Urbanization in Africa

The urbanization of most of Africa is moving fast forward, especially South of the Sahara. It is estimated that in 1900, about 89% of inhabitants lived from the primary occupations of farming, hunting and gathering, cattle nomadism, and fishing (Aase, 2003:1) meaning that 11% or less were urban. At the start of the independence period in 1957, 14.7% of Africa's inhabitants were urban, in 2000 had it risen to 37.2% and it is expected to rise to 49.3% in 2015, in effect 3.76% to 3.35% per year (UN, 2002). In sub-Saharan Africa in 1960 "only one city, Johannesburg, had a population of one million;...in 2009, there were fifty-two cities with such large populations." The Nigerian city of Lagos that in 1963 had 665,000 inhabitants (Rakodi, 1997) and 8.7 million in 2000 is expected to become the world's 11th biggest city by 2015 with 16 million inhabitants (UN, 2002).

Pre-colonial times

thumb|A replica of a wattle and daub house at the Etowah Indian Mounds

The process of urbanization required some initial conditions to be met before the process could begin. The purpose of towns was to support the labor of those who were not in agriculture, whether that be craftsmen, priests, traders, landlords, etc. This kind of city was called a "Giant Village," and it allowed the city to move when resources became depleted. Most of the structures built were made of wattle and daub, often even the chiefs quarters.

Nile Valley

thumb|Aerial view of the Pyramids in Meroe Sudan

The earliest known cities of Africa emerged around the Nile Valley. Kerma, in present-day Sudan, is the oldest urban centers in Africa, dating back to at least 2500 BCE. Excavations by Charles Bonnet revealed a city with planned streets, elite residences, workshops, and the massive Western Deffufa, one of the oldest standing mudbrick temples in the world, indicating complex religious, political, and administrative organization.

Alexandria was founded in Egypt in 331 BC and is famous for the lighthouse Pharos, for a legendary library, and for the martyrdom of Hypatia of Alexandria. While more Ancient Greek papyri were preserved in the sands of Egypt than anywhere else in the ancient world, relatively few from Alexandria still remain. In Upper Nile Valley, Meroë (present-day Sudan) was one of the major cities in the Kingdom of Kush. For several centuries after the sacking of Napata in 590 BC, the Meroitic kingdom developed independently of Egypt, reaching its height in the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC. Meroë advanced in iron technology, and building construction dates back to at least 900 BC. Meroë was a great center of agriculture at its height.

Africa north of the Sahara has long had political and cultural contact with people outside of Africa.

West Africa

thumb|Several Historical Yoruba Cities In South West current day Nigeria

Between AD 700 to 1600, cities in the West African savanna emerged from the trans-Saharan trade. Some of the more prominent were Kumbi Saleh, Timbuktu, Djenné and Gao. Arabic scholars like Ibn Khaldun have been a very important source of historical accounts from this area and period. Gold mining, iron technology, pottery making and textile production were the important technologies. In the commercial and capital center of Ghana Empire (not present Ghana) Kumbi Saleh an elaborate economic system including taxation was developed. The growth and strength of the 3 kingdoms of Mali, Ghana, and Songhai can be attributed to their fertile and easily farmable environment. This allowed them to create a surplus of rice, as well as their long-distance trade of salt and gold. In the Mangbetu Kingdom districts changed their structure to fit the need of the kingdom. There is evidence of equal dispersion of villages of equal sizes transforming into larger clumped villages in times of war or when trade route were diverted through the village and then reverted back when those times have passed back to equally dispersed villages of equal sizes. Great Zimbabwe is one of the more famous pre-colonial cities of Africa. Its Great Enclosure is considered the largest single prehistoric structure in Africa. The earliest inhabitants of the Angola area are believed to have been Khoisan hunter-gatherers whose remains date back to the Old Stone Age.

