African Urbanization Research Under The Perspective Of Elements Flow

Urbanization is the natural historical process of social development from traditional agricultural society to modern city, is the inevitable outcome of the social and economic development and is the sign of human society progress. The development of the national urbanization is the result of the flow and configuration between urban and rural factors. The free flow of factors and the reasonable configuration will promote national urbanization and economic development or else they will create obstacles.Africa, as one of the largest developing regions in the world, has many countries and rich culture and plays a significant role in the world stage. In recent years,the urbanization of Africa got a rapid development, and the urbanization rate increased significantly, but also has many problems in development process. From the angle of factors flow between urban and rural areas, the research of the African country urbanization process has a great value for the optimization of African countries factor allocation efficiency between urban and rural areas, and will accelerate the urbanization process, and also has the certain enlightenment function for the development of urbanization of our country.This dissertation firstly reviewed both domestic and foreign documents of the African urbanization, and classified the documents according to the main content. Secondly, this dissertation analyzed the relationship between urban and rural areas in the process of urbanization evolution under the action of the economic law, and discussed the factors flow characteristics, industrial structure and the gap between urban and rural areas of the relationship between urban and rural areas in different periods,and illustrated other models of the relationship between urban and rural areas, such as the city bias model, rural bias model, and Desakota model. Thirdly, this dissertation analyzed the content and characteristics of factors flow in the process of urbanization in Africa, combed the relationship between the African factors flow, economic development and urbanization. Then this dissertation chose South Africa and Kenya as two typical countries because South Africa has a high income, high level of urbanization, and Kenya has a low income and low level of urbanization development. It used qualitative research and quantitative research methods to analyze two typical countries, found that the two have different characteristics anddevelopment processes. Finally this dissertation summarized conclusions and analyzed the enlightenment of process of urbanization in the African for our country.(1)Under the function of economic law, the relationship between urban and rural areas in the process of the evolution of urbanization can be divided into three periods, rural dominant, urban dominant and rural-urban interaction. Rural dominated period is the most early development model, during which the country first appeared and the city gradually produced and got embryonic development in the process of economic development; and various factors mainly slowed from rural to urban, and agriculture is the main industry of the society; handicraft industry, labor-intensive industries gradually formed. With the development of productivity and economy,urbanization got into the urban dominant period and got a rapid development, and in this period, the various factors rapidly gathered to the city, city was a growth pole to drive economic growth, and produced the agglomeration economy effect;labor-intensive industries transformed to capital-intensive industries; services got a prosperous development; and the gap between rural and urban areas produced and gradually expand. In the period of urban and rural interaction, the factors got a free flow and a reasonable configuration between urban and rural areas; agriculture upgraded to modern agriculture; industries given priority to capital,technology, technology intensive industry, and intelligent industry appeared; service industry became a dominant industry and the gap between urban and rural areas gradually narrowed, thus urban and rural become integrated.(2)In the process of urbanization, African factors flow on the whole is one-way from rural to urban, and got the dual influence of the development of economy.Through the analysis of these five aspects-the population flow, capital flow, resources flow, information flow, goods flow, it is found that the main process of urbanization in Africa is the unidirectional flow between urban and rural areas; and the unidirectional flow made the factors gathered in the city, created the growth pole and agglomeration economy effect, promoted African urbanization and rapid economic development in the short term. However, one-way flow of factors leaded to the unreasonable configuration of factors, caused city disease, produced the problems of the gap between urban and rural areas; and factors of inefficient allocation caused the serious poverty problem in Africa.(3)In the process of urbanization, the high income and high level of urbanization in South Africa has experienced urbanization lag phase of limitthe factors flow, under of urbanization recovery stage of the moderate factors flow and the rapid urbanization development phase of the free factors flow. under the influence of apartheid, South Africa’s urbanization development was almost stagnant in the early stage of development, because of the limitation of segregation factors and freely flow limited. During the medium-term development, because of the social resistance system, control for factors flow began to be relaxed, urbanization development began to recover. In the later development, with the abolition of the system, the factors got the free flow, and urbanization immediately entered a rapid development stage.(4)In the process of urbanization, Kenya, the low income, low level of urbanization development, is the factors in one-way flow causing serious urban disease problem. The Kenyan government adopt city bias model, city got various advantage resources, formed the growth pole and agglomeration economy. In the process of development, although in a short time urbanization and economy got a rapid development, but one-way flow of factors and unreasonable configuration posed a serious urban diseases, made the development of urbanization and economic anaemic.Villages, in the process of development, also got a huge damage. Factors gathered in the cities, and villages were lack of resources and favorable conditions, thus the development of village was far behind the cities; and the gap between the urban and rural areas become lager and lager.