To understand urbanity in Africa, we need to not only address recent migrants to cities but also long-term residents…in the case of Nairobi, this means pushing the understanding of urban Africans back at least two decades and searching for the few spaces of permanence.
Ngweno, 2018. ‘Growing Old in a New City’. City 22(1):28Africa has long been the least urbanised region of the world, but this is changing rapidly: it is now the fastest urbanising part of the world, and the United Nations Population Division projects that the continent’s urban population will reach parity with rural inhabitants by 2030 (United Nations 2018). In social science theories, this dramatic demographic shift is expected to reshape patterns of economic life, social belonging, and political behaviour. An extensive and interdisciplinary literature – spanning political science, sociology, economics, city planning and human geography – has linked urbanisation to a host of important outcomes, from transformations in political claims-making, to shifts in national identification and interethnic relations, to changes in voting behaviour, service provision and patterns of collective action (e.g., Bates Reference Bates1976; Robinson Reference Robinson2014; Harding Reference Harding2020; Green Reference Green2022; Nathan Reference Nathan2019). Understanding how African urbanisation unfolds is thus critical for anticipating its social and political consequences.
Much of this scholarship, especially outside African studies, implicitly or explicitly draws on modernisation theory’s early claims that urban migration will sever rural attachments and reorient individuals toward ‘urban’ identities, interests, and institutions (e.g., Mair Reference Mair1938; Wilson Reference Wilson1941, Reference Wilson1942; Malinowski Reference Malinowski1945; Mitchell Reference Mitchell1956; Southall and Gutkind Reference Southall and Gutkind1957; Epstein Reference Epstein1958; Epstein Reference Epstein1967). Yet, as Africanist research has long shown, this binary image of ‘urban’ versus ‘rural’ rarely fits reality. From earlier ethnographies documenting circular migration and the durability of rural obligations among urban dwellers, to later work on the politics of rural indigeneity and identity, scholars have demonstrated that Africa’s cities are deeply entangled with the countryside (Epstein Reference Epstein1958; Mayer Reference Mayer1961; Mayer Reference Mayer1962; Mitchell Reference Mitchell1969; Aronson Reference Aronson1971; Ross Reference Ross1977; Vail Reference Vail1989; Andreasen Reference Andreasen1990; Ferguson Reference Ferguson1990; Gugler Reference Gugler1996; Potts Reference Potts and Rakodi1997; Gugler Reference Gugler2002; Bah et al. Reference Bah, Cissé, Diyamett, Diallo, Lerise, Okali, Okpara, Olawoye and Tacoli2003; Potts Reference Potts2010; Beck Reference Beck2015; Bryceson Reference Bryceson2011). These insights are echoed by recent quantitative studies, as well: Eubank (Reference Eubank2019) uses mobile phone metadata to trace persistent rural ties among Zambian urbanites, and Kramon et al. (Reference Kramon, Logan and Raffler2022) employ panel data in Kenya to examine how rural-to-urban migration shapes identification and attitudes. Across this body of work, the rural–urban distinction appears porous, negotiated, and sustained over time.
Our aim in this article is to build directly on this Africanist tradition while advancing it in three ways. First, we move beyond treating rural–urban connection as a single dimension to instead conceptualise and measure multiple, analytically distinct forms of linkage. Drawing on insights from across the literature, we develop a four-part typology of urban-rural connections – direct personal contact, provision of material support, anticipation of a rural safety net, and spiritual connection – and we bring these into a single empirical framework. Second, we show how these different connections vary systematically by urban duration, both within an individual’s lifetime and across generations. The latter form of duration is especially important; while the number of rural-to-urban migrants continues to grow, urbanisation in Africa is now also being driven by a new generation of urbanites born in Africa’s cities (Potts Reference Potts2010; Fox Reference Fox, Bloch and Monroy2018). Our focus on urban duration allows us to interrogate not only whether rural ties persist, but which ties persist and under what conditions. Third, we use this empirically and conceptually thick understanding of urban–rural linkages to analyse their consequences for integration into urban social and political life.
Using an original survey of 472 residents of Nairobi, we assess the strength of each linkage and examine its relationship to indicators of urban (re)orientation. In contrast to some earlier findings (e.g., Falkingham et al., Reference Falkingham, Chepngeno-Langat, Evandrou and Scott2012; Mberu Reference Mberu2013), we show that rural connections do not diminish over time among first-generation migrants, no matter how long they reside in the city. But these connections do erode – albeit unevenly – across generations, with spiritual linkages proving particularly durable. Moreover, while some urbanites achieve deep integration into urban social and political life, our results suggest that maintaining strong rural ties is generally associated with weaker investment in, and orientation toward, the city.
