ARTÍCULO 1019. NEGOCIABILIDAD DE LA CARTA DE PORTE O

Urbanisation can be viewed mainly as a process of increasing the proportion(s) of the total population living in urban areas (Parnell and Walawege, 2011). Historically, a large majority of the population lived in rural areas. However, urbanisation picked up and gained as an area of research in the 1900s when the global urban population was merely 14% of the total population, Africa then had only 1.5% of the world’s urban population (Davis, 1955). After 1900 the proportion of urbanized dwellers rose gradually, and by the end of the 1950s, the world’s urban dwellers rose to about 30%, further rising to 52% in 2012 (UN, 2012). While the most

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recent urban share of the population is 54% (UN, 2015), projections indicate that it will rise to 6.3 billion or about 60% of the total global population by 2030 (Seto et al., 2011) and 6.4 billion or nearly 70% by 2050 (UN, 2012, UN-Habitat, 2008).

While urbanisation continues to rise, of major concern is the majority of this increase happening in the developing economies. For example, while in Europe, North America, China and other developed countries, over 50% of the population currently live in cities, in Africa (the least urbanized continent) only about 39% of the population are urban dwellers. Even as the least urbanized of all the world’s regions, SSA’s rapid rate of urbanisation (about 2.46%, ten times that of the developed countries and about three times that of the rest of the developing world) is a major concern (Barrios et al., 2006). As such 13 of the 100 fastest growing cities in the world are in SSA (RUAF, 2010, http://www.citymayors), despite the high number in China and India. Thus, while in mid-1990s Africa had only 28 cities with over one million residents, by the end of 2005, 43 African cities had over 1 million people UN-Habitat, 2008), these rose to over 55 cities by 2015 (UN, 2016).

As a consequence of the rapid rate of urbanisation in SSA, the urban share of the total population is estimated by (UN, 2013) to go over the magic 50% by 2040 (Fig. 2.1). Indeed, some countries in SSA such as Angola, Nigeria and Botswana have crossed the 50% urban population mark, with a few countries having even higher urban proportion than in many developed countries: e.g., Gabon (84.7%), Djibouti (87.0%) and Réunion (93.1 %). This is because, as reported in UN (2012) and WHO (2010), the majority of global urban population growth in the next 50 years will occur in developing countries, predominantly in SSA and Asia

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(UN, 2012, WHO, 2010), with over 50 % of the global population growth between 2015 and 2050 expected to occur in Africa (UN, 2015).

Figure 2.1 The proportions of urban vs rural of the total population in SSA between 1950 and 2050 (UN, 2015)

The current SSA urban population is mostly concentrated in regional centres (population between 1- 5 million) and in a few capital and commercial mega-cities (population between 5- 10 million) (https://www.citypopulation.de/world/Agglomerations.html). However, there are thousands of smaller urban centres that contribute significantly to the proportion of the total urban population. These small cities sometimes referred to as secondary cities are experiencing the higher growth rate than other areas (Simon, 2008). Based on the projected exponential urbanisation growth rate (Fig. 2.2), these small urban centres may well grow into bigger regional centres and cities in the near future.

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It is worth noting that SSA urban population had almost doubled in the past 15 years (in 2000 urban population was about 197 million but by 2015 urban population rose to 360 million) and by 2050 SSA will host about 1.2 billion people (Fig. 2.2) or about 55% of the total population (Fig. 2.1)

Figure 2.2 Trend in SSA urban population 1950 to 2050 (UN, 2015)

Urban growth occurs in two major forms; urban intensification (a process whereby new buildings are developed existing open spaces within the city resulting in higher density) and urban expansion which involves the urban growth into urban peripheries, transition zone between rural and urban centres (Simon, 2008). It has been widely observed that much of the urban growth in both small and large cities is occurring in the latter (Lerner and Eakin, 2011). This form of urban growth presents most of the environmental, socio-economic, and political challenges in achieving sustainable urban development with sufficient local food production.

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The current and projected rapid land-use transformations in peri-urban areas have great consequences for food production and consumption for the peri-urban residents. This rapid land-use transformation in peri-urban zones is occurring almost exclusively at the expense of agricultural land, which has placed food production in these areas at risk. Food security concerns particularly arise as a result of the loss of cultivable land to a combination of sale and land degradation are a result of urban growth into peri-urban areas is a great threat on food security especially in developing countries (Simon, 2008).

The rapid transition from peri-urban landscapes to fully urbanised areas results in a drastic decline of available land for farming leading to limited land accessibility. Peri-urban farmers compete for available land with urban development pressures the latter often out-competing the former. Farmlands in peri-urban areas rise in value rapidly, the cost of agricultural land also increases as it becomes linked to those in the non-farm economy (Richards et al., 2016). Thus, as more agricultural lands are converted to urban uses like housing or recreation, the urban residents face a considerable challenge of ensuring their food security.

Despite the aforementioned rapid urban growth into peri-urban areas challenges and their negative implication for food security, including the risks of agricultural production systems in peri-urban areas to health and environment, agricultural production in many cities of developing countries persists, albeit on the declining scale. There several motivations of food production in peri-urban areas in the face of urban growth; emergent consumer demands from urban non-farming households, cultural needs, as well as need to supplement the household food supply (Lerner and Eakin, 2011). Persistence of food production in peri-urban areas plays

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important role in food security strategies at a household level and waste management (through recycling of organic wastes), often major problems in urban centres across Africa.