In recent decades, sub-Saharan Africa has been the world’sfastest-urbanizing region.
The region’s most populous country, Nigeria, shows the scale of that change. In 1950, only around 1 in 10 Nigerians lived in a city. Today, it is nearly 1 in 2.
As you can see in the chart, over the same period, the share living in rural areas fell, but so did the share living in towns and suburbs, which had been the largest group in 1950 by a substantial margin.
Nigeria’s population became much more concentrated in cities — both because people migrated into established cities, and because new ones emerged as towns and suburbs grew dense and large enough to be classified as cities.
In early-industrializing countries, rapid urbanization was oftenclosely tied to industrialization. Today, in many lower-income countries, including across much of sub-Saharan Africa, it is happening under different conditions.
Explore the data and read more about the link between urbanization and development in our newly updated Urbanization page
