plate 378 · 2025 data

Lusaka now outnumbers Zambia's 13 other cities of 2000

Lusaka from space, about 2000 and 2025; drag to compare. UN estimates for Zambia's 14 cities of 2000.

Africa's century
  1. 1. By 2100, more than 1 in 3 people will be African
  2. 2. Nearly half the world's under-25s will be African by 2100
  3. 3. DR Congo is projected to outgrow the US by 2100
  4. 4. Kinshasa will soon be bigger than Paris and London combined
  5. 5. Two-thirds of the world's mobile money moves in Africa
  6. 6. Volcanic heat makes nearly 45% of the power Kenya generates
  7. 7. Africa's solar imports more than doubled since early 2024
  8. 8. DR Congo mines three-quarters of the world's cobalt
  9. 9. Most people in Africa are still offline
  10. 10. Africa formally recycles less than 1% of its e-waste
  11. 11. Ethiopia added over a third of Africa's new renewable power
  12. 12. Nigeria's cities now hold more people than Japan's
  13. 13. Sudan now has the world's most people displaced at home
  14. 14. Nigeria now has almost 25 million more people than Brazil
  15. 15. Six of the ten fastest-growing big cities are African
  16. 16. Africa now has more hungry people than Asia
  17. 17. Six in ten child deaths now happen in sub-Saharan Africa
  18. 18. Rwanda spread electricity faster than any country since 2014
  19. 19. Nigeria now eats more rice than Japan
  20. 20. More sub-Saharan Africans now have mobile money than bank accounts
  21. 21. Sub-Saharan Africa's cities now hold more people than Latin America's
  22. 22. DR Congo tripled its copper mining in ten years
  23. 23. Nitrogen dioxide over Khartoum fell 39% after war began
  24. 24. Countries mostly without electricity fell from 33 to 15
  25. 25. Seven in ten West African mobile money accounts sit idle
  26. 26. Nigeria became the third-biggest sender of students abroad
  27. 27. Guinea overtook Australia as the world's biggest bauxite miner
  28. 28. DR Congo passed Chile in refined copper
  29. 29. Burkina Faso now sends half its exports to the UAE
  30. 30. Nouakchott's mobile internet sped from Africa's slowest to top 30
  31. 31. Nigeria now imports more solar panels than generators
  32. 32. Zimbabwe climbed to fourth among the world's lithium miners
  33. 33. Services now employ twice as many Ghanaian women as farms
  34. 34. Sub-Saharan Africa doubled its grain, mostly by farming more land
  35. 35. Sub-Saharan Africa added more rural people than the whole world
  36. 36. France fell from first to third among Côte d'Ivoire's suppliers
  37. 37. China's car sales to Ethiopia are now mostly electric
  38. 38. Guinea rose from 17th to second for investment in Africa
  39. 39. Africa now mines three-quarters of the world's manganese
  40. 40. Tanzania rose from no graphite to world's third-biggest miner
  41. 41. DR Congo has more babies each year than the EU
  42. 42. More Malawians go online than have electricity at home
  43. 43. Nigeria is now Brazil's biggest supplier of urea fertiliser
  44. 44. 19 sub-Saharan countries are now mostly urban, up from 7
  45. 45. Sub-Saharan Africa added 13 million births a year since 2000
  46. 46. Sub-Saharan Africa now holds 88% of people without electricity
  47. 47. Malawi's life expectancy rose 21 years, more than anywhere
  48. 48. Ethiopia's wheat harvest nearly doubled, mostly from higher yields
  49. 49. In purchasing power, Egypt overtook Nigeria as Africa's biggest economy
  50. 50. Kenyans abroad send home more than Kenya receives in aid
  51. 51. Africa tops urea supply in 12 countries, up from six
  52. 52. Lusaka now outnumbers Zambia's 13 other cities of 2000
38.7% → 52.7%

Lusaka's share of the people in Zambia's 14 cities of 2000, from 2000 to 2025. It passed half between 2015 and 2020.

1.06 → 3.51 million

Lusaka's population, 2000 to 2025: 3.3 times as many people. The other 13 cities grew 1.9 times, from 1.67 to 3.15 million.

936,900 → 1.78 million

The five Copperbelt mining cities together, 2000 to 2025: once nearly Lusaka's size, now half of it.

Source: UN DESA, World Urbanization Prospects 2025: population of cities; images: Landsat 7 and 9, USGS/NASA, 2025
the numbers & method
Lusaka now outnumbers Zambia's 13 other cities of 2000. Source: UN DESA, World Urbanization Prospects 2025: population of cities; images: Landsat 7 and 9, USGS/NASA, 2025.
20002025
Lusaka's share of the 14 cities (%)38.852.7
Lusaka, people1,056,3893,510,723
The other 13 cities, people1,669,9923,150,923
Five Copperbelt cities, people936,8981,781,631

Claim types Estimate

Estimate. The numbers: UN DESA Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects 2025 (2025 Revision), File 21: population of cities by the Degree of Urbanisation (POP/DB/WUP/Rev.2025/F21, CC BY 3.0 IGO), read via the progrss vault (§4.11, un-wup 57/0). Method (UN WUP 2025 methodological report): city populations come from 1 km population grids (GHS-POP, every five years to 2020, projected to 2025) onto which census counts are spread and scaled to the UN's national totals; cities are places of at least 50,000 people under the Degree of Urbanisation, and their extents are redrawn for each reference year. The UN calls all years to 2025 estimates; yearly values between the five-year points are straight-line. Set: the 14 places the UN lists as cities of Zambia in 2000 (Lusaka, Kitwe, Ndola, Chingola, Kabwe, Kasama, Livingstone, Chipata, Mufulira, Kapiri Mposhi, Solwezi, Mongu, Luanshya, Monze), held fixed so that towns becoming cities later do not change the denominator. Lusaka 1,056,389 in 2000 and 3,510,723 in 2025; the other 13 together 1,669,992 and 3,150,923; Lusaka's share 38.75% in 2000, 45.08% in 2010, 48.36% in 2015, 51.70% in 2020, 52.70% in 2025. Against all 33 places the UN counts as cities of Zambia in 2025 (including Mansa, now the fourth-largest at 335,503), Lusaka's share is 41.5% and the other 32 hold more people (4.94 million); against the 13 next-largest cities of 2025 Lusaka is ahead by about 1% (3.51 against 3.47 million). Copperbelt = Kitwe, Ndola, Chingola, Mufulira, Luanshya: 936,898 in 2000 (89% of Lusaka) and 1,781,631 in 2025 (51%). Shares and ratios are progrss calculations. The pictures: true-colour median composites of dry-season (May to October) Landsat 7 scenes, 1999–2002 (65 scenes), and Landsat 9 scenes, 2024–2025 (62 scenes), under 20% cloud, USGS Collection 2 Level-2 surface reflectance, exported at about 30 m per pixel by progrss through Google Earth Engine (non-commercial registration, so this plate is not licensed); the same frame (28.06–28.51°E, 15.28–15.57°S, about 48 by 32 km) and the same colour stretch for both. The two sensors render colours slightly differently (the 2000 picture is redder); small bright specks are roofs, quarries or leftover cloud. The frame is not the UN's city boundary. Landsat data are public domain (USGS). No cause is claimed.

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