14 Feb 2017

World Bank senior director global practice on social, urban rural resilience, Mr Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez says there is critical need to devise a strategic approach to prepare for the unprecedented wake of people migrating from countryside to cities in Africa by 2040.
Mr Ijjasz-Vasquez told journalists from various African countries via a video conference last Thursday that cities in Sub Saharan Africa were experiencing rapid population yet their economic growth had not kept pace which led to overcrowding.
He indicated that the cities were disconnected and costly adding that the cost of living in African cities was very high hence were avoided by potential investors.
“African cities are 30 per cent more expensive to live in than other regions on average,” he said.
Thus, he said there was need to invest in development of African cities in a coordinated approach to make them attractive and livable taking into cognisance the increasing numbers in rural urban migration.
He added that it was time Africa invested heavily in its cities because they were the economic hub of nations with 80 per cent of economic activities taking place primarily in cities.
However, that, he said had since reduced over decades saying “capital investment in African cities has remained relatively low for the past four decades at around 20 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).”
The challenge, he said was that Africa was urbanising at lower income levels which was poorer than other developing regions with similar urbanisation levels.
“In 1968 when countries in the middle East and North Africa region became 40 per cent urban, their per capita GDP was US$1 800. In 1994 when countries in the East Asia and Pacific region surpassed the same threshold, their per capita GDP was US$3 600. By contrast Africa with 40 per cent urbanisation today has a per capita GDP of US$1 000,” he said.
World Bank official, Mr Albert Zeufack said findings by the bank project Africa’s population to double by 2025.
“Africa’s urban population stands at 472 million people today. As cities grow in size, another 187 million people will be added to urban areas by 2025. Africa’s urban population will double over the next 25 years reaching one billion people by 2040,” said Mr Zeufack.
These numbers, he added, thus call for calculated action from policy standpoint to ensure they were adequately contained by the cities because these were locations where innovation happened, where people found jobs and grew their countries’  economies.
The decline in oil and commodity prices had hit hard on resource rich countries hence the much needed economic diversification in Africa. ENDS