{"id":908,"date":"2011-10-03T16:21:55","date_gmt":"2011-10-03T16:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africaresearchinstitute.org\/wordpress\/?p=908"},"modified":"2016-03-21T12:50:16","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T12:50:16","slug":"urbanisation-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/africaresearchinstitute.org\/wordpress\/urbanisation-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Urbanisation in Africa: by the numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone knows that Nairobi\u2019s Kibera district is the largest \u201cinformal settlement\u201d, or slum, in sub-Saharan Africa. At least, they used to know. Politicians, journalists, NGOs and urban planning professionals routinely declared that 700,000 – 1,000,000 people lived in Kibera. But when the district was\u00a0geo-statistically mapped<\/a>\u00a0for the first time in 2009 its population was estimated at no more than 220,000-250,000.\u00a0Kibera<\/a>\u00a0has not exactly disappeared, but it is a shadow of its former imagined self.<\/p>\n

In similar vein, the city of Lagos is widely believed to have about\u00a015 million inhabitants<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 an estimate supported by the city authorities in the wake of Nigeria\u2019s contested (and manipulated) 2006 census. But the\u00a02009 Africapolis survey<\/a>\u00a0of West Africa\u2019s urban population, the most sophisticated to date and compiled with the aid of satellite imagery, found that the city was home to no more than 10 million people. Even more significantly, while Nigeria\u2019s census claimed that the country\u2019s population was 140 million, the Africapolis team concluded that \u201cin reality, [Nigeria] probably does not contain 100 million\u201d.<\/p>\n

The shrinkage of Kibera, Lagos and Nigeria will prove to be unexceptional. Governments and city authorities competing for funds, and donors and investors competing for projects, have shared a penchant for exaggeration. Despite the lack of a census in DRC since 1984,\u00a0McKinsey forecasts<\/a>\u00a0that Kinshasa will be the 13th largest city in the world by 2025. The UN has routinely \u2013 and demonstrably \u2013 over-estimated the size of Africa\u2019s larger cities and urban populations. Over time, errors and misinterpretations of data have become magnified, and projections less realistic. Yet it is the UN\u2019s statistics which are most commonly cited. \u201cThey have become \u2018fact\u2019 by being constantly re-stated\u201d, says\u00a0Dr Debby Potts<\/a>\u00a0at King\u2019s College, London, \u201cinstead of being recognised as guesses\u201d.<\/p>\n

More reliable urban population estimates and projections are increasingly available to anyone minded to heed them. They present a far from uniform picture for the continent, but challenge the received wisdom that Africa is urbanising faster than any other continent in the world. According to Africapolis, the urbanisation level in West Africa will rise by less than 3%, to 34.6% of the total population, in the period 2000-2020. Analysis by\u00a0Debby Potts<\/a>\u00a0and other leading specialists of the 18 censuses published by sub-Saharan countries in the past decade reveals a similar picture. While urban populations are growing fast in many countries, only in four countries is rapid urbanisation occurring. According to Potts, \u201cthe most common pattern is for slow urbanisation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rapid urbanisation is being portrayed \u2013 by the UN, the World Bank and many others \u2013 as a potential developmental \u201csilver bullet\u201d for Africa. Cities, we are frequently told, will be the drivers of economic growth and poverty reduction on the continent in the years to come. At present, such claims are too simplistic, and counter-productively over-optimistic.<\/p>\n

One of the explanations for the modest momentum of urbanisation in so many African countries is the dearth of opportunities for individuals to improve their lot in towns and cities.\u00a0Job creation, or lack of it<\/a>, is the key factor here. In the absence of formal or informal employment, or better services, many rural migrants chose to return whence they came, or to come and go \u2013 a phenomenon known as \u201ccircular migration\u201d. This is becoming more and more common, and stays in each location are of shorter duration. Natural increase among the poorest urban-dwellers, not migration, is the biggest driver of urban growth in Africa. This means slum growth, and burgeoning ranks of unoccupied young men and women.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0Professor Edgar Pieterse<\/a>, Director of the African Centre for Cities in Cape Town, points out \u201cthis is tough stuff\u201d. In Africa, despite encouraging GDP growth figures over the past decade, larger concentrations of people are not automatically generating benefits \u2013 quite the opposite. Talk of widespread \u201cbottom-up development\u201d occurring in towns and cities is far-fetched. The notion that big ticket urban infrastructure projects will be a panacea is equally misguided.<\/p>\n

The social, economic and political consequences of policymakers continuing to ignore the best available demographic research could be grim. For example, appropriate food supply networks and health services require sound knowledge of population distribution and migration patterns. But unsound \u201ccommon knowledge\u201d is contributing to bad policymaking and wasted resources \u2013 human and financial. \u201cA set of very pernicious trends is unfolding and planned investments will exacerbate these trends\u201d, says Pieterse.<\/p>\n

Edward Paice<\/strong><\/div>\n
Director<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rapid urbanisation is being portrayed \u2013 by the UN, the World Bank and many others \u2013 as a potential developmental \u201csilver bullet\u201d for Africa. Edward Paice argues these claims are too simplistic and overly-optimistic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[64,68,72,73,70,47,71,65,66,69,67],"class_list":["post-908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-africa","tag-africapolis","tag-cities","tag-demography","tag-dr-debby-potts","tag-employment","tag-job-creation","tag-kenya","tag-kibera","tag-urban-population","tag-urbanisation"],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\nUrbanisation in Africa: by the numbers - Africa Research Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Little is known about urbanisation in Africa. 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