Africa can learn from China about growing cities

The economic growth paths of Asian and African countries have often been compared. China, with gross domestic product per capita of US$251 in 1987, was poorer than most African countries at the time. Uganda’s GDP per capita in US dollar terms that year was $392, Zambia’s $319 and Ghana’s $354. Yet today China has GDP per capita of $6,091 and it is the world’s second largest economy. In Uganda, per capita GDP is still only US$964.

Asia and Africa have urbanized at similar speeds. Africa is undergoing the fastest urban transition the world has experienced to date with projections that nearly 1 billion more people will live in its cities by 2050. Earlier, China was in the top spot: between 1978 and 2010, over 700 million people moved to China’s cities. The urbanization rates in Southeast Asia have been impressive as well and many of these nations have not even completed their urban transitions yet.

There’s a difference, too. Across China and Southeast Asia, urbanization has been coupled with industrialization and, through increases in economic productivity, has been unlocking growth dividends and reducing poverty. The same pattern has not happened in Africa.

Much has been written to analyze how the urban transition happened, particularly in China, and what other parts of the world can copy from it. The “best practices” identified include policies around special economic zones, which have now proliferated across Africa.

Success in replication has been limited, at best. It’s not always remembered that China’s success did not happen overnight. It was not a linear process and not all regions benefited equally.

But something did happen in China and many benefited. As Chinese scholar Yuen Yuen Ang highlighted in her book How