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Zaire Urbanization: Causes and Characteristics
Urbanization is a relatively recent phenomenon in
Zaire, and in
the early 1990s Zaire was still a predominantly rural
nation. Since
the 1940s, however, the population has increasingly
shifted from
rural to urban areas, especially Kinshasa. An estimated
39.5
percent of the population was classified as urban in 1990,
up from
30.3 percent in 1970 and 34.2 percent in 1980. Between
1940 and
1970, all urban centers had grown in population by a
factor of ten.
Growth has continued at a relatively high rate since then.
Indeed,
the average annual urban population growth rate has been
estimated
at almost 4.7 percent for the 1985-90 period, as compared
with an
average annual rural population growth rate of less than
2.3
percent during the same period.
Kinshasa remains, overwhelmingly, the nation's largest
city,
with a population estimated at nearly 5 million in 1988.
More than
one-third of all city-dwellers lived in Kinshasa in 1988.
There
are, however, a number of other large cities as well,
several of
which (including Kananga, formerly Luluabourg, and
Lubumbashi) had
populations of nearly 1 million by 1985 (see
table 7,
Appendix).
The concentration of resources in the cities has long
drawn
migrants from the countryside. Civil strife following
independence
intensified the shift of population to urban areas. Most
recently,
the chaotic economic and social conditions of the late
1980s and
early 1990s have aggravated existing disparities between
urban and
rural standards of living. Urban residence has thus grown
increasingly attractive as the conditions of rural life
have
deteriorated even more rapidly than the conditions of
urban life.
In the colonial era, influx controls kept large numbers
of
people from migrating to the cities. The controls also
allowed more
men (as workers) than women into the cities, resulting in
a skewed
urban sex ratio. But since independence, government
attempts to
discourage urban migration, including periodic roundups
and
deportations of the urban unemployed to the countryside,
have
failed. Ample evidence of the failure is provided by the
numerous
squatters' villages that have sprung up on the outskirts
of
Kinshasa and other cities.
Indeed, state policies over the years actually
accelerated the
rural exodus to the cities. State investment funds were
almost
entirely targeted toward cities and the mining areas,
further
aggravating the resource disparity between rural and urban
areas.
State-fixed prices for food crops produced by villagers
were kept
deliberately low in order to keep urban populations
quiescent. The
state also continued the colonial-era policies of
compulsory
agricultural production quotas and of heavy direct and
indirect
taxation for cash crops such as cotton. When indirect
taxes, such
as turnover and export taxes, on cash crops are added to
direct
taxes, Zaire specialist Crawford Young has estimated that
as much
as 50 percent of real and potential village income is
routinely
extracted by the state or its representatives. Moreover,
the
exactions levied by the state and its agents generally
increase in
severity in proportion to distance from urban centers.
Rural public
employees and soldiers frequently use their official
powers to live
off the land, or for extortion, particularly when their
salaries
are either delayed or not paid by corrupt superiors. Given
the
scale of legal and illegal state exactions on the rural
population,
the flight of villagers to the cities can be seen as
absolutely
rational.
Several particular aspects of the growing urban
population are
also noteworthy. Since independence, women have been
particularly
quick to migrate to cities and exploit the opportunities
of urban
life, in particular the opportunity to engage in economic
activity
in the informal sector. In the 1990s, women generally
equaled or
outnumbered men in Zaire's urban centers, in sharp
contrast to the
colonial era. Migration of the young to Zaire's urban
centers in
search of postprimary education has also been a strong
factor in
urban growth.
Another striking feature of Zaire's urban populace has
been the
low number of wage earners in the formal economy relative
to the
total population. The most extreme known case is that of
Kananga,
which was reported to have only 10,000 wage earners out of
a
population of 429,000 in 1973. The survival of most urban
households has been founded on activity outside of the
formal
economic sector. Much of the populace makes its living in
the large
and thriving informal sector
(see The
Informal Sector
, this ch.;
The
Informal Economy
, ch. 3).
Data as of December 1993
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