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Urbanization and industrialization: What future for Sub-Saharan Africa?
Introduction
The continuing rapid rate and scale of
urbanization
The
urban environment
The limitations of industrialization
The impact of structural adjustment
Sub-Saharan Africa as the global periphery
Implications for urbanization and
industrialization
References
David Simon
It is inevitably impossible within the scope of a short paper to do justice to the diversity of urban conditions in the 46 countries 1 comprising Sub-Saharan Africa. For this the reader is referred to the several comprehensive accounts that are available (e.g. O'Connor 1983, 1991; Gilbert and Gugler 1992; Simon 1992). Only a brief summary of the five most salient recent trends and issues is given here. Many recent urban and economic studies have focused upon tropical Africa rather than Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. South Africa, Namibia, and the BLS countries (i.e. Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland) have thus unfortunately been excluded, as if they formed a distinct and discrete subregion. This is difficult to defend. South Africa, in particular, is vital, given its historically pivotal role in southern and central Africa, its status as Sub-Saharan Africa's most highly urbanized and industrialized country, and the current implications of this as its economic and political relations with the rest of the Sub-Saharan countries mushroom even before the formal demise of white minority rule.
The continuing rapid rate and scale of urbanization
Although Sub-Saharan Africa is the world's poorest and least urbanized and industrialized continental region, it does now have several metropolises with over 3 million inhabitants and problems comparable in intensity to those in megacities elsewhere in the third world. However, the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging (PWV) complex, centred on Johannesburg, Lagos, Kinshasa, Durban, Cape Town, Kano, and Ibadan are still the exceptions. Most capital cities and major industrial centres in Sub-Saharan Africa have populations below 2 million; in the smallest states they house no more than 100,000-150,000. In international terms, these would rank as merely modest intermediate or secondary cities. Yet the majority of urban Africans still live in cities, towns, and villages of this size or smaller.
Nevertheless, it is misleading to focus exclusively on absolute urban size. Far more critical in terms of the ability to absorb, house, and employ people is the rate of urban growth. In this respect, SubSaharan Africa has for some time now led the world, with rates of 5-6 per cent per annum. Many primate centres and some secondary cities have experienced persistent growth of 9 11 per cent per annum, which means that their populations double in less than a decade. These rates are two to three times higher than the respective national population growth rates, which average 3-4 per cent per annum and are themselves among the highest in the world.
Although obviously increasing, the levels of urbanization in the Sub-Saharan countries remain among the lowest in the world. International comparisons are impeded by the widely differing definitions of urban areas adopted by national statistical offices, as well as great variation in the coverage, accuracy, and base years of national censuses. Nevertheless, World Bank compilations are useful as an indicator of orders of magnitude (fig. 5.1). South Africa and Zambia were the only two countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with over half their populations classified as urban in 1990. Congo, Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, Mauritania, and Zaire fell in the 40-49 per cent range, but the majority of countries had levels of between 20 and 39 per cent. The average in SubSaharan Africa is just over 30 per cent.
It follows from the above that, in contrast to Latin America and much of Asia, rural-urban migration remains the principal source of urban growth, although the contribution of natural increase is rising in the more highly urbanized countries such as Zambia and South Africa. One of the principal reasons for such rapid urbanization has been poverty and the persistence of longstanding urban-rural disparities in the diversity of income-earning opportunities, average incomes, infrastructure, and service provision. Conditions obviously vary across the continent but, on the whole, agricultural mechanization has been rather less of a contributory factor to migration than in more intensively farmed regions of the world. On the other hand, over the past 20 years or so, drought, famine, and armed conHict have forced millions of Africans off the land.
Fig. 5.1 Levels of urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1990 (Source: World Bank 1992)
Although urban areas are generally better served with infrastructure and public utilities than are pert-urban and rural areas, major disparities in access to these forms of collective consumption exist within towns and cities. Whereas the urban elites and most of the middle classes enjoy adequate facilities, in some cases on a par with first world standards, the urban poor endure varying degrees of deprivation. Two components of inaccessibility can be distinguished:
1. Inadequate service or infrastructure provision, in that the resources and political will to expand piped water and reticulated sewerage networks, refuse and other solid waste collection services, and health care and education systems in accordance with urban growth have proved lacking. Even the reduction of standards, e.g. pit latrines and communal standpipes, as commonly incorporated in site and service or shanty upgrading schemes, for example, has not enabled such services to reach anything like all urban residents. Many peripheral and poor neighbourhoods are thus unserved, while infrastructural maintenance in older low-income areas, even of formal dwellings, has often been deficient or neglected (Hardoy and Satterthwaite 1984; Hardoy, Mitlin, and Satterthwaite 1992; Simon 1992).
