Population of African Cities to Triple
November 25, 2010
All Africa
African city populations will more than triple over the next 40 years, warns UN-HABITAT’s new report, The State of African Cities 2010: Governance, Inequalities and Urban Land Markets.
For the first time, in 2009, Africa’s total population exceeded one billion, of which 395 million, almost 40 per cent, lived in urban areas. This urban population will grow to one billion in 2040, and to 1.23 billion in 2050, by which time 60 per cent of all Africans will be living in cities.
“No African government can afford to ignore the ongoing rapid urban transition taking place across the continent. Cities must become priority areas for public policies, with hugely increased investments to build adequate governance capacities, equitable services delivery, affordable housing provision and better wealth distribution,” said Joan Clos, the Executive Director of UN-HABITAT.
According to the report, with an urban growth rate of 3.41 per cent, Africa is the fastest urbanizing continent in the world and will in 2030 cease being predominantly rural. The increase in urban populations will lead to an exponential increase in the demand for shelter and services. But as the authors point out African cities are already inundated with slums; a tripling of urban populations could spell disaster, unless urgent action is initiated today.
Dimensions of urbanisation
Channel Four News: Population Explosion is the cause of Third World Poverty |
The report highlights various dimensions of urbanisation in Africa making a number of observations:
- Cairo, with 11 million inhabitants is still Africa’s largest urban agglomeration. But not for much longer. In 2015, Lagos will be the largest with 12.4 million inhabitants. In 2020, Kinshasa’s 12.7 million will also have overtaken Cairo’s then 12.5 million population. Luanda has recently surpassed Alexandria and is now Africa’s fourth largest agglomeration. It is projected to grow to more than 8 million by 2040.
- Up to 2020, Kinshasa will be the fastest-growing city in absolute terms, by no less than four million, a 46 per cent increase for its 2010 population of 8.7 million. Lagos is the second-fastest with a projected 3.5 million addition, or a 33.8 per cent increase. Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Ouagadougou, Cairo, Abidjan, Kano and Addis Ababa will all see their populations increase by more than one million before 2020.
- The average for the 10 proportionally fastest growing cities is around 51 per cent. Abuja, Bamako, Luanda, Lubumbashi and Nairobi are projected to grow at rates between 47 and 50 per cent over the current decade, while Dar es Salaam, Kampala, Mbuji-Mayi and Niamey are projected to grow between 50 and 57 per cent.
- In the case of some African cities, projected proportional growth for the 2010−2020 period defies belief. Ouagadougou’s population is expected to soar by no less than 81 per cent, from 1.9 million in 2010 to 3.4 million in 2020. With the exception of the largest cities in the Republic of South Africa and Brazzaville in Congo, from 2010 to 2020, the populations of all sub-Saharan million-plus cities are expected to expand by an average of 32 per cent.
- But 70 per cent of all African urban population growth will be in smaller cities and those with populations of less than half a million. This is where the real urban transition of Africa is taking place. Therefore, this means that smaller cities will increasingly need public investment to cater for this growth.
Drawing lessons
Nightline (2000): CIA & Pentagon: Overpopulation 1/2 Nightline (2000): CIA & Pentagon: Resource Wars 2/2 |
Drawing lessons from urbanisation in other continents and other times, the authors argue that strong demographic growth in cities is neither good nor bad on its own. If anything, worldwide, urbanisation has been associated with improved human development, rising incomes and better living standards. However, these benefits do not come automatically. They require well-devised public policies that steer demographic growth, create healthy urban economies, and ensure equitable distribution of wealth.
Rapid demographic growth that merely results in massive urban slum proliferation, steep inequality and human misery is not good urban growth. When demographic expansion is harnessed in support of economic progress and development through job creation and higher productivity, this is ‘good’ urbanisation. Such progress is predicated on good governance that sees to proper housing and basic services for all.
This model is the reverse of the socio-economic conditions currently prevailing in African cities regardless of size, where demographic expansion is continuing against a background of significant and ever-growing shortfalls in housing, services and livelihood opportunities. These deficiencies can only worsen if African cities are allowed to mushroom under current laisser faire modalities of urban expansion. African governments must regain control over their cities’ development.
» » » » [All Africa]
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Population explosion: Africa is sitting on a time bomb
Publication date: Wednesday, 31st March, 2010
By Peter Mulira, New Vision
WITH the population of Africa predicted to double within the next 30 years, the economic future of its people is set to be very bleak unless something is done to combat the uncontrolled growth rate.
It is on the basis of these trends that experts predict that unless checked the population will double from the present level of around 850 million to 1.7 billion people within the next 30 years. The continent will simply not be able to cope with the multiplicity of problems a population in billions will bring about. As has been said by one population expert, “High rates of population growth create unemployment faster than jobs, increase the mouths to be fed faster than the production of rice paddies, squatters faster than people housed in modern facilities, excrement faster than sewers can be built.
