Can satellite cities help solve Africa’s urbanisation challenges?

FOR ALL but the well-off, living in an African city can be dispiriting. Home is often a cramped shack in a fetid slum. Getting to work, if there is any, means navigating rutted streets and manic traffic. Unlit alleys give cover to ne’er-do-wells, making the trudge home even more hazardous. Given all this, it would not be unreasonable to assume that few people would want to live in Africa’s cities. Yet every year millions gamble on swapping a prospect-free rural life for a potentially fortune-changing urban one, however Dickensian.If African cities are creaking, the future looks even more forbidding. Africa’s urban population has trebled since 1990. Over the next 26 years it may expand by another 900m people. By 2100, five of the world’s seven most populous cities could be African. Lagos, unnavigable at the best of times, may be home to 88m people.