The Coordination Between Urban Population Growth and Economic Development in African Countries

Urbanization in African countries entails substantial growth in the urban population and economic development. The interdependent progress of the population and economy significantly impacts the sustainable development of these nations. By constructing an evaluation framework, this paper assesses the urban population growth and economic development systems in African countries. Building upon the coupling coordination model, it quantitatively investigates the relationship between the two and utilizes a geographical detector model to analyze the driving factors of the coordination of evolution. The findings reveal a continuous improvement in the quality of urban population growth and economic development between 2001 and 2020. Nevertheless, their overall quality remains relatively low, exhibiting considerable variation across different countries. Many African countries struggle with a low level of development coordination, with economic progress often trailing behind the pace of urban population growth. The average coupling coordination degree increased from 0.464 to 0.526 over 20 years, with 48.08% of countries still in uncoordinated development by 2020. Factors such as industrialization, foreign trade dependence, government spending, international aid, and political stability are all influential factors affecting the degree of coordination. The absence of industrialization in conjunction with urbanization poses a major impediment to effectively harnessing urban population growth for economic development. Ultimately, this study provides a targeted framework for integrating urban population growth and economic development to address low coupling coordination.