Response to arguments about African urbanization trends

What is it about?

This issue of Urban Studies contains a full length paper authored by myself on how very variable trends are in African urbanization. That paper analyses the most recent census data from Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, Rwanda, Ghana and Botswana. It shows that some of the oft-cited and published analyses or statements about urbanization in the first four countries can be rather misleading. The journal issue also contains a paper authored by Fox and Bloch which analyses Nigerian urbanization and argues strongly against previous work published by myself which suggested that Nigerian urbanization was slower than had been assumed. This 'response' paper actually responds to a short article by Ivan Turok whose paper in the same issue reviews both of these other papers. My response picks up on some issues in the Fox and Bloch paper, in particular pointing out that their claim that I have argued that Nigerian urbanization had stopped ('stalled') was incorrect and that their analysis was using a revised Nigerian data-set from Africapolis (which provides urban data for African countries) which completely changes the picture of urbanization there as two large areas of the country with very high population densities are re-defined entirely as urban. My previous analysis had used an earlier Africapolis data-set which was published as 'final', which used Nigeria as an example of slowing urbanization in West Africa and did not define those areas as urban. Most of the differences between our analyses therefore rest on the different data available at the time the studies were undertaken, and the huge shift in definitional approaches taken by Africapolis. My analysis of Nigerian urbanization mainly focused on the country's main cities, however, and trends there are not affected by this issue.

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Why is it important?

There is some tendency in literature on sub-Saharan African urbanization to assume a uniform and unilinear picture of very rapid urbanization across all the countries of the region. My research over decades has attempted to challenge this by showing how variable the processes of urbanization are, and have been, between different countries and over time. This 'response' paper is part of this continuing debate about what is actually happening and how important it is to engage with the available sub-Saharan urban data in a critical way.

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