In their recent blog Can Africa Claim the 21st Century?, Andrew Dabalen and Chorching Goh rightly highlight Africa’s moment of opportunity: a convergence of global attention, demographic momentum, and natural resource wealth. But whether this century can truly be Africa’s depends on whether its cities can generate enough good jobs to employ its growing population.
Last month, I visited Du Noon township in Cape Town, which offered a vivid, street-level view of both the challenges and opportunities facing urban areas. Originally built in the late 1990s as part of South Africa’s post-apartheid social housing program, Du Noon has become unrecognisable from its initial layout. Walking through its narrow alleys, I saw rows of two- and even three-story structures rising above the original single-family homes. These were rental units added by residents, stacked on top of government-built houses and rented to recent migrants, workers, students, and anyone needing proximity to opportunity.
A young mother I spoke with had built two such rooms using savings from her job as a domestic worker. The income from her tenants is enough to cover school fees for her children. Her act of informal densification was also an act of economic resilience. It wasn’t perfect, but it was working.
Du Noon is a preview of the raucous, largely unplanned process of urbanisation underway across the continent. Cities are densifying informally, growing outward and upward, often without services or regulation. These new neighbourhoods are where the urban economy lives—in construction, transport, informal retail, and microenterprise—they are job markets.
By 2050, Africa will add over 700 million new city dwellers. Another figure to consider: 10 to 12 million young African people enter the job market each year, often without formal pathways into employment.
Well-functioning cities offer:
- Higher productivity: urban workers tend to earn more than their rural counterparts. Even informal urban jobs often offer greater access to markets, services, and capital.
- Employment multipliers: for every formal job created, cities generate two to three additional jobs in supporting services like transport, logistics, construction, and food.
- Faster innovation and clustering: cities enable firms to co-locate, specialise, and scale, all of which drive job creation.
But these benefits require infrastructure, land policies, local governance, and above all, planning for inclusion.
What’s Working and Where
- In Freetown, a property tax reform using satellite imagery has increased local revenue threefold and created jobs in digital services, surveying, and data entry.
- In Rwanda, industrial zones are pairing infrastructure with technical education to generate tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs.
- In Kigali and Cape Town, local governments are experimenting with how to support informal densification safely, recognising that the urban poor are already building the housing and job infrastructure of the future.
These are not pilot projects. They are blueprints.
Secondary Cities Matter Most
Too often, we focus only on megacities like Nairobi, Lagos, or Johannesburg. But it’s Africa’s secondary cities that will absorb most of the urban growth over the next 20 years. These cities, places like Gulu (Uganda), Eldoret (Kenya), and Dodoma (Tanzania), are often the first port of call for the rural poor migrating in search of a better life. They have the space, affordability, and job opportunities. They can serve as manufacturing hubs, agro-processing centres, logistics corridors, or tourism anchors—but only if we invest early in planning, services, and connectivity.
The Governance Edge
Local governments are under pressure, but also have a unique opportunity. When a city fails to provide clean water, public lighting, or waste collection, its residents notice. This immediacy creates a feedback loop and a chance for accountability. I’ve seen modest governance improvements, like better street lighting, digital land records, or streamlined business permits, build trust and capacity. The key is to sequence reforms: start with wins that improve daily life, then move toward deeper system changes.
Making the Numbers Work
The infrastructure financing gap in African cities is real but not insurmountable. The solution lies in:
- Blended finance: use public funds to de-risk private capital in employment-rich sectors like transport, logistics, and clean energy.
- Bankable project pipelines: build capacity in cities to prepare and manage projects investors can trust.
- Job-linked investments: prioritise infrastructure with clear employment returns—industrial parks, market hubs, digital platforms.
The Time for Action is Now
Africa’s urban transformation is underway. If Africa wants to claim the 21st century, it must start with cities not just as places to live, but as engines of employment, resilience, and inclusion.
What I saw in Du Noon reminded me that ordinary people are already doing their part, building homes, creating jobs, and investing in their communities. The question is: will governments, development partners, and planners match their sense of urgency?