2. The unaffordability to the poor of services that do exist. This problem is particularly acute in the absence of state health care, for example, or when residents are unable to afford the cost of water and electricity installations and payments. As discussed below, the situation in this regard has deteriorated markedly since the early 1980s as a result of public expenditure cutbacks and widespread retrenchments under the impact of structural adjustment and economic recovery programmes. Class, ethnicity, gender, and access to employment are becoming, more than ever, the critical determinants of urban quality of life in urban Sub-Saharan Africa.
The urban environment of large cities is also suffering increasingly as a result of industrial pollution. Although there have fortunately been no disasters on the scale of Bhopal or Mexico City in SubSaharan Africa, industry is a major polluter in metropolitan areas such as the PWV and Lagos. On calm days, the smog enveloping Cape Town is on a par with that choking Los Angeles. Here and elsewhere, high motor vehicle concentrations play a role. In addition to atmospheric pollution, groundwater and soil contamination by toxic chemical discharges, leaks, and unscrupulous dumping is widespread across the continent. Notorious cases of imported toxic dumping in several African countries have hit the headlines in recent years (O'Keefe 1988). Factory workers are often at great risk from hazardous substances and processes, for which they commonly receive inadequate training and/or protective clothing.
In many countries, the basic problem is the absence or inadequacy of environmental legislation and emission controls. However, even in countries such as Nigeria and to some extent South Africa, which now have relevant laws on the statute book, the problems persist. This reflects inadequate enforcement of the regulations on account of staff and equipment shortages, lack of muscle, political corruption and nepotism/clientelism, or executive decisions to play down environmental considerations in the pursuit of employment and industrial output. A recent United Nations Environment Programme/World Health Organization (UNEP/WHO) study found that, overall, megacities in countries of the South now suffer more severe air pollution than their counterparts in the North (UNEP/WHO 1992). Although no African city was included, the implications for large cities such as Cairo, the PWV complex, and Lagos are ominous.
Finally, in this context, it is necessary to record that poverty is also a source of urban air pollution. The great majority of urban Africans still rely on fuelwood, charcoal, or coal as their primary energy source for cooking and heating. At night, especially in winter, large lowincome areas are often submerged under thick blankets of smoke.
The limitations of industrialization
It is no coincidence that Sub-Saharan Africa is not only the world's least urbanized continental region but also (apart from the Caribbean) the least industrialized. There are no newly industrializing countries (NICs) and no industrial cities on the scale of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, or Mexico City. Even where industry forms a significant activity and has diversified since the 1960s, as in the major metropolitan centres and cities such as Bulawayo, it is geared essentially to import substitution for the domestic market rather than for export (Simon 1992). Many inappropriate prestige industrial projects have failed to operate efficiently, and such investments, especially when funded by the state, have drained resources from other sectors of the economy.
The emphasis has remained on primary import substitution, i.e. production of consumer non-durables, whereas Latin America and South-East Asia have made considerable progress in the spheres of consumer durables and light capital goods and in adopting successful export-substitution strategies. Moreover, the benefits to Sub-Saharan Africa of import-substituting industrialization have been reduced by its continued heavy import dependence on inputs and intermediate goods. Currency devaluations, especially as an element of structural adjustment of the economy over the 1980s, have aggravated the problems, leading to poor utilization even of existing industrial capacity. Even in South Africa, the most sophisticated Sub-Saharan economy, manufacturing (as distinct from all industry) provides only about a quarter of gross domestic product.
The impact of structural adjustment
The role of structural adjustment and associated policies deserves specific attention. Their impact across the continent has been profound, often exacerbating macroeconomic conditions, at least in the short to medium term, and having the most severe consequences for the poorest countries, the most powerless groups (notably the poor and female-headed households), and the environment, which is now subject to even more intense exploitation pressures. Many infrastructural, social, and related programmes that were vital to the urban (and rural) poor have been savagely cut or abolished, while the loss of subsidies and rapid decline in purchasing power of low- and most middle-income earners have hit people hard (see Save the Children Fund/Overseas Development Institute 1988; Onimode 1988, 1989; South Commission 1990; O'Connor 1991; Cornia et al. 1992; Stewart et al. 1992; Woodward 1992). Let me add at once that I do not deny the need for radical economic restructuring and political change; nor is it realistic to blame Sub-Saharan Africa's predicament exclusively on external forces. Africa undoubtedly bears significant responsibility too. My problem is far more with the treatment and its wider consequences than with the diagnosis.
