In recent years the most important type of migration of people has been that involving people moving from the rural areas to towns. The process where by an increasing proportion of the total population in a country settles in towns is known as urbanisation. To determine whether an area is urban or not, the size of the population, population density, functions of the settlement, social and economic criteria are the factors to be considered
Urban settlements are called towns, cities or cornubations. A town often a centre for administration, trade, commerce and education. A city is a very large town, while a cornubation is a group of towns linked together. A metropolis is the chief city or the capital city of a country while a megalopolis is a name given to region with many cities joined together as in the case of United States and Japan.
A town may serve the surrounding areas which can extend several kilometres from the town centre. The surrounding area served by a town is referred to as its sphere of influence. Urban settlements can be classified on the basis of functions.
In Africa, majority of the people live in rural areas compared to urban areas. In fact the population structure is that 65% of people of Africa live in rural areas.
Hundreds of thousands of people, millions in some cases, live in towns and cities throughout the African continent. They do not grow food because there is no land on which to grow it. All the available land has been taken up by housing, office blocks, industrial sites, shops, roads and railway stations. They do not collect water from a well. Instead they turn on a tap. Only a very small percentage of Africa's people live in towns and cities: about 10% in fact. This is not really very surprising as Africa is not a continent of great urban development, by virtue of the fact that her greatest natural resource is her land. She is an agricultural continent, a continent of farms both big and small, a continent of rangelands and plantations, of deserts, lakes and mountains.
There are however several great cities and a greater number of large towns and ports; all of which are gradually becoming larger in population, more widespread in area and more comprehensive in function. There are many reasons why towns and cities develop in certain places and the ones which grow to be the biggest are the ones which have the most reasons for being there.
Many towns in Africa, as elsewhere, have grown near rivers. This is only natural because rivers provide drinking water. In the beginning crops can grow on the nearby fertile valley soils and there is ample water for irrigation. Perhaps a town grows at an easy place for crossing the river: a ford where the water is shallow. At such a place merchants would wait to sell goods to travellers. Shops would be a natural development, followed by houses. Small service industries develop such as vehicle repair, weapon repair and manufacture and simple foods are made ready for sale.
People also use rivers as routeways. Their valleys form an easy route through steep hilly land, and across mountains. It is inevitable that travellers along river valleys meet with those crossing the rivers and that they should discuss matters of mutual interest, trade with each other and generally spend a little time before moving on. Inevitably a town at such a place grows larger, if only because it becomes a collecting and distributive centre for the surrounding farm lands. The bigger the river, the fewer the crossing places on it and the richer the surrounding farm land, the bigger and more important will be the towns at the meeting places. Examples include Bamako on the River Niger in Mali, Kisangani on the River Lualaba and, to a smaller extent, Livingstone on the River Zambezi. Roads often develop along river valleys and these make the river towns even more important as there are then two means of transport. Bamako is a case in point.
While towns which grow up at crossing places on a river often do not become exceptionally large and important, those which grow at the meeting place or confluence of two big rivers almost always do. Khartoum is one such town, a town so big that it qualifies as being referred to as a city.
Khartoum has grown up at the meeting place of three great river routes; the Nile from the north, the White Nile from the south and the Blue Nile from the south-east. It became the great crossing place for east-west travel, the pilgrimage route of devout Muslims on their way to and from Mecca, and so there was an east-west land route crossing the point at which three river routes met. Khartoum had to become important and the development of more road and rail routes through it only added to its importance.
Another consideration in the old days was defence. Natural defensive barriers made it that much easier to hold off attackers. In times of war people tend to rush to a safe place, one that is easily defended. What more suitable place than Khartoum, defended on two sides of a triangle by wide and deep rivers.
Look again at the Nile, We have seen already that its valley and its delta were the only places in this arid land where people could live. Naturally they travelled up and down the whole valley so what more suitable place for a town and meeting place than Cairo at the head of that great delta; the point where so many distributaries branched out on their way to the sea. It was natural that Cairo should become the meeting place of the Nile Valley routeway and movements from east and west.
Other towns develop and grow at the end or beginning of a long overland route like those which cross the Sahara. Having crossed this burning wasteland, travelers wanted food, shelter and rest; after which they wanted to trade. In this way towns like Kano, Niamey and N’djamena grew.
