Africa's urban share increased from 27% in 1990 to 54% in 2020. Cities drive economic development, increase resilience and address sustainability challenges. Urbanisation has contributed approximately 30% of Africa's GDP per capita growth over the past two decades. Small cities consistently outperform rural areas in terms of wages, skilled employment, educational attainment, and access to services and infrastructure, underscoring the economic advantage and improved living standards that urban environments bring.
Urbanisation, infrastructure and development
Fast-growing cities are transforming the economic, social and political landscapes. This is especially evident in Africa where urbanisation offer significant opportunities to accelerate progress towards the 2030 and 2063 development agendas. The OECD provides vital data and policy analysis to assist decision makers in comprehending the impacts of urban growth.
Key messages
Recognising the strategic role of cities in national development agendas is essential to unlocking their full potential to drive growth and address climate adaptation. Positioned at the forefront of the response to climate change, African cities must prioritise green spaces to enhance ecosystem services and resilience and promote sustainability amidst rapid urban growth.
In the context of fast population growth and urbanisation, small and medium-sized cities silently play an essential role in the rapid transformation of human settlements, not least by supporting the massive flows of population, goods and services between rural and metropolitan areas. Most of those intermediary cities are still growing: now is therefore the time to influence their dynamics, and thereby the entire design of urbanisation in those regions, in ways that limit the exposure of urban dwellers to climate shocks and avoid carbon lock-in.
Context
Urbanisation is an opportunity to enhance socio-economic outcomes and standards of living
With one-third of Africa's per capita GDP growth in the last two decades attributable to urbanisation, the impact is clear: cities generate agglomeration economies that boost the productivity of firms and workers. In addition to higher wages, more skilled jobs, and increased hours worked, urban residents enjoy better access to education, services, and infrastructure compared to their rural counterparts.
Moreover, the benefits of cities extend beyond their boundaries, positively impacting nearby rural areas. Proximity to urban centres improves the performance of rural regions, while the development of small and mid-sized cities brings essential infrastructure and services closer to rural populations. To maximise these benefits, African governments should invest strategically in cities of all sizes, fostering an environment where both urban and rural communities can thrive.
Green spaces can increase the resilience of cities to climate change and strengthen their sustainability
Green spaces can mitigate the impacts of extreme weather events such as heat waves, heavy rainfall, storms and floods, as well as slow onset risks such as drought, soil erosion and landslides. Recent OECD analysis shows that green spaces can help reduce air pollution in urban areas in Africa. In addition to sequestering and storing carbon, they also contribute to water quality and even biodiversity conservation. These spaces are being lost as urban agglomerations become more compact.
The green space indicator is the proportion of an urban agglomeration covered by green space. A value of 0.25 means that green areas cover 25% of the urban area. The colour of the urban area represents the value of the indicator in 2021. This data is regularly updated for the whole continent.
Intermediary cities can help reduce GHG emissions
In developing countries, most urban CO2 emissions are produced by big cities. In 2015, cities of more than 1 million inhabitants produced around 13 million tons of CO2 on average. This is almost five times more than the average amount of CO2 produced by cities with 500 000 to 1 million inhabitants, 37 times higher than for cities of 100 000 to 500 000 people and 132 times higher than for cities of 50 000 to 100 000 people. Overall, cities of more than 1 million inhabitants accounted for 57% of all CO2 emissions. The contribution to CO2 emissions by city size further depends on the sector of activity. Large cities produce around two-thirds of CO2 emissions in the transport and industry sectors, and more than half of the emissions in the residential sector. In contrast, intermediary cities account for the largest share of emissions in the energy and agriculture sectors.
