The key to understanding the growth of cities in the African continent. At a frenetic pace, Africa has gone from being the least urbanized continent to be the fastest urbanizing region on the planet. With urbanisms and complex dynamics as diverse as the histories that have shaped them, African metropolises today stretch across the continent…

Half of the African urban residents live in one of the more than 7,500 medium or small continental cities. They are often excluded from investments and public services. But they enhance the continent’s extraordinary heritage of biodiversity. Large metropolises attracted a monopoly of attention to their immense social and environmental challenges, but the data on…

The economic or educational prospects offered by African cities are fundamental to the urban growth that the continent is experiencing in general, compared to countries such as Niger or Chad which see their rural populations growing. Migrations from Africa have often been analysed by studying movements to other continents, especially Europe. However, the way intra-African…

 The art of getting by with countless informal activities not only affects the economy or daily activities but has significant repercussions on the urban form and on the very way of understanding urban centres as a constantly changing organism. In the large square of a modern petrol station, incoming cars have to go around to…