Urban migrants in Nampula City, northern Mozambique, perceive themselves to be living in an environment where they are particularly vulnerable to sorcery attacks. Key to this sense of vulnerability are Makhuwa notions of matrilineal descent and relatedness, which work to locate sorcery fears in the interstices of two kinds of proximity, namely social and physical. Accordingly, people fear the translocal reach of the ill will of kin residing in the countryside, with whose well-being they remain connected regardless of the physical distance. Simultaneously, there are threats posed by urban neighbours who, due to their proximity in physical terms but separation in social terms, are considered dangerous. This article analyses practices of conspicuous exchange as one of the strategies urban migrants employ in coping with these anxieties. Specifically, it draws on the life histories of two women in one neighbourhood of Nampula City to explore the challenges they experience in meeting demands for material assistance from rural kin and urban neighbours. The analysis shows that their accounts of sorcery are structured by the difficulty of balancing such demands in a setting of poverty and socio-economic inequality. This finding has implications for anthropological theories of sorcery, misfortune and urban migration.

In West Africa, concrete is increasingly taking hold of physical landscapes, popular consciousness, and everyday conversations. Ubiquitous and pervasive, concrete is now an integral part of West African urban materiality and cultural identity. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s theory on the production of space, I consider this material as both a product and a producer of urban space. By tracing flows of building materials across the West African urban corridor linking the cities of Abidjan, Accra, Lomé, Cotonou, Porto-Novo and Lagos, this article proposes to understand how cement and concrete (re)shape African built environments, human lives and urban futures. It examines three dimensions of this concrete urban materiality: its links with capital, its social meanings for inhabitants-builders and its ecological impacts. I conclude by highlighting the potentials, limits and contradictions raised by this now contested material, thus shedding light on the complexity of the production of urban spaces in West Africa.