At the recently concluded Ethiopian national dialogue, a few politically sensitive issues may have stolen the show. The status of the capital city (Addis Ababa) and the city of Dire Dawa in the eastern part of the country were among the hottest topics inconclusively debated during the national dialogue. As the dust settles and the noise fades, it is time to pose and reflect on the development and nation-building roles of urban centers in Africa, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, including Ethiopia.
The objective of this article is to provide an alternative independent view with a focus on a developmental perspective of cities and urban centers. The key argument is that beyond the discourses on demographic, political, historical, and “ethnic ownership” of cities in Africa, debates should focus on how best to accelerate urbanization for nation-building and socioeconomic development. This is because urbanization is crucial for social cohesion and peaceful coexistence by reducing fragmentation, fractionalization, and polarization. It is key for fostering productive capacities and kick-starting structural economic transformation. Without these cornerstones, it will be difficult for Africa to achieve inclusive growth, generate decent jobs, and reduce poverty. This does not mean that rapid urbanization automatically translates into successful urban development. When poorly planned, inadequately managed, and with poor delivery of modern infrastructure and key services, urbanization can contribute to widening inequality. It can also lead to the proliferation of informal settlements and slums, overcrowded housing, persistent poverty, and unemployment. The confluence of all these may put pressure on infrastructure and public services, leading to environmental degradation, violence, and insecurity, among other problems.
However, if appropriately harnessed and carefully designed and centered on modern infrastructure and delivery of quality services to citizens, no doubt, urbanization can foster collaboration, networking, and positive interethnic relationships in ethnically diverse countries such as those in SSA. This calls for reframing policy approaches to or political debates on urbanization in socially inclusive and developmental contexts. Without this, it will be difficult for African countries to address the continent’s continued marginalization in global trade, investment, and financial systems. Nor will it be easy to achieve inclusive growth, industrialization, and sustainable development, as well as deepen structural economic transformation. If urbanization is slow, stagnant, or poorly planned, unemployment and poverty will remain pervasive, acting as an “equalizing factor” between the urban and the rural poor. This is to say that the economic or developmental rationale for urbanization remains more persuasive today than ever before when examining Africa’s growth trajectory and transformation narratives.
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Some stylized facts
- Available evidence suggests that urbanization (with development) is synonymous with overall socioeconomic advancement of nations and nation-building. Generally, advanced developed nations have the highest level of urban development with a complex web of mutual coexistence, networking, and collaboration of societies. They also have the highest productive capacities, economic transformation, industrialization, and technological advances. Even in developing countries, including those in Africa, the limited productive capacities countries have built are heavily concentrated in urban centers, indicative of the role of urbanization in production transformation and socioeconomic development.
- The United Nations Population database shows that, in the 1950s, less than 30 per cent of the world population lived in urban centers and nearly half that in developing countries. During the same time, the percentage of the urban population in developed economies was as high as 60 per cent (on average). This means that the pre-1950 history of urbanization is confined to developed economies. However, over subsequent years, the proportions have changed significantly, with developing countries radically altering the composition of their urban-rural population. In 2025, the global urban population reached 45 percent, with developing countries ratcheting their urban population to a staggering 38 percent (against about 15 percent in 1950).
In 1950, Africa’s urban population was less than 15%, compared with other developing regions in the same year. There were significant variations among African regions, with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for less than 5% of the urban population. The overwhelming majority of SSA’s population (95%) in 1950 was rural and largely agrarian. In the same year, Asia’s urban population was about 20%, while in Latin America the proportion was as high as 40 per cent. This means that about 8 decades ago, Latin America was more urbanized than developing Asia. Africa’s urbanization lagged behind the rest of the developing region, with little or no impact of colonialism on the region’s urbanization.
In 2025, about 45 per cent of Africa’s population lived in urban centers, which is projected to increase to 70% in 2050. In terms of headcounts, Africa’s total urban population surged from less than 27million in 1950 to well over 600 million in the 2020s, making it the region with the fastest urban growth rate globally. Similarly, SSA has shown a tremendous increase in the region’s urban population, accounting for about 46 percent in 2025 and growing by about 3.5% annually, touted as the world’s fastest urbanizing region. Although the quality of urbanization varies from country to country and within countries, the shift in the growth of urban population in post-colonial Sub-Saharan Africa is remarkable. Egypt, Libya and Algeria from northern Africa, Ghana and Nigeria from western Africa, Kenya and Tanzania from eastern Africa, and Angola and Mozambique from the southern region have more than doubled their urban population in the last 50 years.