Many long routeways end at a coast, at an inlet, a river mouth or sheltered bay. Ships called to trade, buying goods from inland and selling goods from other lands. Gradually a port develops: a meeting place of land and sea routes. Alexandria is one such port where Mediterranean sea traffic met the traffic of the Nile Valley. Built on a bar which encloses a large deltaic lagoon, Alexandria provides easy access to Cairo and the Nile and has done so for several thousands of years.
The Portuguese explored Africa's coasts in the 15th century; finally reaching East Africa where they chose several fine harbours to act as shelter for their ships and trading centres. The finest of all these harbours was Mombasa, the island commanding the entrance to two fine deep water havens, sheltered from strong winds and storms, and being an island, easy to defend. When the Arabs superceded the Portuguese, Mombasa grew in importance as their slave traders and merchants roamed far into East Africa's interior. Later a railway was built; and as a result, Mombasa has gone from strength to strength, becoming the export outlet for a huge area.
For a port to become really great and important however, something more than just a good harbour is necessary. All ports trade to a certain extent; they all have an import and export traffic, but it is the size and the scope of the traffic which counts. For a port to become great there must be a rich and large area behind it with fertile farmlands and a great many people. There should be minerals, preferably those which support a large industry in the big towns of the interior. As a result of this large and prosperous interior, ships will bring a wide variety of goods for sale and will buy and take away other goods.
It is this hinterland of a port which decides its potential for development, that area over which the port holds influence, that area which the port helps by its activities. It handles that area's imports and exports. Thus. as we have seen in an earlier chapter, Mombasa's hinterland extends to Zambia's copper, Rwanda's tea and coffee exports and her petroleum imports, all of Uganda's surface trade and, before very long, some of Sudan's. Mombasa is an important port.
The greatest ports are those which not only have an extensive hinterland but which also control sea routes as well. Cape Town comes into this category having been settled by the Dutch as a transit port, a place where ships could take on stores and water for a continued journey to the Far Eastern colonies. It was the last great port of call before crossing the Indian Ocean. A country which can control Cape Town in these modern days can also control the sea ways in both directions. Therefore, apart from commerce, Cape Town has an important strategic position as well as being a base for exploration and research in the Antarctic.
There is another aspect to ports in that if, because of a large hinterland, they become very large, they will also develop industries based on their activities as ports. Oil refining is one such industry; flour milting is another. Industries such as these are known as port industries and develop because it is convenient or most economical that certain commodities should be processed as soon as they arrive rather than be transported inland in their original state.
Wherever there is industry people will be attracted to it: particularly in Africa now that industrialisation is becoming very important. So much of Africa is inhospitable, so many of her people are poor. Industries provide good wages for the people who work in them; and with these wages food can be bought. So people drift to the towns, many of which are capital cities, hoping to obtain one of these well paid jobs. Unfortunately there are always too many people for too few jobs; and so while populations of cities grow, an increasing number of people are housed in sub-standard conditions: reluctant to return to what they consider is an even harsher, possibly landless, life in the rural areas.
Some towns start to develop for no other reason than that minerals are found. Probably the most famous of all towns of this type is Johannesburg. As we have seen coal, gold and iron ore were found in quick succession as a result of which her industries developed. All routes soon led to Johannesburg: road, rail and air links from all directions of the compass and from all the major countries of the world. It has even become the nucleus of a satellite system of towns which have now combined to form one great conurbation. All this because of local coal, gold and iron ore.
Other towns grow because they are multi-route centres, places where all modes of transport converge. Some of the finest examples of this are Port Harcourt, or Brazzaville and Kinshasa. All the rivers of Zaire and most of those in Congo and Central African Republic lead to Kinshasa and Brazzaville- River transport is tremendously important in these countries and Kinshasa and Brazzaville have become collecting and distributive centres as a result; particularly Kinshasa where road, rail, river and air traffic meet. Even sea traffic is near at hand at Matadi, Boma and Banana. These three ports supply Kinshasa, while Kinshasa supplies the hinterland and vice versa. They complement and grow with each other.
Finally, a few towns start for no other reason than the need for a new town. Such a town is Abuja, the new capital of Nigeria which will take 20 years to complete. The 8000 square kilometres Federal Capital Territory in which it stands lies to the north of the confluence of the Niger and Benue. See your atlas. The climate is good, the scenery is beautiful, it is central, easily accessible and with plenty of development land. The population density is very low and, and very important, it is ethnically neutral. Planning will ensure a city of wide roads and plenty of space: quite unlike the congested conurbation of Lagos: the old capital.