Six of the ten fastest-growing big cities are African
Population growth 2015–2025: the ten fastest of the world's 82 cities of 5 million or more. Africa in yellow.
- 1. By 2100, more than 1 in 3 people will be African
- 2. Nearly half the world's under-25s will be African by 2100
- 3. DR Congo is projected to outgrow the US by 2100
- 4. Kinshasa will soon be bigger than Paris and London combined
- 5. Two-thirds of the world's mobile money moves in Africa
- 6. Volcanic heat makes nearly 45% of the power Kenya generates
- 7. Africa's solar imports more than doubled since early 2024
- 8. DR Congo mines three-quarters of the world's cobalt
- 9. Nearly two in three people in Africa are still offline
- 10. Africa formally recycles less than 1% of its e-waste
- 11. Ethiopia added over a third of Africa's new renewable power
- 12. DR Congo now has more children than Brazil
- 13. Nigeria's cities now hold more people than Japan's
- 14. Sudan now has the world's most people displaced at home
- 15. Nigeria now has almost 25 million more people than Brazil
- 16. Six of the ten fastest-growing big cities are African
Luanda's growth from 2015 to 2025, from 7.1 million to 11.4 million people: the fastest of all 82 big cities.
Africa has 14 of the world's 82 cities of 5 million or more, but six of the ten fastest-growing.
Median growth of all 82 big cities over the same decade. Tokyo grew 0.9%.
the numbers & method
| Growth 2015–2025 (%) | |
|---|---|
| Luanda | 59.9 |
| Kozhikode* | 58.0 |
| Dar es Salaam | 49.6 |
| Yaoundé | 47.5 |
| Addis Ababa | 46.5 |
| Dubai | 42.2 |
| Kinshasa | 37.5 |
| Amman | 36.2 |
| Onitsha | 35.9 |
| Karachi | 35.5 |
Claim types Estimate · Interpretation
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2025). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2025 Revision, File 21 (POP/DB/WUP/Rev.2025/F21): population of cities of 50,000 or more at mid-year, 1975–2050, thousands; CC BY 3.0 IGO. Read in full from the UN file on 4 Nov 2026 (16,829 rows). Cities follow the Degree of Urbanisation: contiguous areas of at least 1,500 people per km² and 50,000 people, measured on 1 km² grids, so a 'city' follows dense built-up land, not city limits. Rows: the ten fastest-growing of the 82 cities with at least 5 million people in 2025. Population 2015 → 2025 (thousands): Luanda (Angola) 7,109.3 → 11,370.1; Kozhikode (India) 3,874.7 → 6,123.9; Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) 5,209.9 → 7,795.1; Yaoundé (Cameroon) 3,462.5 → 5,106.1; Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) 4,577.1 → 6,705.7; Dubai (UAE) 3,714.6 → 5,283.8; Kinshasa (DR Congo) 7,960.6 → 10,943.6; Amman (Jordan) 4,700.9 → 6,403.7; Onitsha (Nigeria) 4,139.9 → 5,627.7; Karachi (Pakistan) 15,811.8 → 21,422.6. 11th: Kabul, 31.6%. The 14 African cities among the 82: Luanda, Dar es Salaam, Yaoundé, Addis Ababa, Kinshasa, Onitsha, Abidjan, Nairobi, Lagos, Johannesburg, Accra, Cairo, Alexandria, Khartoum. Tokyo 2015 → 2025: 0.9%. Growth rates, ranks and the median (13.1%) are progrss calculations. The 2025 values are UN modelled figures. Kozhikode: the UN city (6.1 million) joins many towns along Kerala's densely settled coast, so it is far larger than the municipal city (interpretation). Cross-check: the EU JRC GHS Urban Centre Database R2024A, which uses its own fixed boundaries, also ranks Kinshasa (66.4%), Dar es Salaam (65.1%), Luanda (64.2%), Addis Ababa (58.8%) and Yaoundé (54.9%) among the fastest-growing urban centres of 5 million+ (2015–2025), excluding a known artefact at Luxor; its single-city figures differ from the UN's.
Published 4 Nov 2026
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