The book by Professor Jenkins shows the process and characteristics of urban development in Sub-Saharan region of Africa, its historical roots, its comparison with other orbs from the continent, the influence of economic and social factors, as well as ethnographic and cultural, focusing on the study of Mozambique's capital city Maputo and its growth displaying distinctive spaces and forms due to particularly political, economic, social, and the cultural contexts. Despite common misunderstanding to the contrary, the urbanization process in Sub-Saharan Africa has historical roots. However, this process has accel­erated enormously during the past half-century of the post-colonial period, creating quite distinctive urban spaces and forms. Paul Jenkins, therefore, presents in his book “Urbanization, Urbanism and Urbanity in an African City: home spaces and house cultures” a framework for a better understanding of urbanization, urbanism and urbanity in Africa and of how residents build cities from below. Based on the case-study of Maputo, Mozambique, he starts by overcoming some common misunderstanding: urbanization is an old process in Africa, and hence applying the tools, policies and practices from the global North to the Global South is questionable as the context is everything but similar. Jenkins retakes a realistic approach: contrary to the Global North where urban development was state-led due to favourable conjuncture, states from the Global South have limited capacities and capabilities in terms of human and financial capital. Furthermore, while engaging with urban development, the state took mostly into account the “formal areas”, excluding informal and slums areas. This led the residents of these fast-growing urban areas to take the initiative regarding the urban development, making the city every day, with limited participation of state and formal private sector. The urban development in Africa involves a plurality of actors and both bottom-up and top-down approaches/initiatives. Therefore it is argued that (i) the state should reinvent its role, (ii) focus its efforts on specific areas of urban development, and (iii) complement residents’ efforts to guide towards better urban development. Although the propositions are more than relevant, a critic could be raised as urban development initiated by the residents might exclude vulnerable people, and hence be non-inclusive. The state has still a regulator role to play, but this regulation should be flexible enough to allow and favour residents’ initiatives. Further research regarding the part of the residents is therefore needed. To conclude this review, I would like to re-emphasize the innovation and relevance of such study, which provides an in-depth understanding of urbanization, urbanism and urbanity in Africa. There are thus significant political as well as economic constraints to pro­vision of such essential urban physical needs in infrastructure and built form, which represent the "structure" within which residents agency operates. This outcome of rapid urbanization is not new, in that such manifestations of urban needs were explicitly identified in the nineteenth-century period of rapid urban growth in the global North. It was here in the fact that these were formally defined, and provision of such urban infrastructure and built form then eventually planned for, and delivered to a significant extent, through both public investment (redistributing wealth to a certain extent in the process) and increas­ing private supply to fee-paying customers. This experience was then repeated worldwide at the time, albeit mainly for urban minorities in the global South, many being colonial settler populations. The approach of the author and his framework are of prime interest, and his findings should be taken into account by both all the actors involved in urban development – and this is where the challenges are mainly present: how to integrate the understanding and these recommendations into concrete policies? Further research about urbanization in Africa should be led following Jenkins’ framework and follow a bottom-up approach due to contextual reasons. There is indeed a need to know more about the dynamism and complexity of urban development in peri-urban areas. The lack of public (central and local government) and "formal" private sector supply of what is seen as necessary urban infrastructure (in terms of water supply, sanitation, paved access, public illumination, electrical and other forms of domestic fuel, and also waste collection and drainage/ erosion control) as well as adequate built form (in terms of quantity, size, quality, and density of housing, health, education, and recre­ation facilities) does not only relate to issues of capacity to fund this directly by users. It is also associated with the will to engage (whether by the state or private sector) with broader but generally very low-income communities. It reflects the lack of such political will in elite-dom­inated governance regimes.