Who is Africa’s Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson? Its Rudy Giuliani or Bill de Blasio? The continent has seen emperors and still possesses an absolute monarch (in Swaziland), along with presidents, prime ministers, state governors and traditional leaders such as kings, chiefs and emirs, but that doesn’t leave much room for the humble city mayor.

A plan to change that took a step forward last week when the first African mayor awards were held in Luanda, Angola, with organisers hoping to boost the profile of this oft-ignored tier of African politics. They claim the annual ceremony “showcases excellence in urban development” at a time that much of the continent’s population growth is concentrated in cities – with Luanda itself a stark example of the gap between rich and poor.

But the inaugural event suffered some peculiar branding. Its formal name, apparently due to a last-minute change for reasons open to speculation, was the José Eduardo dos Santos African Mayor Awards. This gave the impression that it was more about promoting the Angolan president, who has ruled with an iron fist for the past 36 years, than the mayors, whose names did not even feature in the official press release save for a picture caption.

The mayors' names did not even feature in the official press release save for a picture caption

The winners were divided into three sections. In the large metropolis category – a million residents or more – Accra in Ghana, under mayor Alfred Oko Vanderpuije, defeated Cape Town in South Africa and Dakar in Senegal. Among medium-sized cities (more than 200,000 residents and less than a million), the winner was Kinondini in Tanzania, represented at the ceremony by Sarah Kyessi (the identity of the mayor remains a mystery to almost everyone outside Kinondini). In the small cities (up to 200,000 residents) category, the winner was Praia in Cape Verde under José Ulisses Correia e Silva.

The awards organiser and publisher of African Business magazine, Omar Ben Yedder, told guests at the ceremony: “The winning cities tonight are being led by individuals who are showing essential leadership qualities as they help build cities that work. And we will need more exemplary leadership, good governance and innovative thinking, whilst paying close attention to our culture and way of living when dreaming of the cities of tomorrow. Our leaders need to be close to the people, and our winners tonight are demonstrating these qualities.”

Yet even most Africa aficionados would be hard pushed to name the mayor of Luanda, or indeed the mayor of most cities on the continent. What about that great Nigerian megacity, Lagos? A headline on the African Arguments website in 2012 read: “Babatunde Fashola: the Mayor Bloomberg of Lagos State.” Technically, Fashola is the governor of Lagos state, rather than mayor of Lagos city.



In South Africa, the mayor of Durban is James Nxumalo, whose Twitter profile shows him wearing traditional mayoral chain, but he is far less influential in the region than Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini, whose recent remarks on immigrants caused a storm.



There is a more high-profile figure in Cape Town, which was shortlisted for the awards: Patricia de Lille, a mixed-race veteran of the struggle against apartheid. De Lille fits the mould of a maverick mayor, and has been a constant thorn in the side of the governing African National Congress. A sign on the wall of her office, where she has reportedly banned air conditioning, reads: “I prefer to do the talking myself, that way we avoid arguments.”

But perhaps the best known personality to date is the former mayor of Mogadishu, Mohamed Nur, who lived in London for two decades, running community organisations for Somali expats, money exchanges, an internet cafe and an unsuccessful campaign to become a Labour councillor in Camden. He once told the Guardian his blueprint for Mogadishu was the regeneration of King’s Cross.