Join us for a talk with Thomas H. Stubbs (Department of Sociology) and discussant Dr. Graham Denyer Willis. Drawing on findings from 70 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in Kigali (Rwanda) and Nairobi (Kenya), the paper that will be presented argues that the urban governance framework—itself constrained by colonial legacy effects—explains the sharply diverging trajectories in recent slum performance of the two countries. In Kenya, institutional arrangements established during colonial times cultivated post-colonial patron-client networks and rent-seeking opportunities in the slums, creating perverse incentives for governing elites to maintain the status quo. In Rwanda, however, the genocide against the Tutsi acted as a critical juncture severing the institutional trajectory and—in its stead—new institutions formed, including a progressive urban governance portfolio instrumental to the containment of slums. In highlighting the mediating role of state governance in the containment of slums, this paper challenges the prevailing wisdom that had erstwhile based explanations of slum proliferation on a narrowly conceived economistic-cum-demographic determinism.