By disaggregating rural–urban connections and anchoring them in the temporal dynamics of urban residence, we offer a more nuanced account of Africa’s ongoing urban transformation. This approach clarifies the conditions and temporal processes under which urbanisation is likely to reshape social and political life. It also provides a framework for comparative work across different African cities and national contexts.
Unpacking urbanisation
Understanding the consequences of Africa’s rapid urban growth requires moving beyond simple urban–rural dichotomies. While much scholarship – especially outside African studies – has treated ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ as fixed and mutually exclusive categories, Africanist research has long shown that migration to the city rarely entails a complete break from rural life. Building on this tradition, we theorise how the depth and nature of urban residence vary across individuals, and how multiple, distinct forms of rural connection can persist alongside city living. In doing so, we link variation in urban duration to variation in both the strength and type of rural linkages, and we anticipate that these linkages shape the extent to which residents socially and politically (re)orient toward their urban home.
Urban duration
The first step is to recognise that time spent in the city – both within an individual’s lifetime and across generations – can fundamentally shape the degree and nature of urban integration. Rather than conceptualising urbanisation as a binary variable based upon physical residential location, we suggest that the depth and degree of urbanisation vary across individuals who are physically residing in the same city.
While conceptions of incomplete settlement or circular migration realise that physical location is not static, these take us only part of the way to conceptualising the process of becoming an urban citizen. Gugler (Reference Gugler2002) characterises three types of urban migration: temporary single, temporary family and permanent migration.
Temporary single urban migration is characterised by a single member of the family being sent to the city for economic opportunities. This type of urbanisation is particularly transitory in countries with natural resource extraction, such as with migrant mining labour in the Copperbelt in Zambia or the Gauteng province in South Africa. This migration pattern is also common to capital cities and major economic hubs for both schooling and job diversification. Raleigh (Reference Raleigh2014) finds that spatial mobility is often a component of household survival strategies for coping with high levels of production uncertainty.
Temporary family migration refers to the nuclear family unit relocating to the city, but returning to the rural home after an extended period. However, in some cases, families may permanently maintain a ‘split household’, with some family members residing permanently in the urban centre while others remain in the rural homestead (Agesa Reference Agesa2004).
Finally, permanent urbanisation considers a linear migration from rural to urban areas, with migrants first experiencing temporary urbanisation but ultimately culminating in permanent urban residence. While ‘urbanisation’ is often used as shorthand for permanent migration, this is generally the least common form of urban settlement (Ferguson Reference Ferguson1990; Potts Reference Potts2010).
We propose an alternative, somewhat simpler, typology for urban duration that considers two different types of urban duration. The first captures variation in the length of urban residence among migrants, with the expectation that urban-rural connections will be stronger and urban orientation weaker among new arrivals compared to those with a long tenure in the city. The second facet of urban duration concerns those ‘born urban’ and is distinguished by generation within the city. Again, we expect urban generation to be negatively associated with maintaining rural connections and positively related to a more urban sociopolitical orientation.
Urban–rural connections
In addition to differences in the duration of urban habitation, urban residents may also differ in the degree to which they maintain connections with a rural home. For urbanites with close family still residing in their home village (temporary single migration, for example), the persistence of economic and social connections to the rural home is unsurprising. Urbanites who expect to return at some point in the future (such as with temporary family migration, for example) may make investments in the rural area to prepare for that eventuality. But even where urbanites have little physical connection to a rural home and no intention of making a life there (as with permanent migration), they can maintain connections through a commitment to the development of their home area or by providing information and advice, urban network opportunities and material resources.
We anticipate that investments and commitments to the rural areas will vary across different domains and are not equally important to all urbanites. Building on a logic of differentiating rootedness across domains, we conceptualise four distinct forms of urban–rural connection that are analytically distinct: direct personal contact; the provision of material support; anticipation of a rural safety net; and spiritual and animistic beliefs. Importantly, these dimensions include ties that are maintained because of personal and familial connections and practical needs, as well as commitments to a ‘rural collectivity’ that transcends personal connections (Geschiere & Gugler Reference Geschiere and Gugler1998; Gugler Reference Gugler2002).
