URBANIZATION AND INDUSTRIALIZATION

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ECONOMIC REPORT ON AFRICA 2017
The level and growth of per capita GDP will be major
contributors to upgrading urban housing supplies.
Middle-class households tend to own their own
homes and reside in bigger and more permanent
housing, equipped with modern durable goods. In
Algeria, Morocco, South Africa and Tunisia more
than 60 per cent of households own their homes,
in part a reflection of the rise of the middle class
(Ncube, Lufumpa and Kayizzi-Mugerwa, 2011). The
quality of their housing also tends to be better, with
more solidly built roofs, walls and floors, and less
Governments should actively
address the persistent formal
housing gap for families who
will not enter the middle class
in the coming decades. Such
programs can be directly tied
to industrialization policies.
overcrowding (Lozano-Garcia and Young, 2014). This
link between GDP and formal housing expenditure,
paired with trends in urbanization, suggests that
Africa is poised to see a major expansion of the urban
housing market, if it puts the right enabling factors
in place, and this expansion should be leveraged
for industrialization through development of the
construction and building materials value chains.
At the same time governments should actively
address the persistent formal housing gap for
families who will not enter the middle class in the
coming decades. Such programs can be directly tied
to industrialization policies, as in Ethiopia (chapter
5). Similarly, the investment in housing that North
African countries like Morocco and Tunisia have
made since the 1990s is reflected in impressive
changes in housing conditions. In Morocco the share
of the urban population living in slums fell from 37
per cent in 1990 to 13 per cent in 2005.
Africa’s urban housing deficit is accompanied
by a huge infrastructure deficit (see “Urban
infrastructure” in section 4.4). Africa lags behind
the rest of the world in access to electricity, Internet
penetration and access to improved water, and has
large road maintenance needs, all with subregional
differences. West Africa has lower road density and
road quality than other regions; North Africa has a
Table 4.2
Infrastructure: Electricity, Internet, water and roads by global regional groupings
ACCESS TO
ELECTRICITY (% OF
POPULATION) 2012
SECURE INTERNET
SERVERS (PER
1 MILLION
PEOPLE) 2015
IMPROVED WATER
SOURCE, URBAN
(% OF URBAN
POPULATION WITH
ACCESS) 2015
CLASSIFIED PAVED
ROAD NETWORK IN
GOOD CONDITION
(% OF CLASSIFIED
PAVED NETWORK)
Central 46.9 4.7 88.7 58.7
East 31.1 42.8 85.6 49.0
North 79.2 4.9 88.3 Not available
Africa
Southern 43.5 35.6 92.7 47.8
West 41.1 6.2 92.2 43.2
East Asia and
Pacific
European
Union
96.1 143.0 97.3 Paved roads:
last available
100.0 965.3 99.9
2010–2014
Elsewhere
Latin America
and Caribbean
96.4 56.6 97.4
North America 100.0 1,616.7 99.5
South Asia 78.0 5.8 95.3
World 84.6 208.7 96.5
Source: Based on World Development Indicators; Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic; International Road Federation.