Is violent conflict in Africa urbanizing? How do urban protests and civil war intersect? How do narratives, mechanisms and identities of contention move between urban and rural arenas? These questions constitute the basis of investigation and analysis of this unique cross-disciplinary volume. Applying diverging perspectives and methods from political science, anthropology and urban African studies, the book carefully constructs the relational and entangled nature of contemporary forms of contentious politics in Niger, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia.