Life's Less Ordinary is the podcast from the BBC World Service, bringing you

extraordinary personal stories from around the globe. Search for Life's Less

Ordinary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Here in West Africa the stretch of nearly a thousand kilometers between Abijan and

the Ivory Coast and Lagos, Nigeria is by 2100 projected to be the largest

zone of continuous dense habitation on earth and home to about half a billion

people. Here in Ghana the population has increased from around six million at

the time of independence in 1957 to 31 million today and according to some

estimates could go above 50 million by 2050.

By the end of this century the UN predicts that Africa which had less than one

tenth of the world's population in 1950 will be home to 40% of humanity.

Most of the staggering demographic growth will take place in Africa's cities.

At the question of how the continent manages what could be the fastest urbanisation

in human history will not only affect the daily lives of the millions of

but shape everything from migration and global economic prosperity to the future of the African

nation-state and the prospects for limiting climate crisis.

I'm Mike Woodridge, I reported from and lived in Africa across the past 50 years

and this gives me a real sense of the enormity of these changes.

And I'm Ruth Ann Richardson.

And together in this BBC World Service series Africa's urban future we'll be

considering the opportunities and challenges these breakneck developments present

for Africa and the rest of the world.

...