Africa’s Urbanisation Dynamics 2022

A publication of the UMDF, in collaboration with the AfDB Group, The Sahel and West Africa Club of OECD and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). 

This report provides new evidence that urbanisation benefits Africa and has contributed to better economic outcomes and higher standards of living based on data of more than 4 million individuals and firms from 32 African countries between 1990 and 2019. It highlights how a lack of systematic and reliable data and analyses has led to range of misconceptions about Africa’s cities’ socioeconomic performance. It shows that, in most socioeconomic dimensions, Africa’s cities significantly outperform the countries in which they are located, and that the gap between the performance of African cities and the national averages is larger than in many other parts of the world.

Published in April 2022. 

Key learning of the publication:  link of key earnings