Africa's urban future: What next?
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2023
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Faced with the ever-quickening pace of urbanisation, what is the future for Africa's swelling cities? Experts predict that Africa could be home to forty percent of humanity by the end of this century, and that the twenty fastest-growing cities in the world will be in sub-Saharan Africa. Will the continent have the potential for a brilliant urban future – or for an increasingly bleak one? Much will depend, in large part, on how it’s managed. How can already highly pressurised African cities provide better opportunities for all their inhabitants?
In the final episode of 'Africa's Urban Future', a four-part series from the BBC World Service, Mike Wooldridge considers the future - and nothing is more pressing than the combination of this rapid urbanisation and accelerating climate change. In many cities, climate change will only add to the challenges. How the continent manages this, will not only affect the daily lives of the millions of Africans, but shape everything from migration and global economic prosperity to the future of the African nation state and the prospects for limiting climate crisis.
‘Africa’s Urban Future’ is a Ruth Evans Productions series for the BBC World Service.
Transcript
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| 0:20.0 | If you look at the 20 fastest growing cities in the next 20, 30 years, they're all going to be in some |
| 0:31.5 | sub-Saharan Africa, all of them. |
| 0:33.0 | Even though there are challenges to many who come to our cities. |
| 0:37.0 | They see opportunities and they see hope. |
| 0:39.0 | This is Africa's urban future. |
| 0:42.0 | I'm Mike Waldridge with a final episode of a four-part series from the BBC World Service looking into the ever quickening pace of urbanization in what has long been the world's most rural continent. |
| 0:54.0 | We see cities doubling or tripling |
| 0:58.0 | their areas and their population in a decade. |
| 1:01.0 | And we know that between now and 2030, |
| 1:05.0 | 2050, urban dwellers will be equivalent to the current population of the |
| 1:12.0 | continent. So it is a massive change. |
| 1:14.8 | What you heard just then from some of the continent's experts in this field |
| 1:19.2 | pinpoints what a critical period many African nations are passing through in managing the rapid growth |
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