We recognise that these dimensions are interconnected in practice. For example, frequent personal contact may obligate one to provide material support. Good standing in the rural community due to financial investments may allow for a proper burial and, therefore, spiritual peace. Burial in the community may also be connected to long-term economic claims to land rights for one’s kin. The point of departure for conceptualising different dimensions of connection is to empirically assess the degree to which they move together, as well as their differential persistence with urban duration. The following sections outline each of these four dimensions of urban–rural connection.
Direct personal contact
The first form of connection is the extent to which urban residents retain personal contact with residents in their home village. Indeed, for temporary single urban migrants who have left their families behind, this connection is likely to be strong. But across all types of urban residents, we expect more variation. Some may elect to retain strong linkages to their rural community by seeking out information about the village or leveraging their status in the rural social hierarchy to influence the behaviour of others. Regular calls, extended visits to the rural area, or social media engagement are common means of communication and transferring information.
Across all these modes of communication, the critical criterion is the extent to which daily urban life incorporates contact with the rural village. The extent to which urbanites are ‘in touch’ with what is going on in the rural area is expected to shape their understandings of rural priorities and political demands, as well as provide channels for urban dwellers to provide social influence and consultation. Regular personal contact thus proves a two-way channel, with information, requests or advice flowing from rural contacts, as well as the reverse channel for urbanites to exert influence on the rural collectivity.
Material support
Urban dwellers often contribute economically to their rural ‘home’ by sending remittances (Morawczynski Reference Morawczynski2009), sponsoring important social events like weddings and funerals (Englund Reference Englund2002), or contributing towards rural development through sponsorship of schools, clinics, community centres or water wells (Potts Reference Potts2010). These transfers can be individually based, or they can take the form of collective investments in the development of rural ‘homelands’ organised through hometown associations or ethnic associations (Nyamnjoh & Rowlands Reference Nyamnjoh and Rowlands1998; Gulger Reference Gugler2002). Rural residents often rely upon remittances and transfers from urban-based family members, either domestically or abroad, which creates pressure for urban residents to send material support to their rural village, particularly when close family members remain based there. Such transfers are often about more than just financial support. As argued by Morawczynski (Reference Morawczynski2009), they also serve a symbolic function: ‘With each transfer, the migrant was sending an important message – that they had not forgotten their obligation to the village whilst residing in the city’.
This linkage is likely to decline over time for those who live in the city and is also expected to vary significantly across generations as they become more permanently settled and fully integrated urban residents, with fewer close familial connections to their rural home. However, many deeply integrated urban residents may nevertheless elect to contribute to collective rural development or support cultural events that promote and retain customs and connectivity. In some cases, moving from personalist material support of direct kin to rural community material support may increase over time with one’s economic establishment and duration in the city.
Safety net
Individuals may seek a socioeconomic safety network in the rural world, a diversification or back-up strategy if urban life does not prove successful, or in case of an urban crisis. For example, Englund (Reference Englund2002) found that among urban migrants in Lilongwe, Malawi, the vast majority planned to return to their home village at some point in the future and thus maintained strong and persistent ties to their rural areas of origin. Many look forward to a more relaxed life in the country with retirement, and retaining inheritance rights plays into that future strategy (Lucas & Stark Reference Lucas and Stark1985).
Even when urban residents strongly prefer to remain in the city, diminished employment opportunities and urban poverty may force them to return (Ferguson Reference Ferguson1990; Potts Reference Potts2010). Urban housing is often tenuous, and thus, residents rely on help from rural kin in cases of eviction or damage (Mongwe Reference Mongwe2003). Over one’s lifespan, citizens may have changing visions about the desirability of returning to a rural home in the future (or making the village home for the first time if born in the city). But as urbanites age, the combination of no state retirement programmes or private sector pensions, coupled with weak property rights, often means that they cannot remain in the city when they stop working. Especially because urbanites do not often own their own home (or land) in the city, they depend on an income stream to maintain their lives in that environment.
The rural ‘safety net’ also applies to security strategies, as the rural world provides a potential source of financial support or a place to seek refuge if conflict or instability erupts in the city. For example, Morawczynski (Reference Morawczynski2009) reports that while remittances typically move from urban to rural areas, the direction of financial flows reversed during the Kenyan post-election violence in 2007 and early 2008, as urban residents sought support in the face of disrupted access to work or the need to escape violent eruptions. This safety net suggests that maintaining rural ties may operate as a future-oriented strategy to provide support or an alternative to the current urban reality. A city with high levels of crime (Nairobi) and insecurity (Johannesburg), an extremely high cost of living (Luanda), or increasing violence associated with civil war (Kinshasa), terrorism (Gao, Mogadishu), elections (Nairobi) or political instability (Bujumbura) may contribute to the need to invest in a future safety net in the rural world. As noted by Bah et al. (Reference Bah, Cissé, Diyamett, Diallo, Lerise, Okali, Okpara, Olawoye and Tacoli2003), maintaining strong social ties to rural areas is ‘a way of spreading assets (and risk) across space and maintaining a safety net which helps in times of economic and social insecurity in the cities’.
