Sub-Saharan Africa added more rural people than the whole world
Change in rural population by World Bank region, millions, 2015–2025. World: 3,391 million to 3,465 million.
- 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. Nigeria's cities now hold more people than Japan's
- 13. Sudan now has the world's most people displaced at home
- 14. Nigeria now has almost 25 million more people than Brazil
- 15. Six of the ten fastest-growing big cities are African
- 16. Africa now has more hungry people than Asia
- 17. Six in ten child deaths now happen in sub-Saharan Africa
- 18. Rwanda spread electricity faster than any country since 2014
- 19. Nigeria now eats more rice than Japan
- 20. More sub-Saharan Africans now have mobile money than bank accounts
- 21. Sub-Saharan Africa's cities now hold more people than Latin America's
- 22. DR Congo tripled its copper mining in ten years
- 23. Nitrogen dioxide over Khartoum fell 39% after war began
- 24. Countries mostly without electricity fell from 33 to 15
- 25. Seven in ten West African mobile money accounts sit idle
- 26. Nigeria became the third-biggest sender of students abroad
- 27. Guinea overtook Australia as the world's biggest bauxite miner
- 28. DR Congo passed Chile in refined copper
- 29. Burkina Faso now sends half its exports to the UAE
- 30. Nouakchott's mobile internet sped from Africa's slowest to top 30
- 31. Nigeria now imports more solar panels than generators
- 32. Zimbabwe climbed to fourth among the world's lithium miners
- 33. Services now employ twice as many Ghanaian women as farms
- 34. Sub-Saharan Africa doubled its grain, mostly by farming more land
- 35. Sub-Saharan Africa added more rural people than the whole world
Rural people added in sub-Saharan Africa, 2015–2025, more than the world's net gain of 74 million.
Rural people lost in East Asia and the Pacific over the same decade, the biggest fall of any region.
Rural people in sub-Saharan Africa in 2025, 55% of its people: the countryside is still growing there.
the numbers & method
Claim types Estimate
World Bank WDI, SP.POP.TOTL (total population) and SP.URB.TOTL (urban population), edition 2026-10-08, World Bank regional aggregates, read from the World Bank API via the progrss vault (GUIDELINES §4.11). Rural population = total minus urban (progrss calculation; the World Bank's own rural series is defined the same way). Urban population follows each country's own definition of urban, as compiled by the UN (World Urbanization Prospects); values are modelled estimates, and 2025 is an estimate. Rural population, millions, 2015 → 2025 (change): Sub-Saharan Africa 616.5 → 731.4 (+114.97); South Asia 1035.6 → 1086.5 (+50.95); Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan 321.9 → 364.7 (+42.85); North America 69.2 → 74.8 (+5.61); Latin America and the Caribbean 127.5 → 123.3 (-4.20); Europe and Central Asia 247.9 → 241.8 (-6.09); East Asia and Pacific 972.7 → 842.3 (-130.44). World 3,391.2 → 3,464.8 (+73.63). The seven regions cover every country, so their changes add up to the world change; bars are rounded to 0.1 million. The World Bank's Middle East and North Africa region includes Afghanistan and Pakistan. China's urban series slows after 2021 (census revision), inside the East Asia and Pacific bar.
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