A surge in the number of shopping malls across many African cities reflects capital’s responses to the continent’s growing middle class and deepening neoliberal globalization. This article develops an analysis of the transcalar nature of these urban investments using the case of the West Hills Mall (WHM) in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA). It explores how multiple actors, with their respective calculations, policies and financial resources, are mobilized from across diverse scales to make such an investment possible. Our findings have implications for theorizing urban development politics. First, we consider the ‘circuits’ of transnational financial investments topologically, as embedded within and generated by particular urban contexts: investibility and investment flows are produced through the distinctive histories of urban territories. Second, this focuses attention on the transcalar networks that make urban development possible, in this case involving tightly networked South African and Ghanaian developers, backed by financialized South African private capital and a Ghanaian state pension fund. Third, we interrogate the outcomes and analytical meaning of the development, tracing its territorial impacts, shaped by a wide array of actors and distinctive forms of land governance. The article contributes African-based starting points for theorizing the actors and outcomes of urban development politics and urban development financing.