The evidence from censuses and satellite imagery is increasing that the rate at which many countries are becoming more urban in sub-Saharan Africa has slowed or is even stagnating. This has major policy implications. Many standard reviews of the region still, however, tend to maintain that urbanization is occurring rapidly but, as this paper demonstrates, the data used are frequently erroneous. Such errors are exacerbated by a lack of reasonable estimates of the size and growth of towns in Nigeria, sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous country with the region’s most complex urban system. This paper also attempts to address this knowledge gap and shows how Nigeria’s level of urbanization has also been significantly over-estimated.
That was from Deborah Potts’ new paper in World Development (ungated version here). Taking the example of Nigeria, the paper shows that the country’s major urban centers were stagnating or losing population relative to the country as a whole. Why is that happening?
The primary cause of reductions in urban population growth in Africa is the weak performance of African urban economies and the very high levels of economic insecurity this means for the vast majority of urban people
… There is also a wealth of evidence on the declines suffered by productive enterprises in cities due to foreign competition. Another severe problem is the very unreliable urban electricity supply throughout the country, meaning many enterprises have to use expensive generators, further undermining their competitiveness
And from the conclusions:
In 2004, Cohen suggested that, ‘[g]iven the historical connection between industrialization and urbanization, continued urbanization in Africa may only be possible if there is a sharp increase in economic development’ (Cohen 2004: 48). This appears to have been a rather better prediction about African urbanization than many, more recent ones. There is evidence now from many sub-Saharan African countries of slowing or stagnating urbanization, defined in terms of a relative increase in the urban versus the rural population
Nigeria is not equivalent to Africa. Nigeria is only one country. How does one use evidence from single country to generalize about Africa
True, I think I didn’t make it clear in the post. The first part of the paper looks at the mismatch between Un-Habitat statistics and censuses from several African cities, not only Nigerians. The second part focuses in-depth on Nigeria.
Another thing to point out is the definition of “urbanization”: “the demographic process whereby an increasing share of the national population lives within urban settlements”. The argument is not that urban areas are not growing in absolute terms, they are just not growing faster than rural areas. I hope that clarifies a little.
I guess this further attributes economic growth in Africa (generally speaking) to the high price of commodities. All that optimism seems to be predicated on rural areas selling raw products for unprecedentedly high prices – surely it can’t last forever.
While I agree with Debbie that Africa is urbanizing slowly despite experiencing rapid urban population growth (a counter-intuitive point), I disagree that urbanization will cease in the region, as she suggests. Africa will continue to urbanize until roughly 70-80% of the region’s population live in urban settlements, just like every other region. My argument is sketched out briefly here:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2012/02/13/africas-urban-transition-challenges-misconceptions-and-opportunities/
and in substantially more detail in this paper (an edited version of which will be published in Population and Development Review in June):
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/internationalDevelopment/research/crisisStates/Publications/wpPhase2/wp89.aspx
Thanks Sean, this is really interesting material.
[...] that will literally pave the way to even more growth for the Lion economies of East Africa? Or, as a recent blog post on Kariobangiblog highlighted, is the focus on all these urban building projects missing the point [...]