Dynamics of Urbanization in Africa

T OWN life, and a constantly increasing movement of people to the expanding towns, is one of the most striking characteristics of present-day Africa. Town life, in itself, is not new to the continent. An early Dutch merchant was surprised at the size and orderliness of Benin City and compared it favorably with the Amsterdam of his time; Diogo Cam was impressed by the efficient organization of the capital of the Bakongo kingdom; Arabic writers testify to an extensive development of urban centers in the medieval Sudanic Empires; and there are the immense ruins of stone towers and walls of Zimbabwe in Central Africa. The Yoruba people are particularly noted for their propensity to build large towns; Ibadan, the third largest town in Africa, has often elicited surprise that it could survive on an essentially indigenous basis. These old towns, however, were different from modern African towns in several ways: they were different in structure in that they were organized on the basis of kinship, and power and commerce were channeled through that form of organization; they were different in scale in two ways, in actual size and in extent of outside contact; and they were parochial in culture. Many of these older towns have disappeared and those which remain, like Kano, have been modified and are being further transformed. The new cities and towns are the result of contact with the West; one writer says that the cities are a colonial creation,2 and another,