Education And Urbanization

Urbanization improves access to basic education for all. Expanding education systems in urban areas is easier and costs less than in rural areas. Thus Africa’s rapid urbanization is expected to increase enrolment, especially at primary level. Indeed, the nature of cities appears to provide incentives for investment in education by residents. Returns to education are generally higher in urban than rural areas—and so literacy rates and enrolment should be higher in urban than rural areas. There is a positive relationship between urbanization and education school enrolment at both primary and secondary level increases with urbanization. While enrolment in primary schools is less than 50% in regions with an urban population share less than 20%,

While the prevalence of malnutrition (height for age) in areas with an urban population share below 20% is 48.9%, this figure is only 25.3% in areas with an urban population share between 50% and 90%. The same trend is found with weight for age: while the rate is about 26.2% in areas with an urban population share below 20%, the figure is only 9.5% in areas where that share is between 50% and 90%. Differences between urban and rural areas in health care centres and access to health facilities explain the differences in life expectancy and childhood malnutrition. On average, only 46.2% of African children are taken to a health provider: only 41.7% in areas with an urban share less than 20% and 51.2% in areas with an urban share between 50% and 90%. Moreover, births attended by skilled staff are only 38.3% in areas with an urban population share below 20% and 78.0% in areas with that share between 50% and 90%. Urban parents are twice as likely as rural parents to have a child attended by skilled staff. The number of community health workers per 1,000 inhabitants is higher in areas with a less than 20% urban population share than in areas with that share between 50% and

On average, 37.1% of the total is in that sector. However, the picture is highly contrasted between less (76.1%) and more urbanized areas (21.3%). Agricultural value added shows the same pattern: in developed countries it is around 2% of GDP, but in Africa is still very high at 30.5%. Urbanization is affecting this pattern, though. For less urbanized areas, agriculture value added is 41.8% but only 10.0% in more urbanized areas. Urbanization is causing economic transformation in Africa, confirmed when we observe industry and services. Industry grows in more urbanized areas. Employment in industry varies from 6.1% in less urbanized areas to 26.1% in the most urbanized areas. Industrial value added is also linked to urbanization. While it accounts for 18.3% in the less urbanized areas, it accounts for 39.0% in the most urbanized areas. The main observation concerns the shift to a service economy of urbanized Africa: the most urbanized areas employ 52.6% of workers in services, the less urbanized areas 17.8%. Services value added in the most urbanized areas is 51.0% of