Urbanization In Africa Study (1960 - Present)

Urbanization is a natural historical process from a traditional agricultural society to a modern urban society, and the inevitable product of socio-economic development, which is also a symbol of social progress. Urbanization study is one of the most concerned topics in the 21st century, and is one of the hot spots on the academic community at home and abroad. Based on the current fastest urbanization of the African countries study, my paper conducts a preliminary exploration on the characteristics of high-speed, dynamic factors, the problems and countermeasures. The author interprets the excessive urbanization influence upon African country'social and economic development from the point of view of history, the combination of urban economics, population economics, the development of a number of disciplines, such as economics theory, and the integrated use of macroeconomic analysis, microscopic analysis and comparison analysis, and statistical analysis approach. The paper reveals negative impacts caused by the rapid urbanization of the contemporary African countries socio-economic development.This paper is divided into four chapters to discuss African urbanization issues:Chapter 1 reviews and sums up African urban development conditions in the past colonial invasion and during colonial era.Chapter 2 mainly expatiates African urbanization characteristics from the speed of city development, the number of urban population and the size of the cities, urbanization and modernization, inter-regional differences in the level of urbanization, and analyzes the reasons for the excessive development on four aspects of the characteristics of African cities from the demographic factors, social factors, the policy factor, natural factors.In Chapter 3, the author first introduces the relationship between urbanization and development of the productive forces, then the concept on"urban disease"and its relevant performance are raised, and mainly from the urban employment, urban infrastructure, urban transportation, urban water supply, health care, garbage collection and urban residential, analyzes the "urban disease" performance.Chapter 4 interprets and analyzes African urbanization countermeasures from the following six aspects, such as changing industrial and agricultural development policies and relaxing internal contradictions of mega-cities; strengthening urban development planning; developing middle and small cities, developing countryside; stepping up urban infrastructure construction; developing and constructing small and medium-sized cities; emphasizing on integrated rural development; developing international cooperation among African countries as well as the countries in the world.In the conclusion, the author summarizes the African urbanization and indicates the new understanding of African countries to the new understanding of the problem and prospects of African cities of the future.