World Bank warns poor urban planning threatens Africa’s future

Sub-Saharan Africa’s future prosperity depends on getting a lot better at urban planning, in a looming era of mega cities.

That’s the assessment of a new World Bank study published on Thursday, which found that unplanned urban expansion was fragmenting business development, raising costs for firms and workers and stunting productivity.

With the number of people living in cities and towns across the region expected to almost double to 1.7 billion by 2050, better planning and infrastructure investment is Africa’s biggest opportunity and largest challenge.

“Decisions made now about where and how cities grow can help create jobs, raise productivity, and attract private investment for decades to come,” World Bank chief knowledge officer Paschal Donohoe wrote in the foreword to the study.

“Shape urban expansion early, before today’s choices become tomorrow’s constraints.”

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The study, Sub-Saharan Africa’s Urban Awakening, describes a region that risks missing out on the opportunities presented by a rapidly growing workforce because of years of uncontrolled urban expansion.

It found that by the middle of the century, the Angolan capital Luanda will have grown its population by 78% to around 20 million people, leapfrogging Nigeria’s Lagos as the region’s biggest metropolis, with at least 15 cities in Africa having populations of more than 7 million, compared with five in 2025.

That haphazard development means that sub-Saharan Africa’s urban workers on average pay 42% more for transport than city dwellers in other regions, and spend far more of their time getting to and from work.

“Jobs are spread thinly rather than forming dense centres in key locations that can stimulate productivity,” the World Bank said.

This “stymies both private investment and the realisation of the agglomeration economies that are typically associated with high levels of population density”.

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Poor public services are also a constraint. Across sub-Saharan Africa, 71% of firms report struggling with electrical outages and one in four lack water supplies, with the same proportion ranking transport as “a major or very severe constraint” to doing business.

The region also faces a severe lack of trained architects and urban planners compared with advanced economies.

To tackle these shortcomings, the World Bank said African cities should be allowed to raise more of their own tax revenue, devolve decision-making to the municipalities and borrow directly.

“Beyond South Africa, Addis Ababa remains virtually the only sub-Saharan African city to have financed substantial amounts of foundational physical infrastructure through contractual debt,” the World Bank said.

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