Spiritual
Finally, urbanites may retain linkages to a rural home in accordance with their spiritual needs, especially the ability to be buried in family land and among their ancestors. For many urbanites, burial must occur in the village of origin (Englund Reference Englund2002; Geschiere and Gugler Reference Geschiere and Gugler1998; Gugler Reference Gugler2002). But to be guaranteed this right depends on one’s status in the rural area. Attending funerals in one’s rural home is an important signal of the spiritual and social importance of homeland burial. Therefore, urban citizens are reminded of the need to reinvest in the rural world when they contemplate their own mortality.
Beyond burial, the exercise or invocation of supernatural means of controlling people or events also connects the urban and the rural worlds, as both the impetus for urban displacement (being forced out of the rural home due to threats of supernatural powers or related disputes) and as the ‘tie that marks urban and rural as members of the same social world’ (Englund Reference Englund2002). Such powers can easily move across space, making the physical distance between city and village insignificant. And the social ties between the two mean that village happenings can be blamed on supernatural powers by urban residents, and vice versa. Many Nairobi citizens, for example, cited the need to invest in their rural homes and maintain good standing to avoid accusations of wielding supernatural power, as well as being victimised in ways that derail one’s thriving endeavours in the city. Rural connections, therefore, can also be a strategy to protect one’s health and well-being over eternal time horizons in relation to the supernatural.
Taken together, spiritual considerations both constitute a distinct form of urban-rural linkage and create incentives for maintaining other forms of linkage. Demonstrating commitments to a rural home, therefore, overlaps with spiritual needs in a very real and proximate way. Spiritual concerns intertwine or make meaningless the physical distance between urban and rural realities, as the significance of funerals and the supernatural sustain the urban–rural overlap of social spaces (Englund Reference Englund2002; Shipton Reference Shipton2009). What is not clear from prior literature, and where we take up our contribution, is whether and how spiritual drivers of urban–rural connection evolve over urban duration and urban generation.
Urban (re)orientation
How are these forms of connection related to how urban residents engage and invest in their urban homes, socially and politically? To answer this question, we consider the degree to which one’s life is defined by and revolves around their rural home, with the expectation that the presence of urban–rural linkages will be associated with less urban (re)orientation.
In pilot interviews, Nairobi dwellers expressed rootedness and belonging in the city to vastly different degrees. For some, it was clear that they would never truly feel a sense of belonging in the city or consider it their home; many dreamed of the day they would be able to return to a rural home in retirement. For others, the idea of a rural home was non-existent, or a concept far removed from the concerns of daily life. Across this spectrum, citizens describe different degrees of their own sense of urban belonging and desire to make their lives focused in the city, making claims and investing their time and energy in building a sense of belonging for their future life there. In another realm of identity change, urban residents who are only weakly linked to rural areas may put less emphasis on their ethnic identity than on a national one, an expectation broadly consistent with modernisation theory and prior empirical work (Robinson Reference Robinson2014).
Those who have a strong urban orientation may also manifest material connections to the city. While owning property in the city is certainly related to class, it is also a significant marker of urban investment (Melly Reference Melly2010). And urban property ownership can be expected to further shape social, political and economic incentives in significant ways. Property owners may be more committed to multi-ethnic neighbourhood associations and social bridging, may have incentives to engage politically in holding municipal governments accountable for public services and security, and may be less concerned with agricultural production policy and more focused on the price of food in the city.
Another dimension of urban orientation is whether residents have social lives that are defined by their presence in the city. Rather than relying solely or primarily on village networks, deeply integrated urban dwellers build social connections that anchor them in the rhythms of city life. Relationships with work colleagues, neighbours, members of hobby groups or religious congregations based in the city can gradually displace reliance on kinship- or village-based networks. These urban-centred relationships create feedback effects – providing mutual support, generating shared concerns and priorities and fostering trust – that reinforce an orientation toward the city as the primary social arena. Conversely, when most close relationships remain with those tied to the rural home, the city may remain a secondary or transactional space rather than a locus of belonging.
