Dynamics of population, urban agglomeration, and economic growths in Sub‐Saharan Africa: Evidence from panel data

• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Author: Fredrick O. Asogwa,Joseph I. Amuka,Anthony A. Igwe,Chigozie Nelson Nkalu
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2447

ACADEMIC PAPER

Dynamics of population, urban agglomeration, and economic

growths in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from panel data

Fredrick O. Asogwa

1

| Joseph I. Amuka

1

| Anthony A. Igwe

2

|

Chigozie Nelson Nkalu

1,3

1

Department of Economics, University of

Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

2

Department of Management, Faculty of

Business Administration, University of Nigeria,

Nsukka, Nigeria

3

Department of Economics, Aberdeen

Business School, University of Aberdeen,

Scotland, UK

Correspondence

Chigozie Nelson Nkalu, Department of

Economics, University of Nigeria, Nsukka,

4100002 Nigeria.

Email: nelson.nkalu@unn.edu.ng,c.nkalu.20@

abdn.ac.uk

This study analyses population, urban agglomeration (UAG), and economic growths

dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using the World Bank panel data ranging from

1970 to 2019. The study utilized a panel fixed effect (FE) model after verifying the

suitability of the model using a Hausman test. The estimation result from the panel

FE model reveals remarkable findings which conform to some extent, the theoretical

a priori expectations. The result shows that growth in rural as well as urban popula-

tion growth and total trade (TRD) have negative relationships with UAG. On the

other hand, gross domestic product (GDP, a better proxy for income) and foreign

direct investment (FDI) have a positive association with UAG in the economies of

SSA thereby validating the existence of the Williamson–Kuznets hypothesis. Based

on the findings, it is advised amongst other policy recommendations that the govern-

ments of the Sub-Saharan African countries should pursue inward-looking policies

targeted toward encouraging the local processing of agricultural raw materials—

possibly to finished products to boost foreign exchange earnings through trade in

other to engender sustainability in both the economic growth and UAG in the region.

1|INTRODUCTION

Urban areas or cities are the major positive and prospective force in

mirroring the level of development, prosperity, and sustainable growth

as they driveinvestment, innovation, and consumption in bothdevelop-

ing and developed economies (Moreno, 2017). Generally, the relation-

ships among population dynamics especially from the angle of growths

in rural and urban population,agglomeration of the urban area and eco-

nomic growthhave not been properlyestablishedin the literature. There

have been ongoing debates in the literature on the links among rural–

urbandrift, economic growthas well as urban agglomeration(UAG).

While some notable studies like Ahrend, Lembcke, and Schu-

mann (2017), Fang and Yu (2017), and Wei, Taubenböck, and Blas-

chka (2017) believe that rural–urban drift causes a substantial growth

in the general economy which leads to more opening of spatial areas

in the cities (UAG); other studies such as Tripathi and Kaur (2017),

Oded and Fan(2007), and Ferreira, Monge-Naranjo, and Pereira (2016a)

argued that increased influx to the urban area from rural domains has

negative consequences on economic growth which rather retards

agglomeration of an urban area with high tendency of driving cities to

slums (Li, Chiu,& Lin, 2019).

An UAG is seen as spatial population within the delineations of

adjoining territory occupied at the levels of urban density irrespective

or regardless of definite administrative boundaries (Moreno, 2017). It

is the integration of suburban areas and “city proper”within the con-

tours of administrative or city boundaries (UNICEF, 2012). Though

UAG can be sometimes controversial in its definitions and delinea-

tions in terms of geographical space as it can also be linked with

urbanization; and can equally be seen as integrated cities that are

vastly and spatially developed (Fang & Yu, 2017).

UAG can be promoted by three distinct forms of economic con-

centration and relatively heightened by “industrial clusters”

Received: 10 August 2020 Revised: 24 August 2020 Accepted: 27 August 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2447

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Public Affairs published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

J Public Affairs. 2022;22:e2447. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of10

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2447