However, regional aggregation masks variations across countries and regions in urbanization and the proportion of urban population. For instance, today, Ethiopia is one of the few least urbanized countries in SSA along with Burundi, Malawi, Niger and Uganda. Ethiopia’s urban population has remained stagnant at about 20 % for the last several decades and is considered the lowest even by the standards of SSA (which is 40% in 2025). The same countries also have weak productive capacities, with little or no substantial economic transformation, often regarded as among the least developed nations in the world.
Why is urbanization important for Ethiopia and its peers?
As seen in the development processes of newly emerging economies in East Asia such as Vietnam, urbanization serves as a “growth pole”, agglomeration, and economic specialization. In Vietnam, four major cities (Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, and Can Tho) generate 80 per cent of GDP growth of the country (for details, see https://www.routledge.com/Africas-Economic-Partnership-with-China-An-Holistic-Analysis/Arega/p/book/9781032281087, pages 216-217). Each of the cities, in addition to serving as a growth pole for the country’s astronomical transformation, also offers stark economic specialization. For instance, Ho Chi Minh City alone, while generating more than 25 per cent of Vietnam’s GDP, specializes in digitization, financial services and electronic commerce. It serves as a fintech and manufacturing hub as well as an engine of international trade for the country of 100 million inhabitants.
The reason why we turn to East Asia in search of best practice is not due to the absence of such experience in Africa. Several African countries have achieved remarkable urbanization but not with the scale and extent of economic transformation observed in East Asian economies such as Vietnam. Moreover, although Vietnam has no ethnic tension or polarization, like many African countries, it went through decades of wars of independence. These were followed by internal ideological divisions and devastating civil wars between the southern and the northern parts of the country during the Cold War era, including a prolonged war with the United States of America that ended in 1974. Despite these episodes of devastating wars and conflicts, Vietnam managed to transform its economy, accelerate urbanization, and significantly improve the living standards of its population in a relatively short period of time.
The how aspect of Vietnam’s transformation
Despite variations in country-specific circumstances and geography, how Vietnam has harnessed the potential of urban centers for growth and transformation may offer incisive policy lessons and starting points for late-urbanizing SSA countries such as Ethiopia. The phenomenal economic transformation observed in Vietnam over the last four decades is associated with the country’s continued urbanization. Economic growth in Vietnam’s urban centers has been twice as fast as the national average, facilitating agglomeration, offering larger and more efficient labour markets, with faster investment and knowledge spillover effects. Vietnam’s urban centers have promoted production linkages between agriculture and manufacturing sectors as well as between smaller and larger firms, among FDI firms and domestic firms. They facilitated economic growth and deepened rapid transformation unprecedented in the history of modern national development. This means that, in countries where governments promote national identity-based politics (as opposed to ethnic-based political narratives), urbanization can contribute to economic growth, improve standards of living, and enable countries to break away from the middle-income traps. Vietnam’s experience illustrates how urbanization can become a powerful instrument of structural transformation when it is embedded within a broader project of nation-building.
Vietnam deliberately formulated its national urban master plan by designating Hanoi as its “northern growth pole”, Ho Chi Minh City as the “southern growth pole”, Da Nang as the “central and coastal growth pole,” and Can Tho as the “Mekong Delta Region growth pole”. Interestingly, the distance between Hanoi (north) and Ho Chi Minh City (south) is roughly 1200 kms. In between the two extremes, halfway (about 605 kms) is the city of Da Nang. The shortest distance is between Ho Chi Minh and Can Tho, which is about 175 kms. There is no major growth pole or megacity of Vietnam in proximity to one another. The distance between the growth poles (dynamic megacities) is deliberately spaced to accelerate balanced regional development and achieve inclusive growth, industrialization, and economy-wide transformation. It is vital for the least urbanized countries of SSA, including Ethiopia, to maintain appropriate distances between urban centers to ensure balanced regional development and pacify interethnic relationships.
More importantly, each of the growth poles in Vietnam is realigned with the country’s comparative advantage, resource endowments, and strategic location. Similarly, the Special Economic Zones (SEZs), Export Processing Zones (EPZs), and Industrial Parks of Vietnam are specialized along with the growth poles and the country’s comparative advantage, regional economic specialization, resource endowments, and strategic locations. For example, Da Nang (Central Region growth pole) specializes in tourism, high-tech manufacturing, logistics, and marine-based industries. It also serves as the nearest growth pole for coffee processing and exports for the central highlands of the country, where coffee is produced. The Mekong River growth pole, on the other hand, specializes in agricultural production, including rice and the nation’s robust aquaculture sub-sector.
