, installations across different mediums, and works from different cities without creating a simplistic experience of: now I am entering Accra, now Johannesburg, now Nairobi.
We wanted the cities to be relational. We wanted themes to cut across them. That process was an experience in itself. I have loved it from beginning to end, but it has certainly not been easy. In some ways, that is indicative of the research itself: it did not begin as we thought it would, and it likely will not end that way either.
Africans Column: There is an interesting tension here. The project argues that African cities may be ahead of the curve, yet you encountered major infrastructural barriers simply moving artworks between African cities. How do you sit with that contradiction?
Carina Tenewaa Kanbi: I think some of our infrastructural challenges around logistics are inherited. I do not necessarily think they were born on the continent. Certain systems favour the movement of works and people towards particular places.
It is not very common for so many large, non-commercial works to move between African cities. When you are not selling something, it can become even more difficult to move it. That raises wider questions around creative infrastructure and the systems available to support cultural exchange on the continent.
The exhibition needed a space capable of housing a very large body of work across three galleries, while remaining centrally accessible. We explored different possibilities before working with the Origins Centre. Those practical realities became part of the wider questions the project itself raises.
Africans Column: Why did Johannesburg become the first city to host the exhibition, and what happens after this chapter closes?
Carina Tenewaa Kanbi: The grant sits through the University of the Witwatersrand and the African Centre for Migration & Society, which is the anchor partner for the Atlas, so fundamentally it made sense to begin in Johannesburg.
The ambition is for the project to travel to Accra and Nairobi. It will not necessarily be the entire exhibition in each place. The intention is for the Accra works to return to Accra and the Nairobi works to return to Nairobi, while finding digital ways to involve works from the other cities that cannot physically travel because of funding limitations.
Africans Column: What has the response in Johannesburg revealed to you about the role an exhibition like this can play beyond presenting research?
Carina Tenewaa Kanbi: The feedback has been phenomenal. People have spoken about how important the exhibition is to see, but also about its value as an educational experience. It allows people to delve into topics in a way that textual means alone do not always enable. It is immersive and incredibly diverse, and many visitors say they need to return because there is so much to experience.
The intention is not simply for people to say, “It is beautiful.” The intention is that it raises questions. Perhaps someone leaves saying, “It made me feel fundamentally uncomfortable.” That is also important. The growth of our cities and urban mobility is not linear, and it is not always perfect, but these are conversations we need to have.
Anastasia Pather’s Zama Zama, for example, engages with informal mining in Johannesburg. The work itself is strikingly beautiful: it is gold, it glitters and it stands at an imposing scale. But beneath that beauty is a story about what happens below the surface—effectively asking us to remember that all that glitters is not always gold.
That is what we hope for: that people find the exhibition intriguing, that it makes them ask questions, and that they leave thinking differently about their own experience within the city.
Africans Column: The Atlas extends beyond the exhibition into a book, digital platform and future iterations across cities. What do you hope it contributes to broader global conversations on urban futures, particularly as uncertainty becomes an increasingly universal condition?
Carina Tenewaa Kanbi: At its core, the Atlas of Uncertainty asks that African cities be central to conversations about the future of cities elsewhere.
While we are looking specifically at Accra, Nairobi and Johannesburg, the contexts and experiences within these cities will increasingly be felt globally. Perhaps we can learn from some of the urban innovations we see within these spaces, particularly in areas of informality where systems are very bottom-up and where forms of governance sometimes sit outside formal structures, yet still work.
In a time of uncertainty and change, perhaps African cities can provide some of the answers. The Atlas invites you to consider them in that way.
Africans Column: Could the methodology eventually extend beyond Accra, Nairobi and Johannesburg to other African cities?
Carina Tenewaa Kanbi: Absolutely. If funding were not a restriction, the ambition would be to use this methodology to explore other cities on the continent.
Lagos would be fascinating to examine through the lens of the Atlas and through the different methods we use to explore data. Dar es Salaam is another. It would be valuable to work with a Central African city as well.
We are also conscious that we have largely looked at Anglophone cities. It would be very interesting to work with Lusophone and Francophone cities. The larger intention is not only to move the Atlas in its current form back to its cities of origin, but to see how the methodology can extend to other cities and create a larger repository of knowledge that allows us to make broader assessments of urban mobility across the continent.
Africans Column: At a moment when migration, xenophobia and belonging remain urgent concerns across the continent, what do you hope audiences, collaborators and the wider cultural sector take from the Atlas?
Carina Tenewaa Kanbi: We would love the Atlas to travel. We would love to use it as a tool to learn, unlearn and question, so we invite people to get in touch. If you cannot visit the Johannesburg exhibition physically, engage with us online. The data will be available through the website, and the book will come out next year.
As an art exhibition, I think it is phenomenal—but it also goes beyond that because it is a tapestry of stories from across the continent. It is almost like a book that can be read many times and in many different ways. Every work has its own story.
It is rare to have a group exhibition of 29 artists, and I think there is something special in what we have managed to achieve with a relatively small budget. The hope is that the project continues and that there remains an ongoing intrigue around it.
Especially at a time like this in South Africa, when xenophobia and pan-African migration are at the forefront, the Atlas can offer some answers, but also more accurate data. There is a great deal of perception surrounding African migration and the role of African migrants. I think the Atlas can begin to unpick some of those false perceptions and deepen our understanding of African migrants’ contributions to cities.
As Atlas of Uncertainty: Transforming African Cityscapes reaches the end of its Johannesburg presentation on 11 July, its central questions remain deliberately unresolved. The exhibition does not offer a singular theory of the African city, nor does it replace one dominant map with another. Instead, it brings multiple forms of knowledge into proximity: survey data beside sculpture, cartography beside sound, demographic change beside memory, and mobility beside the intimate work of making a life. In doing so, the Atlas proposes that uncertainty is not simply something cities must overcome. It can also be a method for seeing what conventional systems of measurement leave outside the frame.
The project’s anticipated movement towards Accra and Nairobi—and its longer-term ambition to extend its methodology to other linguistic and geographic contexts across the continent—may prove as significant as the exhibition itself. At a moment when African migration is repeatedly reduced to departure, crisis and border spectacle, the Atlas redirects attention towards the complex movements taking place within countries, between neighbouring regions and through the everyday spaces of rapidly changing cities. Its most consequential proposition is therefore also its simplest: African cities are not peripheral to the global urban future. They are already producing knowledge about how uncertainty is lived, negotiated and transformed—and the rest of the world may need to learn how to read them.
