In 2050, Africa's urban population will be the second in the world.

45 million people are at risk of starvation in southern Africa.

What will be the most dynamic area of Africa in 2020? Against all odds and while the G5 summit
Sahel has just met in Pau to find solutions to fight against growing insecurity in the region, it is the Sahel zone (Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Chad, etc.) that will
show the best economic performance.
With +5.4% in 2019, it recorded the strongest acceleration on the African continent, compared to the
other major economic basins. In addition to a base effect, the Sahel region benefits from sustained prices of
raw materials (gold from Burkina Faso or Mali, iron from Mauritania) and good harvests. " Same
along with East Africa and North Africa, the Sahel should therefore constitute, in 2020, one of the three regions
to the most sustained development of the entire continent", indicates the French Development Agency
(AFD) in a book just published (*).
Africa, in 2020, is a continent with explosive debt, which has gone from 33% of GDP in 2010 to 58% in
2018, and openly raises the question of financing the development of countries. It is also a demography
unbridled, which pushes the population into the cities and generates an annual need for 4 million housing
additional. In 2050, Africa's urban population will be the second in the world. In Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso)
Faso) for example, the number of inhabitants fell from 750,000 in 1996 to 1.18 million in 2006 and could
reach as many as 9 million by 2025, according to some estimates.
Glaring disparities
“Africa is going through a particularly rapid phase of urbanization, it is doing it twice as fast as it did
Europe in the 19th Century,” the document states. In Egypt alone, where 2 million people come every
year to add to the existing population, about fifteen new towns are in the process of seeing the light of day, while
22 others were brought out of the ground between 1977 and 2000 with uneven success. Currently, Africa has
three megacities (Cairo, Lagos and Kinshasa), to which should be added three others by 2050: Dar Es
Salaam (Tanzania), Johannesburg (South Africa) and Luanda (Angola).
According to the IMF, African GDP should increase this year by 3.8% after +3.2% in 2019. But this forecast
must be taken with caution as the disparities are flagrant and the precariousness growing. Not less than 45
million people are threatened with starvation in southern Africa, according to the UN, a record number.
Resumption of tourism
Some countries, including South Africa and Nigeria, the two main economic engines, draw the
statistics down while Egypt (+5.5%) signs a good performance thanks to the recovery of tourism
and massive investments in infrastructure. In total, some twenty countries have a rate of
growth above 5%.