A population growing faster than the output of modern goods and services not only frustrates development goals; it undermines the credibility of promises made in the name of development and the political will to pay the price of progress.”
There is a direct correlation between high population growth and low level economic development in Africa. For example with its population growing at twice the rate for the world the continent still contains 32 of the 47 countries classified by the World Bank as least developed in the world. Secondly, while the continent’s population grew at the rate of 2.9% between 1960 and 1980, GNP per capita grew at a rate of 1.9% per annum between 1965 and 1983. Thirdly, it is now well established that countries with the highest fertility rates also happen to be among the poorest.
With a total fertility rate of 6.6, the highest in Africa, Chad’s GNP per capita of around $230 is the lowest in the world while Algeria with a total rate of 3.8 had a GNP per capita of $1550.
» » » » [New Vision]
Population explosion threatens to trap Africa in cycle of poverty
Xan Rice in Kampala
The Guardian, Friday 25 August 2006
There are 27.7 million people in Uganda. But by 2025 the population will almost double to 56 million, close to that of Britain, which has a similar land mass. In 44 years its population will have grown by nearly as much as China's.
"You look at these numbers and think 'that's impossible'," said Carl Haub, senior demographer at the US-based Population Reference Bureau, whose latest global projections show Uganda as the fastest growing country in the world. Midway through the 21st century Uganda will be the world's 12th most populous country with 130 million people - more than Russia or Japan.
» » » » [The Guardian]
Licensed to breed
Published: 8/12/2009 19:57:18
by Michael Coetzee, Chief Sub Editor
The Citizen
James Bond has one that allows him to kill, drivers of cars are supposed to always have one on them, and gun owners are constantly complaining about how difficult it is to get or renew one.
While it may indeed often be an inconvenience to obtain them, licences play a very useful role in regulating the ownership and use of dangerous and potentially lethal tools such as vehicles and firearms.
Few would deny that it’s a good idea people should obtain licences before being allowed to pilot a few tons of metal down the highway at 120km/h, or that it should be ascertained whether someone has a criminal record or is mentally unstable before they are allowed to own and carry a lethal weapon.
It seems there is pretty much a consensus that when it comes to things that have the possibility to injure, kill or in any other way negatively impact the lives of people or society in general, regulation is desirable.
Considering this, there is one sort of licence that is conspicuous by its absence: a licence to breed.
Or procreate, to use the more acceptable term, for people seem to get quite upset when the rather mundane event of a human giving birth to a child is referred to in any way other than with the respect and awe usually reserved for describing some religious experience.
It is, after all, a miracle, isn’t it? A miracle that happens 150 times each minute.
But to be fair, the baby born this very second somewhere in the world is indeed unique – just like everyone else.
It is only common sense that this is a field of human activity that should be tightly regulated, yet the unemployed, uneducated idiot who is incapable of looking after a child considers it an inalienable right to bequeath on the world more of his genetic legacy.
And make no mistake, stupid people love to breed – people with low IQs have more children than those with high IQs.
A lack of intelligence is unfortunately no impediment to impregnating someone or to being impregnated, and human offspring seem to have the uncanny ability to survive even the most incompetent of parents.
What this means is that the world population is slowly getting dumber and dumber as those of lower intelligence continue to multiply like rabbits, outbreeding their intelligent and educated counterparts.
 In this February 14, 2008 photo, James J. Lee protests overpopulation and the media's censorship of it, in front of the HQ of Discovery networks in Maryland, U.S. On 02 September 2010, James Jay Lee took three people hostage in the company's HQ, before being shot dead by police. His martyr's manifesto included: “Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. [..] All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs' places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.” |
The future does not look bright.
Or rich, for that matter, since the poor also have more children, never mind the fact that they are incapable of feeding them.
The previous examples focused on the effect that unrestricted breeding has on society as a whole, but what about the effect this has on the children themselves, forced to grow up in an abusive environment?
On a more personal level, the unrestricted right to procreate also means that a violent, emotionally unstable person who we would not trust with a car or a gun is allowed to have children and be their primary caregiver.
Even the SPCA checks out prospective dog owners and their property before allowing them to adopt an animal. But when it comes to people, it seems we have no such concerns over their physical or emotional well-being.
A system that requires prospective parents to demonstrate the necessary material means and parenting knowledge to look after children before being allowed to procreate would be the ideal solution to the problem.
Unfortunately, uncontrolled breeding has left humanity far too stupid to implement something of the sort.
» » » » [The Citizen (since deleted)]
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