Urban–rural linkages can also shape political-administrative orientation. Some residents continue to rely on informal institutions rooted in rural locales – such as traditional leaders, customary courts or village-based administrators – for dispute resolution, official documentation or political representation, rather than engaging with the formal, state-provided administrative and judicial institutions available in the city. This reliance reflects more than habit or convenience: it signals that the rural arena remains the primary site of legitimate authority and trusted governance. It may also be self-reinforcing, as relying on rural institutions of authority creates further incentives to invest in one’s good standing in that community.
Together, these forms of urban orientation – identity and belonging, material investment, social embeddedness and political-administrative breaks with rural institutions – capture the degree to which a general orientation towards city life accompanies urban residence. These are important as African states seek to develop sustainable cities that rely on an urban tax base, and as political parties attend to the interests of urban residents (e.g., Resnik Reference Resnick2013; Stacey & Lund Reference Stacey and Lund2016; Fjeldstad, Ali, & Goodfellow Reference Fjeldstad, Ali and Goodfellow2017; Nathan Reference Nathan2019; Agbalajobi et al. Reference Agbalajobi, Awal, Lawanson and Paller2025; Essien & Jesse Reference Essien and Jesse2025).
Urbanisation in Kenya
We unpack urbanisation within the context of Nairobi, Kenya, which has several advantages. First, Nairobi is a major metropolis that has been settled since the construction of the British colonial railway (Rahbaran and Herz Reference Rahbaran and Herz2014). As a result, Nairobi is a case where we can identify families with multiple generations of sustained settlement within the city (Ngweno Reference Ng’weno2018). The longer people reside in the city, the more we can determine whether urban living contributes to an urban reorientation and the decay of urban–rural linkages.
Second, Kenya – like many other countries in Africa – is experiencing dramatic ongoing urbanisation. As an emerging middle-income country with a growing share of its population living in urban areas, the country is facing major social and economic transformations. Kenya remains a rural country with an urbanisation rate of approximately 27%, but is estimated to reach urban–rural parity by 2050. Economic analyses suggest that Kenya’s urbanisation continues, given that the transition from agriculture to industrial production has not yet been fully realised.
Third, Kenya has ushered in a major devolution process to create effective local governments in both urban and rural environments through the 2010 constitutional reform. This shifting administrative, judicial and bureaucratic state capacity provides a rich empirical landscape for assessing the degree to which urban residents are rooted in the administrative institutions of the city or the countryside.
The urbanisation and decentralisation process has taken place within the Kenyan context of ongoing, high ethnic political salience and electoral campaigning (e.g., Bratton & Kimenyi Reference Bratton and Kimenyi2008; Mueller Reference Mueller2008; Horowitz Reference Horowitz2018; Hassan & Shealy Reference Hassan and Sheely2017; Harris Reference Harris2019), orienting individuals to identify rural homes or regions as a part of their political identity. The high political relevance of ethnicity is embedded in power contestation and the competitive mobilisation of electoral participation: vote choice for candidate and party, urban or rural location of political engagement and voting and calculation of clientelist ties and opportunities. Given this salience, Kenya is a case where rural ties are likely to be reinforced through political mobilisation, and developing deep urban (re)orientation may be more difficult or limited. It thus provides a rich empirical setting to understand the complexity of urban-rural connections, the temporal variation in duration of such ties across urban experiences, and how and when urban orientations do emerge.
Data and measurement
We collaborated with 17 experienced interviewers to conduct face-to-face, structured interviews with 472 residents of Nairobi, Kenya, in August 2016. Respondents were recruited across 16 different areas within Nairobi, chosen to capture variation in residents’ generational status, socioeconomic status, neighbourhood ethnic diversity and religion. The areas included one upper-class, well-established area (Karen), three middle-class, well-established areas (BuruBuru Estates, Langata, and Jamburi 1), three lower-income, well-established areas (Jerusalem, Jericho, and Bahati), three ethnically mixed neighbourhoods (Nairobi West, Umoja, Babadogo), three ethnically concentrated areas (Pipeline, Dagoretti, and Gatwekera), two Muslim majority areas (Eastleigh and South B) and one transit area (Machakos Country Bus Terminal and market).
Within each area, interviewers approached respondents across various locations, including matatu stations, government offices, restaurants, shopping centres, market stalls and residences. Interviewers alternated the gender of those they approached to achieve gender parity and simply asked to speak to different urban residents as they conducted business, ate or rested between travel.
