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REPORTAGE

African urbanisation:
Dynamics from here to 2050

Takeaways from the OECD report "Africa's Urbanisation Dynamics 2025: Planning for urban expansion"

 

nairobi
Nairobi (above), along with Cairo, Onitsha, and Lagos, will be among the world's largest cities outside Asia in a few decades (Photo: Unsplash)

The African story of the 21st Century will be defined by urbanisation: the increase and expansion of cities, from Egypt to South Africa, from Nigeria to Uganda. At the UCT GSB Case Writing Centre, we seldom write a case about modern African businesses that doesn’t engage with the impact of urban-rural divides – in energy, transportation, and access to affordable goods and services. The growth of African cities is continually shaping this discussion in terms of new opportunities to bridge the divide, and the forces that are narrowing (and in some case widening) the divide.

Any way you look at it, cities are Africa’s future, transforming lifestyles and landscapes. A recent report from the OECD paints a more detailed picture of what this transformation will look like. Between 2020 and 2050, 80% of the continent’s demographic growth will be absorbed by cities. Over this period, the urban population is expected to double from 717 million to 1.4 billion to make it the continent with the second largest urban population behind Asia. And the growth rate of cities themselves will supersede population growth for a projected footprint of 175 000 square kilometres by 2050.

The report entitled 'Africa's Urbanisation Dynamics 2025' is full of insights about the planning, funding, and designing Africa’s urban areas, and well worth a read. Here are just four takeaways for your consideration:

 

Fusion will be a driver of urban growth

Fusion occurs when growing urban centres merge with other nearby urban centres to form a single city. This ‘connecting of dots’, especially for larger urban centres, contributes to growth of both the urban population and footprint. This effect is expected to be most significant in West Africa, where there are regions with dense urban networks, and East Africa, due to its many linear and sparse settlements. For example, in Uganda, the capital city Kampala is projected to merge with five large urban centres (>100 000 residents) and 44 medium urban centres (10 000-100 000 residents), and to absorb 230 rural settlements. At scale, this trend is leading to ‘mega-agglomerations’ – extended metropolises that create ‘complex, socio-economically connected urban landscapes’. According to current estimates, the ten most extensive agglomerations in Africa by 2050 will be Nairobi, Bujumbura, Onitsha, Mbale, Lagos, Kampala, Johannesburg, Juba, Dar es Salaam, and Cairo.

 

Planning around informality

Informality is a cornerstone of urban living in Africa with the majority of urban dwellers living in informal areas, and getting their goods and services from informal businesses. When urban economies grow faster than housing and infrastructure, unplanned neighbourhoods emerge. And though formal neighbourhoods in Africa benefit the most from investment, policies, and regulation, informal neighbourhoods drive the most spatial and demographic growth. There are many reasons for this (read Luc Gnacadja’s case study in the report for more), a troubling trend given the potential for informal areas to enable sustainable urbanisation in Africa, as Gnacadja suggests.

By providing employment opportunities, affordable goods and services, and establishing their own infrastructure, informal neighbourhoods can serve more people than urban planners uner current conditions. Yet, many development strategies focus on eliminating or formalising these neighbourhoods, sometimes in ways that do not benefit residents. Given the challenges informal residents can face – higher crime rates, and reduced access to public services and commerce – this may seem a humane approach. But as Gnacadja explains, Africa’s immense urbanisation needs, measured in both scale and time, will require less rigid and more agile planning, and a participatory approach that is more inclusive of all residents. He envisions a future where African cities embrace a unique urban identity, based on both traditional know-how and local innovation – a space in which informal communities can lead.

 

Decentralisation for better urban management

Decentralisation programmes aim to devolve power for urban planning from central to local governments. The ultimate goal is for local governments to manage key processes of urban development – such as city planning, land transactions, and public service delivery – while central governments maintain regional and infrastructure planning. This is an approach strongly supported by the African Union as a strategy for improving the livelihoods of more people. Decentralisation has the power to enhance development by improving allocation of resources, increasing fiscal efficiency with local tax revenues, and increasing political accountability for public service delivery. In practice however, national governments have few incentives to decentralise power. The authors explain: ‘What has not developed are the incentives that enable urban actors at all levels of government, as well as in private and civil society organisations, to work together in ways that generate sustained economic and social progress; and specifically, to work towards inclusive and resilient cities.’ The best guarantee of decentralisation for development, they suggest, is a national constitution that recognises the autonomy of subnational governments – an area where South Africa, Kenya, and Angola offer worthy examples.

 

Funding is insufficient and skewed

Unfortunately, funding for urban development is not keeping pace with demand. Although it is difficult to measure total spending since urban development encapsulates multiple sectors (e.g. transport, energy, water, and ICT), using public infrastructure spending as a proxy, Africa as a whole only invested 3.4% of GDP (USD80 million) in urban growth in 2020. On top of this, most funding is allocated to only a few large projects in major cities – typically urban highways, conference centres, and shopping malls – because investors find these more attractive than smaller projects, though the latter that might benefit more people. Transport absorbs the most funding (42%), followed by energy (29%) and ICT (13%). Just 6% is allocated to ‘multisectoral’ needs – schools, health, waste management, and housing – all of which tend to be controlled by municipalities, highlighting the misalignment between resources and needs, especially for those in more informal settings.

‘Too often, these investments provide infrastructure and services that are unaffordable for large parts of the population. This tends to result in an increasingly fragmented urban fabric and does not address the main bottlenecks of [city] economies,’ the authors write. Estimates for Africa’s true infrastructure funding needs vary wildly, limiting the usefulness of projections, with past estimates (USD173 billion for 2006-2015) proving to be almost half of the true costs (USD320 billion) in the end. More accurate estimates at the city-level, based on better date from more sectors, will enable governments to develop better urban planning, and attract more investors – something for policymakers, planners, and developers to consider as they begin planning and building the cities of Africa's future.

 

Read the report

Read the full report, Africa’s Urbanisation Dynamics 2025: Planning for urban expansion, from the OECD.

 

By Sarah Boyd


 

 

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