Urban Africa

Total Population (Size) & Urban Population (Color), 2015 (Countries)

Pct. Change Urban Population, 2000-2015 (Countries)

Urban Population, 2000 (Countries)

Urban Population, 2015 (Countries)

Population, 2015 (100k and up)

Pct. Change, 2000-2015 (100k and up)

Urban Density

This map shows each African country's total population in 2015—represented by circle size—compared to the percentage of the population that lived in urban areas that year—represented by color.

One of the first things to stand out is the close proximity to water—like the Nile river or lake Victoria—for many of the most densely populated areas.

Through this lens, a new set of countries—including Angola, Kenya, and Rwanda—initially draw the eye. The proportion of Rwanda's population living in cities, for example, grew by 30 percentage points over 15 years.

With a population of more than 188 million, Nigeria was Africa's most populous nation in 2015.

Urbanization has been a phenomenon seen round the world. Within the past decade, the world crossed a historic threshold, with more than half of the planet's human population living in cities.

Society today faces many unique challenges that impact cities in every country. Governments, businesses, health care, social services, and other types of organizations must plan for higher population and housing density in urban areas, maintain and increase open space, and decide where to locate services for youth and senior citizens.

Urban Observatory: A Live Museum with a Data Pulse

While Nigeria and Egypt stand out here for their sheer size, explore the map in greater detail and you'll find some interesting pieces of information. Compare, for instance, Nigeria with Ethiopia.

For many, the mention of Africa conjures images of grassy plains, thick jungles, or charismatic megafauna.

In 1960 less than 20 percent of Africa's population lived in cities.

However, less than 53 percent of the Nigerian population lived in urban areas. By comparison, as much as 93 percent of Egypt's population was urbanized by 2015, making it the most urban country on the continent.

But the timing and pattern of the migration to urban centers has varied dramatically: Europe and North America have been largely urban since the 1950s, while urbanization took off in Latin America and Asia a few decades later. Now, Africa is undergoing an urban shift of its own.

Looking back more than a decade, it's clear that urban populations across Africa have generally been on the rise. This map visualizes that growth, comparing each country's urban population size in 2000 to its size in 2015.

The maps above use data from <a href="http://africapolis.org/home" target="_blank">Africapolis</a>,&nbsp;a project of the <a href="https://www.oecd.org/swac/" target="_blank">Sahel and West Africa Club</a> in collaboration with <a href="https://e-geopolis.org" target="_blank">e-geopolis.org</a>.

Agglomerations and rates of change, revisited

It's pretty extensive data, and this brief discussion has only started to scratch the surface of it. You can peruse more of its analysis on Africapolis' own site, or download it and dive in that way.

This pattern is especially evident in the Great Lakes region of East Africa, which has experienced the greatest rates of urbanization since 2000.

Regional hubs like Nigeria and Ethiopia are also interesting to examine, revealing the outward creep of a growing population fueled by greater economic opportunity.

Ethiopia's urban population grew by nearly 18 million people over 15 years; that's a fraction of the 50-million-person increase Nigeria experienced during the same time. But, factoring in each country's starting point, Ethiopia's urban population nearly tripled, while Nigeria's essentially doubled.

Africa is home to some of the world’s largest megacities: As of 2015, it had 11 urban areas with more than 5 million inhabitants each.

Let's take a closer look at urbanization across the continent to better understand this trend.

Knowing where people live is important. During a natural disaster, having information on the size and location of the impacted population facilitates better response and recovery. In a disease outbreak, being able to tell where people are acquiring the disease-and whether certain populations are in its path-is crucial.

Map Gives New Insights into Global Population

Among these urban centers are some of the oldest human settlements on the continent.

In the forests and mountains of Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, natural barriers (such as rivers and valleys) have produced narrow “corridors” of development, and many of the urban agglomerations here span several administratively independent cities or settlements.

Generally speaking, all of these megacities are located in areas that are, or once were, economically strategic.

Urban centers, meanwhile, are projected to house <a href="https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Publications/Tracking_Africa%E2%80%99s_Progress_in_Figures.pdf" target="_blank">nearly 60 percent</a> of the population by 2050. By the numbers alone, it's clear that the rate of urbanization in Africa is truly taking off.

Or, if you'd like a head start, find the layers above in ArcGIS Online, pull them directly into a web map of your own from there, and see what other trends you can uncover on your own.

With our most recent release, the World Imagery basemap now contains updated coverage of more than 230 urban areas around the globe. This is our third, and by far the largest, batch of Pléiades imagery released. We released Pléiades imagery in 60 urban areas last year.

Hundreds of urban areas updated in World Imagery basemap

Now that we've considered these trends at the country level, let's see how they play out on a more granular level.

As this example demonstrates, having a sense of the amount of urban population growth is a good place to start, but there is more to this story than just sheer size.

This story was created by Esri's StoryMaps team. Ross Donihue, Greyson Harris, and Cooper Thomas took the lead on cartography, while Allen Carroll, Michelle Thomas, and Hannah Wilber assisted with graphics, research, and writing. Learn more about ArcGIS StoryMaps—and build a story of your own—<a href="https://www.esri.com/storymaps" target="_blank">here</a>.

In the previous map, more populous countries distracts a bit from urbanization's impact on smaller countries—which often see more drastic rates of change than their larger counterparts. This map, therefore, tells us which countries are shifting from rural to urban living the quickest.

Increasingly, though, they don't represent the day-to-day realities of people living on the continent. For the locals, city life is rapidly becoming—or already is—the norm.

As was hinted at in our country-level maps above, megacities are not necessarily the fastest-growing urban areas in Africa, and rural exodus is not necessarily the primary driver of urbanization across the continent.&nbsp;

Rather, rapid population growth and development within rural areas has led to the emergence of thousands of small urban agglomerations. Between 2000 and 2015, the number of agglomerations of 10,000 to 100,000 people grew by nearly 50 percent.

The African continent is vast and diverse, but one constant holds true across it: a rapid migration from rural areas to expanding cities.

To be certain, these natural spectacles are a staple of the tourism industry for most African countries.

Unsurprisingly, the population density patterns largely translate into a map of cities across the continent.

Cairo is Africa’s largest urban agglomeration with a population of nearly 23 million. Several former colonial centers, like Lagos, Nigeria (which bears a Portuguese name), also boast mega-sized populations.

Today, that number has doubled to roughly 40 percent. 

Here we can see where on the continent people are the most concentrated.