ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at population growth, environmental stress, and the economic trends and examines the political and administrative framework in which urban management takes place. For sub-Saharan Africa, the two key demographic events of the period 1950 to 1985 are steady population growth and increasing urbanization. Thus, the redistribution process which began with a strong movement to the cities in search of newly-created jobs in industry and services became entrenched by the steady decline of the domestic rural-urban terms of trade and the decline of agricultural export markets. The benefits of urbanization have been emphasized, both at the level of the national economy and at the level of the individual. The history of the conflict in the Sudan is full of tales of invasions, enslavement and exploitation of the South by the North. Group consciousness in the Sudan has been founded on race, culture and religion and these factors have been powerful in accentuating inter-group relations in many plural societies.
