A new report, Africa’s Urbanisation Dynamics 2025: Planning for Urban Expansion, from the Sahel and West Africa Club (OECD/SWAC), the African Development Bank, Cities Alliance and United Cities and Local Governments of Africa, analyses the rapid urbanisation underway across Africa and looks at the policy measures that will be required to manage this transition fairly and sustainably.
The number of people living in cities in Africa is expected to double from 700 million to 1.4 billion by 2050, according to the report, with cities absorbing 80% of the total projected population growth in Africa over that period.
This pace of urbanisation presents a pressing challenge – with a need for national and local governments to rapidly increase housing supply, infrastructure and essential services – but also a transformative opportunity to make future cities and expanded urban areas more resilient to challenges such as inequality and climate change.
The report calls for policies that improve land governance, including better regulatory frameworks for land tenure, and increased investment to finance urban development with clear economic, social and environmental objectives. It is also essential to involve the private sector, civil society and informal settlements to prevent a mismatch between investment and urban needs and to share the benefits of growth.
Africa’s Urbanisation Dynamics 2025 provides a comprehensive analysis of the continent’s urban transformation to date with first-of-its-kind projections on urban population growth and spatial expansion through 2050 in over 11,000 urban agglomerations across 54 countries.
Read the executive summary and book highlights here. The full report will be available here at midnight tomorrow.
The authors of the report will present key findings and discuss policy implications for Africa’s rapid urbanisation during the launch webinar at 15:00 CET tomorrow. To join the webinar, please register here.