Postcolonial period

Most of today's African countries gained their formal independence in the 1960s. The new countries seemed to have a great faith in planned economy regardless of how they gained their independence. The government should actively develop the country, not only by building infrastructure and developing social services; but also by developing industry and employment. Many parastatal companies are today left as 'white elephants' and demonstrate the great investments that were made in the cities at the beginning of the post-colonial period (Rakodi, 1997).

For many reasons it was thought that centralisation equalled a strong (powerful) state (government). The reasons could be

the wish to induce a feeling of nationhood, which also led to the establishment of brand new capitals (to be mentioned later);
a lack of qualified government officers; someone had to do the work that the colonial officers had done, but in some places these people simply did not exist;
the fear that local authorities would turn against central authorities. (Rakodi, 1997).

Centralization meant that companies had even more reason to establish themselves in the already large capitals because this was closest to power. In effect this led to a huge concentration of investment in urban areas. For example, in Nigeria where 80% of investments not related to agriculture was spent in urban areas (Rakodi, 1997).

New cities were also established in the post-colonial period, but not for the same reasons as in the colonial period. The seaport Tema in Ghana was built awaiting great industrial growth. Later, new capitals were built, inspired by the planned city of Brasília in Brazil. This happened in Malawi (Lilongwe), Côte d'Ivoire (Yamoussoukro) and Nigeria (Abuja) (Stock, 1995). The new capitals were meant to give the nation a 'fresh start', they were supposed to be the beginning of a new golden future promised by the liberation politicians.

As none of the new capitals have grown to more than about half a million inhabitants, they have probably not had much influence on the growth of the already established cities. Tema could be said to be a success as it is the most important port today, and together with Accra represent the biggest metropolitan area in Ghana (The World Bank Group, 2001; UN, 2003b; Obeng-Odoom, 2013).

At the same time as influx-control regulations were intensified in South Africa, this kind of regulation was weakened in the newly liberated countries. This led to more rural-urban migration in the newly liberated countries (Rakodi, 1997), and a stable decline in urbanization growth from 1950 to 1990 in South Africa.

From figure 1 one can see that after the end of apartheid in 1990, the urbanization rate grow from 2.29% to 3.41%, while it continues to sink in the rest of Africa. The abandonment of the influx-control regulations in 1986 is a part of this picture. The city of Bloemfontein grew 51% between 1988 and 1996. (The Ministry of the Flemish Government, 2001).

{| class="wikitable"

|- VALIGN=TOP

! Country / Region

! 1950–1955

! 1955–1960

! 1960–1965

! 1965–1970

! 1970–1975

! 1975–1980

! 1980–1985

! 1985–1990

! 1990–1995

! 1995–2000

! 2000–2005

| style="width:9%; vertical-align:TOP;"| Africa

| 4.50

| 4.63

| 4.85

| 4.68

| 4.37

| 4.45

| 4.38

| 4.26

| 4.16

| 3.91

| 3.76

| style="width:9%; vertical-align:TOP;"| Eastern Africa

| 5.57

| 5.77

| 6.08

| 6.07

| 6.28

| 6.56

| 5.36

| 5.56

| 5.31

| 5.10

| 4.70

| style="width:9%; vertical-align:TOP;"| Southern Africa

| 3.21

| 3.32

| 3.00

| 3.03

| 2.82

| 2.64

| 2.73

| 2.63

| 3.50

| 3.15

| 2.13

| style="width:9%; vertical-align:TOP;"| South Africa

| 3.14

| 3.23

| 2.88

| 2.90

| 2.66

| 2.46

| 2.49

| 2.29

| 3.41

| 3.13

| 2.09

| colspan=12 |

Influx control regulation was active in South Africa until 1986–90, while in the rest of Africa they were more or less abandoned or without effect. However, even the remnants of these regulations could have an effect on how the cities grew, since they made it difficult to get hold of legally owned land. This again led to the illegitimate occupation of land.

One reason for people wanting to move from rural to urban areas is that they think living will be better there. A comparison between HDI rank and urbanization level in Africa could show that there might be some sense in this belief. The five African countries that in 2001 ranked highest on the United Nations Human Development Index was also some of the most urbanised, see figure 2.

