In your agricultural science subject in the 3rd year in secondary school, your teacher must have noted that rural-urban migration was one of the problems affecting agriculture in Africa; my teacher, Mrs Aduanya, explained it clearly. Then, in your social science subject, they examined the same issue from another angle: overpopulation; my teacher, Mr. Mbah, noted that Africa must stop that trajectory to improve overall welfare.
Unfortunately, we have not managed rural-urban migration as Africa continues to urbanize faster than it is industrializing – and that is a problem since major cities do not have the resources to support more people.
In a soon coming Harvard Business Review article, I explain this problem and posit a solution. This is following my postulation that Africa must engineer an indigenous development roadmap that is totally untethered to what worked for China, because China’s development strategy has already expired. Yes, what worked 40-50 years ago will not work now because of many reasons I explained (read here )
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Africa must develop – and we must refresh our strategies.
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Nothing influences migration more than markets, wherever the markets are, there the people will congregate. The next question is, what constitutes a market? Once you answer this simple question comprehensively, you can address all the migration related dynamics.
We are neither good at planning nor making projections, what we do best is to churn out literatures, drawing circles with no actual movement.
Population is growing but we are not creating new cities, only to complain about migration, as if there was ever a plan to make things work…
“Population is growing but we are not creating new cities” that is the real challenge for the continent.