Africa on the Ground

Myths

Do most Africans live in villages?

About 45 in every 100 Africans lived in a town or city in 2023, and in 23 of the 54 countries most people did.

1 minute read · every sentence below carries its source number

In the record

The idea

The picture of Africa as a continent of villages is old and sticks. Village life is real for very many people. It is not the whole picture.

What the numbers say

In 2023 about 672 million people in the 54 countries lived in urban areas, out of about 1,478 million.[1][2] That is about 45%, calculated here by adding the countries' figures.[1][2]

In 23 of the 54 countries, more than half the people were urban.[1][2] Counted this way, the other 31 were mostly rural.[1][2]

Two very different Africas

The urban share runs from about 17% in Malawi to about 92% in Gabon.[1][2] Niger, South Sudan and Ethiopia are below 25%; Libya is at 88%.[1][2]

So "most Africans live in villages" is true of some countries and false of others, and the share moves with every year.

What we do not know
  • The figures follow each country's own definition of urban, which differs from country to country; we have not compared those definitions here.
  • The sums and percentages are our own arithmetic on 2023 World Bank values. The 2025 population on the Countries page is a different year.
  • The data say how many people live in places counted as urban, not how those places look or what work people do there.
From people who know this

What readers add

No local voice on this story yet.Notes are added once the author has agreed to publication, and are read by people who know the subject afterwards.

Sources

  1. Institutional[1] Urban population (SP.URB.TOTL), 2023. World Bank. data.worldbank.org retrieved 8 Oct 2026
    2023 values for the 54 countries, obtained through the World Bank API (data last updated 2026-07-13). Each country's own definition of urban applies.
  2. Institutional[2] Population, total (SP.POP.TOTL), 2023. World Bank. data.worldbank.org retrieved 8 Oct 2026
    2023 values, used beside the urban population of the same year. They differ from the 2025 values used on the Countries page.

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