Given the challenges of random sampling in urban areas of developing countries (Thachil Reference Thachil2018), due to the high mobility of urban residents and the fact that most are away from home during the day, we opted for this non-random sampling strategy. The difficulty of conducting surveys with busy urban residents is evident in the fact that only 40% of those approached agreed to be interviewed as they rushed to work or otherwise went about their daily lives. While we cannot empirically estimate the impact of this sampling strategy, we anticipate that our sample is poorer, less formally employed, and less rooted in urban areas than Nairobi as a whole.
In addition to standard demographic information, the survey included questions designed to capture rich descriptive data on the nature of each individual’s (or his or her family’s) journey to the city and the nature and strength of connections to their home village (if they had one). We also included questions aimed at identifying different dimensions of connection to the urban area: personal, economic, security and spiritual.
The sample of 472 respondents was 57% male, and 56% of respondents reported being married. The average age in the sample was 34 years, with respondents ranging from 18 to 86 years old. In terms of education levels, 30% of respondents had not attended secondary school, 41% had a secondary school diploma and 29% had completed some form of post-secondary education. Most of the respondents (81%) were employed, with the largest proportion being traders or vendors (26%), unskilled manual labourers (22%), retail workers (10%) or mid-level professionals (e.g., teachers, nurses, etc., 6%). The sample included individuals at all levels of income, including those with household incomes of less than 10,000 Ksh per month ($100, 27%), those earning between 10,000 and 25,000 Ksh (37%), and those earning more than 25,000 Ksh (36%). The sample was also ethnically diverse at 29% Kikuyu, 20% Luo, 14% Luhya, 14% Kamba, 4% Somali and 19% others, including Kalenjin, Kisii, Meru/Embu, Masai/Samburu, MijiKenda and Taita. Finally, 68% of respondents were Christian (non-Pentecostal), 22% were Pentecostal, and 10% were Muslim. In the face of such diversity, most interviews were conducted in Kiswahili (54%), and the remainder predominantly used English.
Results
In this section, we present four sets of empirical findings. We begin by describing variation in our two measures of urban duration – years lived in Nairobi and generational status – to establish the temporal diversity in our sample. Next, we examine patterns of rural connection across respondents, showing how the four types of linkage vary in prevalence and the degree to which they co-occur. We then analyse the relationship between urban duration and each type of rural connection, both within lifetimes and across generations. Finally, we assess how these different forms of rural connection relate to indicators of urban (re)orientation, shedding light on how persistent ties to rural homes may shape integration into urban social and political life.
Variation in urban duration
We rely on two different measures of urban duration. The first is generation, which is an indicator of when an individual or their family relocated to Nairobi. The second is a continuous measure of how many years one has lived in Nairobi, which is only captured for those born outside of Nairobi. Together, these variables allow us to determine whether generational patterns are similar to the patterns of what happens with a longer urban tenure during one lifetime.
As expected, there is rich variation in urban duration in our sample. In terms of generation, which is an indicator of when an individual or their family relocated to Nairobi, 71% of our respondents had migrated to Nairobi as adults (first generation), 5% arrived before the age of 13 (1.5 generation), 16% were born in the city to first generation migrants (second generation), and 8% were born in the city to parents who were also born in the city (third generation and beyond). Comparing those who migrated as adults (n = 330) to those who were born in Nairobi or migrated during childhood (n = 135) reveals only minor differences. While migrants are slightly older (35 years vs. 32 years, t = 2.55, p = 0.01), less likely to have completed primary school (82% vs. 92%, χ 2 = 6.45, p = 0.01) or secondary (56% vs. 67%, χ 2 = 4.82, p = 0.03) and are poorer (χ 2 = 7.73, p = 0.02), on average, there are no religious or gender differences.
There was also significant variation in the length of time that the 330 urban residents who were born outside Nairobi (first and 1.5 generations) had lived in the city. Across the sample of migrants, the average number of years living in Nairobi was 11. To give a sense of how this variation manifests, consider the most recent arrival and the longest-term migrant. The former had arrived in Nairobi only a few weeks before we spoke to him. He was a young, unmarried man who had completed primary school, owned property in his home village, and spoke three languages (English, Swahili, and Luhya). He was living rent-free with a friend in Nairobi while looking for work, but already anticipated that he would need to return to his rural place of origin because of the economic precarity of urban living. The latter was an 86-year-old woman with a Standard Four education who had come to Nairobi to seek employment in 1966. She was living with one of her adult children, but still owned land in her home village and anticipated returning one day, if not before her death, than surely after.
