Africa’s urban growth offers a chance to build stronger economies, better infrastructure and more inclusive cities. Ahead of World Cities Day on 31 October, Hastings Chikoko argues that realising this potential will require smarter planning, credible investment projects and local governments with the authority and resources to deliver.
By Hastings Chikoko
Every year, Africa’s towns and cities absorb more residents searching for opportunities. Projections from Africapolis, the urban data platform developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), show the continent’s urban population roughly doubling from about 700 million to 1.4 billion people by 2050.
Too often, this is told as a story of crisis: informal settlements, congestion and failing services. Those challenges are real, but they tell only half the story. Focusing on them alone risks overlooking the remarkable opportunities unfolding across the continent.
African cities are becoming hubs of innovation and engines of economic growth, with solutions that could shape the future of urban development globally.
Increasingly, cities are being recognised for their potential rather than defined by unmet needs. Across Africa, urban leaders, businesses and citizens are finding new ways to address longstanding challenges while creating opportunities for millions.
Progress is visible in how leaders talk about cities. At the second Africa Urban Forum held in 2026, governments signed the Nairobi Declaration, recognising urbanisation as a catalyst of structural transformation rather than a problem to be contained. That shift matters: it encourages planning for growth rather than reacting to crisis.
Opportunity for new and better infrastructure
Most of the urban Africa of 2050 has not yet been built. The roads, houses, transit lines, water networks and power grids that will serve hundreds of millions of people are still on the drawing board.
Older towns and cities must retrofit at enormous cost. Africa’s secondary cities face a more hopeful task. Many are still small enough to plan well from the outset, rather than patch up badly designed systems later. They are also where much of the growth will happen.
These growing cities have an opportunity to skip outdated, carbon-heavy models and build systems that are smart, efficient and climate-resilient from the start.
Lagos shows how investment can respond to growing demand. For decades, commuters depended on congested roads and crowded minibuses. In 2023, the city opened the Blue Line, its first intra-city rail system, on the Marina–Mile 2 corridor. It is Nigeria’s first fully electric urban railway. Uptake has been strong: the line carried about 3.5 million passengers in 2025, with daily ridership rising to 15,000.
Opportunity for better economies
By concentrating talent, markets, infrastructure, finance, manufacturing and trade, cities accelerate productivity and innovation, supporting household, local, national and regional economies.
Urban areas already account for the bulk of Africa’s economic output, and their contribution continues to expand. The Economist Intelligence Unit projects that Africa’s leading cities will generate more than 60% of its GDP by the mid-2030s. Kenya’s National Bureau of Statistics reported in its 2024 Gross County Product publication that Nairobi City contributed 27.5 per cent of national Gross Value Added. In South Africa, Gauteng, home to Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni, generated 33.2 per cent of national GDP in 2024.
Small businesses are also turning this concentration of people, skills and markets into household income. Suame Magazine in Kumasi is recognised as the largest single cluster informal industrial setting in West Africa with about about 200,000 people and 12,000 enterprises. A partnership with a local university is helping its artisans adapt to modern car technology, linking urban enterprise to the wider economy.
In Durban’s Warwick Junction, WIEGO and local organisation Asiye eTafuleni piloted the Phephanathi project with local traders, demonstrating how collaboration can improve market health and safety. Nearly half a million people now pass through every day.
Opportunity for technology deployment and innovation
Africa is urbanising alongside rapid technological change. Unlike cities that grew during earlier waves of urbanisation, African cities can draw on mobile phones, digital payments, renewable energy and artificial intelligence to leapfrog development paths that were once slow and costly.
The people who make this possible are young. Africa has the world’s youngest population, with a median age of 19.3 years against 42.8 in Europe. This may be the continent’s greatest urban advantage.
As young people move into cities and working age, Africa has an opportunity to earn a demographic dividend: a period when a large working-age population can drive faster growth. Given the right skills, infrastructure and opportunities, young urban Africans can become a powerful engine of economic transformation.
Kigali is harnessing this youthful energy and building innovation into the city itself. Kigali Innovation City, a 61-hectare smart city development, is expected to be worth $2 billion when complete and to generate $150 million a year in ICT exports. More than 1000 students have already graduated in information technology, artificial intelligence and electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University Africa on the site.
What will it take? First, cities must plan better. Many still rely on outdated tools, scattered spreadsheets and systems that do not talk to each other.
Urban data platforms, artificial intelligence, digital twins and smart meters allow cities to see where needs are greatest, anticipate risks such as flooding, prioritise investments and track how assets perform. These capabilities support better decisions and help cities show funders credible evidence for proposed projects.
The investment opportunity is equally large. Africa’s infrastructure needs run to as much as 170 billion dollars a year, much of it in cities. Yet money does not flow to needs — it flows to well-prepared projects. Most projects stall between identifying a priority and preparing it well enough to move forward.
Meanwhile, traditional funding is shrinking. Net official development assistance fell by 23.3 per cent in 2025, the largest annual drop on record. Cities must develop lasting capacity to turn priorities into clearly defined, evidence-based projects with realistic routes to funding, whether through public budgets, concessional finance, municipal borrowing, blended structures or private investment.
Even well-prepared projects stall when cities lack the authority to act. Municipal borrowing, tax reform and credit guarantees usually need national approval, and many decisions sit with ministries, utilities and regulators.
Fiscal devolution, giving cities clearer revenue autonomy and access to finance, must go hand-in-hand with stronger coordination between national and local government.
Residents matter too. Housing and markets built without community input too often stand empty.
Africa’s cities do not lack ambition. They need data and digital technologies to plan, credible projects to attract investment, and mandates and partnerships to deliver. We must get this right to ensure that urbanisation becomes the continent’s greatest opportunity.
Hastings Chikoko is founder and CEO of Cities Africa, a not-for-profit organisation supporting African cities to turn urban growth into stronger economies and better lives for all.
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