Takashie: Translating Transnational Policy Circulations in the Ningo-Prampram City Extension Agenda

Globally, rapid urbanization processes are confronting city planners with urgent spatial and infrastructural challenges. One response to this development has been the development of so-called city annexes or urban extensions. This article taps into established theories of “policy translation” and “soft urban infrastructures” in explaining the localization of transnational policy models into the Ningo-Prampram city extension, located approximately 45 km east of the Ghanaian capital Accra. It is argued that institutionalist translation theories often ignore crucial factors in the translatifon process, that is, the social and cultural institutions that shape processes of city making in areas under transformation. The article introduces the local Ghanaian concept of takashie as an alternative morality mobilized by youth in the Ningo-Prampram community to stage claims to the city in the current moment of social, economic, and spatial transformation. As a competing moral register, takashie impacts the perceptions and experiences of urban change in multiple ways.