Urbanization in Africa - Postcolonial Period

Postcolonial Period

Most of today's African countries gained their formal independence in the 1960s. The new countries seemed to have a great faith in planned economy regardless of how they gained their independence. The government should actively develop the country, not only by building infrastructure and developing social services; but also by developing industry and employment. Many parastatal companies are today left as 'white elephants' and demonstrate the great investments that were made in the cities at the beginning of the post-colonial period (Rakodi, 1997).

For many reasons it was thought that centralisation equalled a strong (powerful) state (government). The reasons could be

• the wish to induce a feeling of nationhood, which also led to the establishment of brand new capitals (to be mentioned later);
• a lack of qualified government officers; someone had to do the work that the colonial officers had done, but in some places these people simply did not exist;
• the fear that local authorities would turn against central authorities. (Rakodi, 1997).

Centralization meant that companies had even more reason to establish themselves in the already large capitals because this was closest to power. In effect this led to a huge concentration of investment in urban areas. For example in Nigeria where 80% of investments not related to agriculture was spent in urban areas (Rakodi, 1997).

New cities were also established in the post-colonial period, but not for the same reasons as in the colonial period. The seaport Tema in Ghana was built awaiting great industrial growth. Later, new capitals were built, inspired by the planned city of Brasília in Brazil. This happened in Malawi (Lilongwe), Côte d'Ivoire (Yamoussoukro) and Nigeria (Abuja) (Stock, 1995). The new capitals were meant to give the nation a 'fresh start', they were supposed to be the beginning of a new golden future promised by the liberation politicians.

As none of the new capitals have grown to more than about half a million inhabitants, they have probably not had much influence on the growth of the already established cities. Tema could be said to be a success as it is the most important port today, and together with Accra represent the biggest metropolitan area in Ghana (The World Bank Group, 2001; UN, 2003b).

At the same time as influx-control regulations were intensified in South Africa, this kind of regulation was weakened in the newly liberated countries. This led to more rural-urban migration in the newly liberated countries (Rakodi, 1997), and a stable decline in urbanization growth from 1950 to 1990 in South Africa. From figure 1 one can see that after the end of apartheid in 1990, the urbanization rate grow from 2.29% to 3.41%, while it continues to sink in the rest of Africa. The abandonment of the influx-control regulations in 1986 is a part of this picture. The city of Bloemfontein grew 51% between 1988 and 1996. (The Ministry of the Flemish Government, 2001).

Influx control regulation was active in South Africa until 1986/90, while in the rest of Africa they were more or less abandoned or without effect. However, even the remnants of these regulations could have an effect on how the cities grew, since they made it difficult to get hold of legally owned land. This again led to the illegitimate occupation of land. One reason for people wanting to move from rual to urban areas is that they think living will be better there. A comparison between HDI rank and urbanization level in Africa could show that there might be some sense in this belief. The five African countries that in 2001 ranked highest on the UN Human Development Index was also some of the most urbanised, see figure 2.

In some countries rural inhabitants have been given even more reasons to migrate to the city by lower food prices in the cities, often because of pressure from trade unions. This in turn has led to lowered income in rural areas and therefore higher migration to urban areas. (Rakodi, 1997; Aase, 2003). Finally it should be mentioned that war and economic misconduct have led to the dilution of rural resources and periodically very high rural-urban migration. At the end of the 1980s, there were only 18 African countries that had not experienced a military coup against their government (Rakodi, 1997).