THE NUMBER of people living in African cities will triple in the next 40 years, the UN has said, increasing the risk that many will turn into large slums unless governments begin planning now.
In a new report, the Nairobi- based agency UN-Habitat says that 60 per cent of people in Africa will live in urban areas by 2050, as more people move from rural areas in search of better opportunities.
While this was neither good nor bad on its own, African governments were urged to begin spending money now on basic infrastructure such as schools and affordable housing.
“As the fastest urbanising continent in the world, Africa is not only confronted with the challenge of improving the lives of slum dwellers but also the challenge of preventing the formation of new slums,” said Joan Clos, executive director of UN-Habitat.
“This will take considerable political will and financial resources. Most of all, it will require a commitment to strategic urban planning so that the needs of the poor will be met. Deferring these investments to the 2040s simply will not do.”
Cairo, with 11 million people, is now Africa’s largest city but by 2015 it will be overtaken by Lagos in Nigeria, with 12.4 million people. By 2020 Kinshasa in the DR Congo is expected to be the continent’s second largest city and Luanda in Angola the fourth largest. It is projected to grow to more than 8 million by 2040.
The speed of growth of some cities "defies belief", said the report, The State of African Cities 2010: Governance, Inequalities and Urban Land Markets.Some cities are expected to grow by more than 500 million people in the next 17 years, and a further 500 million by 2050. For example, the population of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, is expected to rise by more than 80 per cent, from 1.9 million in 2010 to 3.4 million in 2020.
The report noted some positive developments, such as the reduction in the number of people living in slums across the continent.
Egypt, Libya and Morocco have nearly halved their total number of urban slum dwellers, while Ghana, Senegal and Uganda have managed to reduce their number by more than 20 per cent. More than 75 per cent of Nigeria’s population lived in slums in 1990, but that is now down to 61.9 per cent, the report said. In South Africa, slum numbers dropped from 46.2 per cent to 28.7 per cent of the population between 1990 and 2010.
Industrialisation has also been given a jump start by the number of people living in cities, it said, with 80 per cent of GDP now coming from urban areas.
However, it warned that many in Africa, which produces just 4-5 per cent of the world’s C02 emissions, would suffer disproportionately from climate change. More than 25 per cent of the population lives within 100km of the coast and the number of people at risk from flooding will increase.