Variation in urban-rural connections
Table 1 summarises our operationalisation of the four different types of urban–rural connections. It is important to note that all forms of urban–rural linkages are coded as absent for those who could not identify a home village, as they could not be asked about their connections to such a home. Because each linkage is captured by multiple indicators, we first report descriptive statistics on each constituent indicator and then combine those indicators into a single index for each type of linkage using a simple mean index of standardised indicators.
Measures of urban–rural connections
We can also assess which elements of rural linkage most commonly occur together. Thus, we next evaluate the relationships among different types of linkages by reporting simple pairwise correlation coefficients for the four indices. Figure 1 shows that while all four forms of urban–rural connection are positively correlated, some are more strongly related than others. For example, the strongest associations are the frequency of direct contact and both material investments by urban residents and expectations of a rural safety net. Spiritual connections between urban residents and their rural homes are the least strongly related to the other forms of urban–rural linkage, especially the provision of material support.
Correlations among the different types of urban–rural connection.
Urban duration and urban–rural linkages
We next evaluate the relationship between urban duration – both generation and years in the city – and the strength of each of the four urban–rural connections. To do so, we estimate a series of linear probability models that include respondent-level control variables for gender, age, marital status, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Models also include enumerator fixed-effects to account for measurement error or bias due to an enumerator’s identity or method of asking questions.
Figure 2 plots the effects of years in the city on the various forms of urban–rural connection for adult migrants. The figure shows a striking pattern: there is virtually no degradation of urban–rural linkages over time among those born outside the city. Those who have lived in Nairobi for more than 20 years are just as connected to their rural homes as recent arrivals. These patterns suggest that urbanisation is unlikely to undermine strong connections to rural areas within a single lifetime.
Urban duration and urban–rural linkages among migrants.
In contrast, Figure 3 shows that these various forms of urban–rural connection do decline across urban generations. However, for all four forms of linkage, the sharpest drop only occurs among those whose families have been residing in Nairobi for three generations or more. For spiritual connections to a rural home, in fact, we see no reduction in strength for the second generation as compared to the first. These patterns make clear that complete urban reorientation – meaning a break from all rural life – only occurs over many generations, and it’s even possible that some components of rural connection may never diminish from some urbanites.
Urban generation and urban–rural linkages.
Urban–rural linkages and urban (re)orientation
To explore the consequences of urban–rural connections, we next evaluate the degree to which different types of urban–rural connections act as a barrier to integration and investment in the city. To do so, we consider four indicators of urban orientation – a sense of belonging in the city; identification with the Kenyan nation over one’s ethnic group; social networks that are not organised around one’s rural home; and owning property (land, home or business) in the city – and two indicators of a lack of urban orientation – plans to vote in one’s rural home in the next election; and reliance on rural institutions (traditional leaders and courts).
As shown in Figure 4, urban–rural connections generally undermine urban orientation, but to different degrees and for some forms of connection more than others. Three of the four linkages – frequency of contact, safety net and spiritual – are associated with a reduced likelihood of feeling that one belongs in the city. For national relative to ethnic identification, only the frequency of contact is significant. All four types of linkage dramatically reduce the breadth of one’s social networks in the city beyond others from the same rural home, but this is especially true for the frequency of contact. Those in regular contact with individuals in their rural home and who rely on their home village as a safe refuge are less likely to own property in Nairobi. Finally, all four forms of urban–rural connection increase the likelihood of casting one’s ballot in their rural home, and both frequent contact and material support are associated with greater reliance on rural institutions.
Urban–rural linkages and urban orientation.
These findings suggest that urban–rural connections act as a substitute or a barrier to a broad reorientation away from rural life. However, some forms of urban–rural connection are more relevant for urban life than others. In general, the effect of direct, frequent contact is most strongly associated with a lack of urban reorientation, and spiritual connections the least. This finding is significant in part because it reinforces the value of understanding the varied forms of rural connections themselves. Spiritual connections to rural homes are most enduring, and yet the least inhibiting of urban integration – demonstrating the synergies of the long-time horizon of rural connection and spirituality that can coincide with deepening urban life. Personal contact is the opposite, creating time constraints, network effects and immediate priorities that are more zero-sum for parallel urban investments. This empirical framework provides new insight into urban social and political life, suggesting the differential potential of forms and temporalities of rural connection to coincide or conflict with urban belonging, investment, authority and claim-making.