{| class="wikitable"

|- VALIGN=TOP

! Country

! HDI value

! % urban population

| Libya

| 0.783

| 88.0

| Tunisia

| 0.740

| 66.2

| Algeria

| 0.704

| 57.7

| South Africa

| 0.684

| 57.7

| Equatorial Guinea

| 0.664

| 49.3

| colspan=3 |

In some countries rural inhabitants have been given even more reasons to migrate to the city by lower food prices in the cities, often because of pressure from trade unions. This in turn has led to lowered income in rural areas and therefore higher migration to urban areas. (Rakodi, 1997; Aase, 2003).

Finally it should be mentioned that war and economic misconduct have led to the dilution of rural resources and periodically very high rural-urban migration. At the end of the 1980s, there were only 18 African countries that had not experienced a military coup against their government (Rakodi, 1997).(Written by Josiah Naidoo).

Summary

The urbanization rate in Africa is slowing, but so is the population growth rate, much because of HIV/AIDS (UN, 2003a). The big cities of Africa will probably continue to grow, but the future is as always uncertain. In 1994 it was expected that Lagos would become the world's third biggest city with 24.4 million inhabitants by 2015 (Todaro, 1997), but in 2001 this was adjusted to the world's eleventh biggest city with 'only' 16 million inhabitants (UN, 2002). This shows how uncertain the numbers are, and how unpredictable the African population development is.

It is evident that like in the rest of the world, the African urbanization process has mainly been influenced by economy. The colonial powers placed ports, railways and mines to economically strategic places. The cities have both in colonial and post-colonial times been economically prioritized. People came to these places for nationalistic pride, work, administration, education and social services. The exception is South Africa who, with its strict influx control regime and apartheid policy, to a certain degree managed to control urban growth. It is nonetheless one of the most urbanized countries of Africa and now has a low urbanization growth.

References

Bibliography

Koreisha, Sergio: Brasília and the Central West.

;1990s

Stock, Robert. 1995: Africa South of the Sahara ? A Geographical Interpretation. The Guilford Press, New York.
Aryeetey-Attoh, S. 1997: Urban Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa, in Aryeetey-Attoh, S.: Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa, Prentice Hall, 1997, page 182–186.
Rakodi, Carole 1997: The Urban Challenge in Africa: Growth and Management of Its Large Cities . New York United Nations University, Tokyo.
Todaro, Michael P. 1997: Urbanization, Unemployment, and Migration in Africa: Theory and Policy.
Dorsey, L. 1998: History 485/885. Africa Since 1800. University of Nebraska.

;2000s

The Ministry of the Flemish Government, Department of Education 2001: South Africa: Spatial transformation in the post-apartheid era. A website course in social economic and political geography, and international educational project.
The World Bank Group 2001: Upgrading of Low Income Settlements Country Assessment Report: Ghana .
United Nations (UN), Population Division 2003a: World Population Prospects, the 2002 Revision. Highlights. New York.
United Nations (UN), Population Division 2002: World Urbanization Prospects, the 2001 Revision. New York.
Hernæs, Per 2003a: Kolonistyret i Africa ? del I. NTNU, Trondheim. Paper only available within the university.
Hernæs, Per 2003b: Kolonistyret i Africa ? del II. NTNU, Trondheim. Paper only available within the university.
The Intelligencer, 2003: Terrible risk to ignore urban slums. Belleville.
Areal, Augusto Cesar Baptista 2003: The City of Brasília. General Information about Brasília.
UNDP 2003: Human Development Indicators 2003.
United Nations (UN), Statistics Division 2003b: Population of capital cities and cities of 100,000 and more inhabitants. New York.
Aase, Asbjørn 2003: Urbanisering og byliv i Africa. NTNU, Trondheim. Paper only available within the university.

;2010s

Obeng-Odoom F, 2013, Governance for Pro-Poor Urban Development: Lessons from Ghana, Routledge, London.

External links

(Bibliography)