The post-war leaders and modernizers of Vietnam (e.g., Ho Chi Minh) realized the importance of social harmony, nation-building, balanced regional development, peace, and political stability for the country’s progress. These were prioritized in the early phases of Vietnam’s revival and renewal process within a unified national development agenda. This helped to cement a culture of a nationally owned, participatory, and citizens-driven development agenda. In subsequent years, in the context of the country’s major renewal agenda (Doi Moi) and following the urban master plan, Vietnamese authorities rallied public support and mobilized citizens’ participation in the implementation of the master plan for urban transformation. This was done by enhancing investments in the expansion and modernization of key urban infrastructure and social services, developing labour-intensive manufacturing and services sectors, and beefing up employment opportunities for the urban youth. These include ensuring equal access for citizens to quality education, training, health, energy (electricity), and ICT infrastructure. The country further developed various incentive mechanisms (including tax exemptions and improved access to finance) to mobilize private domestic investment and attract and effectively target foreign direct investment (FDI). This, in turn, has played a crucial role in enhancing productivity and technological catch-up and upgrading of production transformation.
Vietnam’s developmental approach can be emulated and experimented with in countries of SSA, replacing the traditional, ethnically orchestrated, highly polarized, and conflictual political narratives. In addition to serving as growth poles and transformation anchors, urbanization can be a powerful policy tool to reconcile political tensions, ethnic fractionalization, and polarization, with the following four key benefits.
First, urbanization acts as a melting pot for interethnic tensions and rivalry. Authoritative studies in the field, including those by specialized agencies, confirm that as the rate of urbanization increases, ethnic identity becomes less significant. Instead, the demand for equal access to income and opportunities, as well as socioeconomic infrastructure, defines relationships and interactions among urban dwellers. This is crucially important for countries as ethnically diverse and marred by interethnic polarization, fractionalization, and conflicts as Ethiopia. This phenomenon, in turn, helps governments to deliver key infrastructure such as potable water, marketplaces, financial and communication services, smooth transportation and logistics, civilian protection (security) and judicial processes, schools, and healthcare facilities, as well as ensuring equal access to these facilities.
Second, urbanization fosters interethnic cooperation, collaboration and networking, while reducing ethnic rivalry and tensions. Although a paucity of resources in the short run can limit governments’ ability (particularly in SSA) to cater for urban populations with modern, dynamic, and affordable socioeconomic services, in the long run, urbanization contributes to minimizing inter-ethnic tensions by focussing efforts on improving access to key services and enhancing positive interactions, networking and relationships between different ethnic groups. When urban dwellers cooperate and collaborate, the focus of governments would be investing in urban infrastructure, including skills and skills formation, intensifying employment opportunities, promoting tourism, improving governance, fighting against corruption and urban crimes.
Third, in countries with ethnic diversity and rivalry, urbanization can promote a more advanced division of labour by boosting specialization in tasks and the delivery of services within a single geographic area (urban centers), which require skills and knowledge rather than mere ethnic identity or affiliation.
Finally (fourth), urbanization creates aggregate demands not only for skills and knowledge but also for locally produced goods and services, facilitating urban-rural production and consumption linkages. This can serve as an incentive to produce surplus in rural areas for absorption, value addition, and consumption in urban centers, helping governments in poor countries maximize the employment intensity of growth, with a concomitant reduction in extreme poverty in rural and urban areas.
Key messages
The messages from this short article are that political elites (a) should view cities as effective spaces for nation-building and indispensable vehicles to implement policies and strategies that enhance socioeconomic growth and improve living standards of citizens rather than viewing them through the lenses of ethnic ownership; (b) instead of being bogged down in historical or ethnic dimensions of urban centers, countries in SSA should reflect on how to best use these centers as “growth poles”; (c) the priority should be on recalibrating investible resources (physical, human, natural, etc capital) to transform cities and economies, harness comparative and competitive advantages, generate employment and reduce extreme poverty levels; (d) for countries of SSA, including Ethiopia ethnic-based political narratives will retard capital accumulation, growth and transformation through their antidevelopment bias and adverse impacts on production transformation as polarization, fractionalization and conflicts become frequent occurrences; and (e) instead of debating which ethnic group holds supremacy over cities and urban centers in terms of ownership, African countries should redirect their preoccupation towards how to best harness the potential of urbanization for inclusive growth and collective prosperity of citizens. This should include using urbanization as a policy tool to address imbalances in regional development within countries of SSA.
The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of the magazine or the institutions with which the author is affiliated.
