ABSTRACT
Between 1960 and 1980, Africa’s population growth rate was explosive, with an average annual rate of 3.2 per cent. The rural population increased from 220 million to 370 million, and the urban population more than tripled, from 33 million to 110 million. Almost a quarter of the African population lived in cities in 1980. Tunisia had become the most urbanized country on the continent (52 per cent of its people living in cities), but South Africa, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Congo-Brazzaville, and Zambia each had an urban population of at least 40 per cent (World Bank, 1983, pp. 148-49; World Bank, 2000, pp. 274-77).
