Box 1.2: Urbanization Levels versus Urban Population Growth: Understanding the Trends and Contributory Factors
Urbanization is a multifaceted concept that can refer simply to the growth of population in towns. It may also be used to describe the social and political changes that may occur when people live in large, nucleated settlements. Urbanization can also refer to two important structural changes. The first is the speed at which the urbanization level (the share of the national population in towns) is increasing. The second is the extent to which this is accompanied by structural shifts in the economy and employment. This corresponds to conventional understandings about the role of urbanization in economic growth and development. Distinguishing between these varying aspects helps to explain some seemingly contradictory trends in recent urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps the most obvious of these is that rapid population growth, as experienced in most of the region’s towns, does not necessarily translate into rapid increases in the urbanization level. The reason for this is that rises in the level depend on how fast urban populations are growing relative to national growth rates. As many African countries have high population growth, the gap between national population growth and urban growth is not necessarily large, even if towns are growing rapidly. A focus on the structural aspects of urbanization, rather than on headline city population growth rates alone, provides a
picture of a very variable urban experience across the region within, and between, countries. Latest census data, rather than projections, show that several large mainland sub-Saharan African countries have experienced periods of quite slow urbanization in recent decades, mainly because the gap narrowed between urban and national growth rates. This can occur even if some towns are growing well in excess of the national average, as long as this is counterbalanced by slower growth in other towns within the same country. Thus, rapid urbanization need not occur just because a capital city is growing fast. Table 1 summarises results of urban census data analyses from countries with populations over about 2.5 million, in which the vast majority of sub-Saharan Africans reside. The level of urbanization rose by less than 2 per cent in a dozen countries in their last intercensal period (which in most cases was longer than a decade). A few even counter-urbanized (i.e. the urban population share fell) in the 1980s and 1990s. Despite understandable caution about the reliability of African census data, it is unlikely that so many censuses could reproduce similar trends by mistake. According to their censuses, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Ghana were, however, urbanizing significantly faster. These data give a rather different picture of Africa’s recent urban experience from the one usually presented of very rapid shifts towards a more urban population, and have important policy implications. If the trends are compared
to recent rises in urbanization levels in many Asian countries, it becomes apparent that although African urban population growth may be higher, the rate at which it has urbanized recently is lower. Analysis of census migration data and surveys shows that a major reason for this slowing urbanization is that the contribution of net in-migration to urban growth diminished. Although there is still much in-migration, urban-rural migration rates rose in response to reductions in the gap between disposable incomes in rural and urban areas as African urban economies informalized under the constraints of structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s and 1990s. In Tanzania, for example, census data indicate that the net contribution of migration to urban growth in 2001-2002 was about 44,000 people: less than 1 per cent of the total urban population at the time. As indicated in Table 1 there are also issues of definition, which can misdirect interpretations of African urbanization. Many countries define small settlements of a few thousand as urban, with no reference to their occupational profiles. This sometimes means that large villages where most people are farmers, or practise other rural or “non-urban” occupations, are classified as urban settlements. It is becoming more important to factor this into the analysis of African urbanization because settlement reclassification, rather than migration, is
Table 1: Large Sub-Saharan African Mainland Countries by Growth Rate in Urbanization Level and Census Period Counter-urbanization (urban share falling)
Slow urbanization (< 2% between censuses)
Rapid urbanization
Uncertain (no census or definitional queries)
Zambia 1980-90, 1990-2000
Benin 1992-2002
Burkina Faso 1996-2006
Angola
Cote d’Ivoire 1988-98
Ethiopia 1994-2007
Cameroon 1987-2005
Congo (DRC)
Mali 1987-98
Malawi 1998-2008
Ghana 2000-2010
CAR 1988-2003
Mauritania 1988-2000
Kenya 1989-2009 Tanzania 1998-2002
Mozambique 1997-2007 Niger 1988-2001 Senegal 1988-2002 Sudan 1993-2008 Togo 1981-2010 Uganda 1991-2002 Zambia 2000-2010 CHAPTER ONE
Nigeria 1991-2006 1
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1
Nigeria’s censuses are particularly complicated. Nonetheless there is significant evidence now that its urbanization level has been exaggerated as the populations of many large towns have not been growing much, if any, faster than the national population.