Urbanization in Ghana. Challenges and Prospects for National Development

Academic Paper from the year 2021 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Africa, , language: English, abstract: Urbanization has the propensity to improve human living standard by promoting socio-economic development. However, recent studies indicate that African urbanization tends to complicate urban poverty, stagnate socio-economic development, and disrupt urban functionality. Unfortunately, African urbanization is expected to drastically increase in the foreseeable future with the continent predicted to become home to about 1.3 billion of the global urban population by 2050.

This current and expected increase in African urbanization has implications for the development of the countries in Africa and the continent as a whole. This study therefore examines urbanization in Ghana and its challenges and prospects for national development. Secondary data were used for the study. More than half of Ghanäs population live in urban areas. There is, however, no uniformity across all the regions in the country. The trend in urbanization by region from 1960 to 2010 increased consistently in the proportion of the population living in urban areas.