ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to reunite thinking about urban and rural areas in the study of development across the continent of Africa. It will discuss briefly past approaches to understanding development and rural–urban relations, arguing that there is a need to reconnect these two spaces in a profound way. For example, development studies – both theoretical and empirical – are often based on the premise that there is a clear distinction between the urban and the rural. However, this distinction has been challenged. There is research in Africa on ‘rural’ activities such as agriculture in ‘urban’ spaces (Lynch et al., 2013), urban activities such as industry in rural spaces (Bryceson, 2002; see also Bryceson, Chapter 27, this volume), and changes taking place at the interface between urban and rural spaces, and on the increasing interdependence between these two realms (Iaquinta and Drescher, 2002; McGregor et al., 2002; Tiffen, 2003). There is therefore a need to bring these disparate themes together. However, before embarking on a discussion of continent-wide trends, a note of caution: the data demonstrate a disparate set of patterns and trends. While 22.5 per cent of Chad’s population is urban, this figure stands at 70.7 per cent in Algeria. While eastern Africa has an urbanisation level of 25.8 per cent, it is 51.6 per cent in northern Africa, 61.6 per cent in southern Africa and 45.1 per cent in western Africa (UN-Habitat, 2016). Similar variation exists in urbanisation rates. However, Potts (2008) cautions that much has been written about trends in sub-Saharan Africa based on questionable data that has been aggregated into received wisdom about trends that closer investigation reveals are questionable or at best may only be partially appropriate. So while this chapter sets out to identify some patterns, it is important to bear in mind the variation across the continent, between regions, and between countries across regions.
