ABSTRACT
As a continent, Africa has the highest overall urbanisation rate in the world. The greatest tensions arising from urbanisation can also be found there, (United Nations Population Fund [UNFPA], 2007). Critics describe urbanisation as ‘parasitic’, ‘premature’, or the ‘migration of poverty’ (e.g., Ravallion et al., 2007; Kinver, 2007), labels which Akin Mabogunje (1968), eminent African urbanist, has interpreted as connoting that urbanisation has outpaced economic development. The World Bank (2000) went as far as claiming that Africa’s urbanisation is runaway, negatively correlated with economic growth, and predominantly driven by strife and tensions in rural areas. This view has prompted some African urban scholars (e.g., Njoh, 2003; Tetteh, 2005; Kessides, 2006) to conduct empirical studies on the economic development–urbanisation nexus. The results of those studies helped to overturn the view that urbanisation in Africa is nebulous or exceptional (see World Bank, 2009, p. 59).