Conclusion
Africa’s cities are growing rapidly, raising longstanding questions about how urban life reshapes social, economic and political orientations. Theories of urbanisation – spanning modernisation theory to more recent political science and sociology – have often linked city residence to outcomes such as increased national identification, reduced salience of ethnicity, broader and more diverse social networks, and greater reliance on formal state institutions (Bates Reference Bates1976; Robinson Reference Robinson2014; Green Reference Green2022). Our findings from Nairobi suggest that these expected outcomes hold most consistently for multigenerational urban residents. For first-generation migrants, even decades in the city leave rural linkages largely intact, and these ties are associated with more limited integration into urban civic and administrative life.
By disaggregating rural–urban linkages into four forms – direct contact, material support, safety-net expectations and spiritual connections – and situating them within the temporal dynamics of urban residence, we show that not all ties erode at the same pace. Spiritual connections, in particular, remain robust through the second generation, while the other linkages begin to weaken. However, by the third generation, even spiritual connections dissipate. These findings advance Africanist scholarship that has long documented the permeability of the urban–rural boundary, while adding systematic measurement, conceptual variations and comparative leverage.
At the same time, all results reported here are correlational. We cannot definitively establish the causal direction between rural linkages and urban (re)orientation. For example, strong rural ties may hinder integration into the city, but it is also possible that weaker integration encourages the maintenance of rural ties. Our cross-sectional data cannot adjudicate between these possibilities, highlighting the need for panel studies, natural experiments or qualitative process tracing to better establish causal pathways.
The Nairobi case is instructive but also distinctive. Kenya’s relatively low overall urbanisation, the city’s recent historical emergence, and colonial-era policies that required Africans to maintain rural ties likely make Nairobi an ‘easy case’ for observing persistent rural connections – and a difficult one to observe urban reorientations. In other African cities, we might expect different dynamics. Settler-colonial cities and mining towns – often characterised by highly transient labour forces and weaker local claims to indigeneity – may resemble Nairobi in their patterns of enduring rural ties. In contrast, long-standing precolonial urban centres or cities with entrenched notions of autochthony may foster stronger urban identities and a more complete reorientation toward the city. Recent research in Ghana demonstrates that urban political contestation there revolves around distinctions between ethnic indigenes and ‘strangers’, creating a different set of pressures on urban belonging and rural connection (Paller Reference Paller2019). Such differences underscore the importance of pursuing cross-national comparative studies of urbanisation.
Future research should also explore urbanisation in ‘second cities’ and smaller urban centres. While mega-metropolises and capital cities have received the most attention in the study of African cities, a significant portion of the growth in urbanisation is happening through migration to smaller, regional capitals and commercial centres (Brycerson Reference Bryceson2011). These cities and small towns are likely to differ from their larger counterparts in several key ways, including their proximity to the rural homes of their residents, their affordability, and the livelihood strategies available to their residents (Tacoli Reference Tacoli2017). Thus, comparative work – both within and across countries – is critical for refining theories of urbanisation and for anticipating how Africa’s urban transformation will shape governance, political competition and development in the decades ahead.
Finally, a comprehensive understanding of urbanisation’s impacts in Africa requires us to also consider the implications of sustained urban–rural linkages for the residents of rural areas. Their connection to urban spaces, through migrant family members or returnees in retirement, may also meaningfully shape their economic opportunities, sense of identity or the scope of their national and political imagination. Indeed, research from the Transkei coast of South Africa has demonstrated that migrants returning to their rural homes from Cape Town function as a frontier of social change, shifting both cultural practices and livelihood strategies as they reproduce some aspects of their former urban lives (Bank Reference Bank2015).
All these areas for future research would benefit from attention to the forms of urban–rural connection and urban temporality that we provide here. In this way, our framework stands in a long tradition of Africanist research that leverages the continent’s distinctive historical and social dynamics to speak to broad theoretical questions. By conceptualising and measuring rural–urban linkages, we add new empirical leverage to enduring debates about the permeability of urban and rural boundaries, the social foundations of political belonging, and the transformation of economic and civic life under conditions of rapid urbanisation. Our approach underscores how African cities continue to provide not only critical empirical sites but also conceptual innovations for understanding the intersections of migration, identity and governance in the contemporary world.
Acknowledgement
The authors gratefully acknowledge research assistance from Eddine Bouyahi, Kasandra Dalton and Mwongela Kamencu in Nairobi, as well as their enumerator survey team. Human subjects review was provided by Ohio State University (2016B0184) and the Kenyan National Commission for Science, Technology, and Innovation (P/16/27016/12226).
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