The Challenges of the Sub-Saharan Urban Explosion

Roads, running water, sanitation, waste collection, electricity and digital networks, community facilities and services, the infrastructures simply cannot keep pace with the sustained rate of growth experienced by Sub-Saharan cities. “The dynamics of investments in infrastructures have varied in space and time, now reaching unparalleled levels in many of the continent’s cities”, explains geographer Olivier Ninot. “However, they are not enough to make a significant improvement to the quality of life of most city dwellers”.

Investments in progress

 “Several reports indicate that the infrastructure deficit remains very high. Investment needs are as high as 100 billion dollars a year for the whole of the continent, including 25 billion for the cities’ infrastructures”, explains Olivier Ninot. “60-80% of the needs have been covered in recent years, which is an exceptionally high level, yet it remains inadequate given their scale.” This situation has fluctuated considerably over time, however. After several decades of major budget constraints between the 1980s and 2000s, marked by chronic under-investment, the continent saw a revival with the economic growth of the 2010s. The public authorities, which are the primary investors, covering 40% of the need, regained their investment capacity, reviving with the confidence and extravagance of international donors like the World Bank and the Agence Française de Développement [French Development Agency] (AFD). At the same time, the emergence of new investors like China, India, the Arab Emirates and private operators, has completely upturned the hierarchy of the African countries’ financial partners. While these new investors are willing to finance sizeable investments in many areas, their arrival is also expediting the formation of public-private partnerships, which often involve complex systems in terms of financing, construction and operations.

Social relations under financial pressure

In contrast to the agricultural rural world that largely predominated up to now, city life has a substantial financial cost for its inhabitants that includes the increased price of staple foods, high total transport costs⁽²⁾, higher expectations for the academic success of children resulting in the widespread use of private education and private tuition, increased rent and the soaring inflation of urban and peri-urban land. “The economic constraints are placing huge financial pressure on both heads of household and other adult members of the household”, points out anthropologist Anne Attané. “Sometimes, the children find themselves having to bear the brunt of these new expenses, either by being taken out of school or by having to do some form of street trading alongside their time at school, such as selling paper handkerchiefs, telephone cards or doughnuts”. This financial pressure, which causes even greater hardship to the most vulnerable social classes, generates a climate of tension within households. These conflicts are having a particular impact on conjugal relations⁽³⁾, in some cases leading to marital breakups, as indicated by the high divorce rates in a capital like Dakar (Senegal).

The fear of poverty and hardship, which are real risks for a considerable segment of the urban population, is becoming increasingly pronounced in the way social relations are structured. Help from within families and communities, once part of the structure of West-Africa rural societies, is becoming increasingly elective, as the IRD's researchers have shown⁽⁴⁾.

An indispensable female economy

“With the financial pressures, the spread of new family models and the closing gap in male and female levels of education, intrafamily roles are also being reshuffled”, observes Agnès Adjamagbo. Researchers have observed that traditional standards for sharing roles and responsibilities within families and couples are being challenged, and the model in which the man is the provider and the woman is the homemaker no longer holds⁽⁶⁾. Women now carry out paid work to contribute to household expenses and, in some instances, supersede their husband if they are unemployed, earn too little to bear the costs alone or are simply absent. Indeed, 25% of urban households are now headed by women, many of whom are single parents⁽⁵⁾. “The economic activities of women are prevalent in the streets, markets, small shops and pavements where a wide variety of open-air trade and services are carried out. The city economy is a female world of its own”, concludes Agnès Adjamagbo. 

Lastly, the expansion of urban life in Sub-Saharan Africa could have still further effects on the societies, specifically due to varying levels of breakdown in links with the village of origin and the weakening of the associated community solidarity. The attachment or detachment of second- or third-generation city dwellers to the rural world culture will galvanise the attention of tomorrow's scientists.

Model city, actual cities

The economic development experience acquired by the larger conurbations of developed countries now enforces a model for the relocation of major industrial and tertiary functions to the metropolitan outskirts, and the creation of rapid communication channels to serve them. “This ‘model city’ blueprint applied to the cities that have emerged most recently, and are rapidly expanding, suggests promoting secondary centralities that will relay the historic economic centres, to revitalise the residential fabric and labour market in the new suburbs”, explains the specialist. This project investment model is proposed as an objective and a method to the African urban authorities. However, in reality, the expansion of Sub-Saharan cities is based largely on the unanticipated and non-regulatory progress of under-equipped districts, on a loose spatial expansion that is not conducive to economies of scale, and the dominance of informal employment. The rampant growth of the continent's conurbations therefore remains heavily dependent on the historic centres, which are themselves unequally rehabilitated. The public powers supposed to implement the model city are themselves undergoing construction.

Persistent obstacles

In addition to the governance bodies themselves, structural obstacles are also impeding the successful development of African cities. “Land control is a central challenge in urban planning, particularly if the goal is to have more compact and more energy-efficient cities”, points out the specialist, who is working on the land register problem in Bamako⁽²⁾. Land ownership is far from being individualised and formalised throughout on a clear and consensual basis. The property markets and records of rights in the cities’ rural fringes are getting out of control, and the need for them to be regulated is growing among the recommendations made by the African cities’ international partners. “But this requirement overlooks the fact that these cities are perceived on their periphery as being responsible for an unfair monopolisation, as being real enemies of the agricultural communities; the planned safeguarding measures are still based only on land titles, they benefit the elite and stir up strong conflict which makes it difficult to implement urban projects”, concludes Monique Bertrand. In the researcher's opinion, scientists must strive to illuminate the political challenges these forced market changes raise.

