Rapid urbanization in Africa has been accompanied by a growth of unplanned settlements and slums. To improve living conditions housing policies generally prescribe community participation - the underlying assumption being that people have a personal interest in settlement upgrading. These policies ignore the fact that a large proportion of urban dwellers rent their accommodation. Jenny Cadstedt provides a thoroughly researched account of how urban life in an African city is shaped by the conditions associated with private rental tenure. Based on a case study of Mwanza city in Tanzania, she invites us to experience what it is like to live in shared accommodations and to depend on private landlords in one's everyday life. By setting these individual experiences against an analysis of housing policy and urban planning at various government levels, she shows how tenants are made invisible as actors in local housing development, despite official concerns with local participation. The book provides essential reading for people engaged in urban planning in Africa and in the international discussion on urban housing policy. Jenny Cadstedt is a member of the research programme on People, Provisioning and Place in Africa at the Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University. This work is her doctoral dissertation.