The lack of foresight in terms of infrastructures, the high population density, lifestyle changes, but also climate change – which is very significant in a tropical area – are posing a threat to the health of Sub-Saharan city dwellers. “Over 63% of the region's urbanites live in informal districts with no sanitation and are exposed to old-time infectious diseases like diarrhoea, typhoid and viral infections, linked to poor water quality or the proliferation of pests”, explains medical entomologist Florence Fournet. “But other worrying diseases are emerging in the cities, associated with modern life and the harmful effects it has on both the population and the environment. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, African city dwellers are in no better health than the rural population.” Within this context, the IRD's scientists are studying the multiple health problems linked to the accelerated urban growth of Sub-Saharan cities and the corresponding means of redress.

Persistence of old-time diseases

The price paid due to the lack of health facilities in Sub-Saharan cities is high. With inadequate networks to distribute water and collect domestic wastewater, a large proportion of conurbations suffer high levels of infectious diseases associated with poor quality drinking water. The number of lives lost to diarrhoea, which has long been the leading cause of child mortality in the southern countries, remains high. “City dwellers often depend on handmade wells for their water supply”, explains the researcher. “In Bouaké in Côte d’Ivoire for instance, 80% of the population in certain districts obtain their water directly from groundwater. But as there is no sanitation, it is inevitably contaminated with human wastewater, with obvious health consequences.” 

And the urban sanitation infrastructures that do exist are often limited to a few rainwater collection channels where wastewater is often poured in by hand. Moreover, open defecation remains prevalent in many districts. This configuration, combined with the scarcity of household waste collection and treatment facilities, is favourable to the proliferation of rodents.

City-dwelling mosquitoes

Contrary to all expectations, malaria is also on its way to becoming an urban disease. “Until recently, the Anopheles mosquito, the vector of the parasite responsible for malaria, could only reproduce in clean water, which kept the disease away from cities where the water is dirty”, explains Florence Fournet. But a few years ago, the insect adapted to the new conditions and began laying its eggs in polluted pools of water. The disease, mainly limited to rural areas, is now gaining ground in the cities.” And the anopheles is not the only mosquito enjoying itself in urban areas. Aedes aegypti, responsible for the yellow fever epidemics which devastated the West African capitals at the start of the 20th century, has already become habituated to this environment. Like its cousin Aedes albopictus, which finds breeding habitats conducive to its urban proliferation in plastic waste, old tyres or water pools, it now spreads (re-)emerging pathogens in Sub-Saharan cities, like the dengue virus. In addition to these exacerbated risks, new dangers are arising.

Emergence of new diseases

Like the city dwellers of the North, Sub-Saharan city inhabitants are exposed to diseases associated with the modern consumerist lifestyle. Here, as in other cities across the world, access to more abundant food and diets that are higher in fat, sugar, animal proteins and salt has led to an explosion of so-called non-transmissible diseases like obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancers. These consequences of changes in eating habits and the sedentary nature of city life are now affecting a variety of social classes, and not just the wealthy. They are now also prevalent in middle-income cities, as shown in a study conducted by the IRD's scientists in Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso⁽³⁾. However, since cities are places where inequality is rife, far away from family agricultural resources which are lifesaving for the most impoverished, some residents also suffer from dietary deficiency and malnutrition. Impoverished city dwellers are also the main victims of a new epidemic: road accidents.

Hazardous urban mobility

The continual expansion of Sub-Saharan conurbations has resulted in daily movements of millions of city dwellers in environments where public transport and road infrastructures are completely inadequate. These massive commuter flows have led to a dramatic increase in city traffic accidents, as shown by the IRD’s research work in Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso⁽⁴⁾. In fact, traffic accidents have become the second leading cause of death for the poorest populations in the informal outlying districts of the region's capitals, which have undergone little if any road developments to cope with traffic levels. However, this is not the only consequence of this new urban mobility. “Every day, African city roads are bombarded with ever-increasing influxes of cars and two-wheeled vehicles, producing unprecedented pollution levels”, explains hydro-climatologist Arona Diedhiou⁽⁵⁾. “Levels of fine particles are much higher than the WHO's standards in large Sub-Saharan cities. And complex mixtures are being produced between anthropogenic aerosols – produced by urban transport, constant combustion in open landfills, domestic fires, and grassland or forest fires – and natural aerosols, particularly desert dust transported from the Sahara.” Moreover, the WHO estimates that 90% of deaths linked to air pollution occur in Africa and Asia. The work carried out by teams affiliated with the IRD⁽⁶⁾ aims to characterise the health impact of these emissions in West African urban areas as well as their seasonal fluctuations. The initial results obtained in Abidjan and Cotonou from the European project DACCIWA^?Dynamics-Aerosol-Chemistry-Cloud Interactions in West Africa confirm the potential link between particulate pollution and respiratory diseases.