I’m not sure this is true. People have crowded by the literal millions into Lagos, not so much because they have to, but because they want to. I’ve seen it said that boredom with rural life is the prime motivator for people to decamp to Lagos. And whatever else you may say of Lagos, it isn’t boring.
And I will say more generally that people who think Africa is hopeless need a sense of perspective. Africa can hardly be expected to emerge overnight from centuries of slavetrading and colonialism. Compare Africa to any country of Western Europe. How long did it take Ireland, for example, to get its shit together as a nation? Just like Africa, it suffered centuries of colonialism, exploitation, man-made famine, brain drain… and then suddenly, just in the last decade or so, it really took off. There’s no inherent reason why an African nation shouldn’t do the same.
People go into the cities to find work, not to enjoy it’s cosmopolitan offerings. Often it is only young men, who leave their families back in the village and expect to retire there, where the quality of life is better.
You’re probably only seeing the ones who are happy with a rural/village lifestyle in the village you’re in. The ones who don’t enjoy that sort of thing have moved off to the cities and don’t come back very often. Like me- my parents live in a small town, but I hate small-town life. I live in a major metro area, and, except for the obligatory few-times-a-year visit to them, spend almost all of my time in cities or metropolitan areas.
If you were in a rural area in the US, you’d be very unlikely to meet someone like me, who likes living in cities. But we do exist- if there weren’t a fair number of us, Manhattan, Tokyo, and London real estate prices wouldn’t be among the highest in the world. Cities like that exist in and near Cameroon, too- Douala, Cameroon, was ranked as the 27th most expensive city in the world to live in in 2006, and Lagos, Nigeria, was 31st- both higher in cost of living than Chicago or San Francisco. Somebody in Cameroon clearly does want to live in a large city.
I just don’t think that’s true. First of all, I don’t think there’s a major gender imbalance in a place like Lagos. And second of all, Lagos, like any big city, certainly has vastly more cosmopolitan offerings than rural Nigeria. It’s not just a vast slum, after all. Young people go to Lagos for the same reason that young people from rural Oklahoma go to New York City. Sure, there’s more crime, danger and income inequity there, but there’s also a chance to enjoy a little excitement, and maybe get ahead in life.
I hope you are right. I personally wish the nations of Africa the best and I think the world will be better off if they succeed. As an independent observer I am definitely in the camp of considering it unlikely. Slavetrading and colonialism are not causes. They are the effects of having a non-competetive population and culture. Global initiatives have failed on a regular basis to establish indigenously-run competetive industries. Billions in loans have never been repaid and are now seen as some sort of external weight crushing down countries instead of creating wealth-producing self-sustaining infrastructure. I find minimal parallels between Ireland and the nations of Africa. The brains that are draining are doing so in staggering numbers and have little incentive to return. This sad comment from Philip Emeagwali: "It is the best and brightest that can emigrate, leaving behind the weak and less imaginative. It means a slow death for Africa. " Africa: Education and Brain Drain
I am reminded of a funny comment (from Mike Royko I think) about Indiana which is sadly apropos of Africa: “A lot of smart people came out (of there) and the smarter they were the faster they came out.”
No, I get asked all the time if I can bring in some foreign aid dollars. I would say there is some degree of a dependent attitude regarding foreign aid. People arn’t confident that they can acheive things on our own. Peace Corps trains us to teach people how to use local resources to acheive their goals, but most people would prefer it if I’d just build something like a well or a school and don’t really understand why I’m here.
And remember, people’s understanding of geopolitics is really hazy. America might not be seen as different than Europe.
There is some local resentment against the Chinese, who people percieve as dumping low-quality goods on them. They often believe that Chinese aid workers are in it to get money from them somehow. Mostly, the Chinese aid workers don’t have great communication skills in French so nobody really understands much about them.
Of course there are people who enjoy city life. And of course cities hold a special attraction to the young.
But African cities are not American cities. I’m writing this from Yaounde right now, my capital. There is one movie theater here. I believe there is a museum and there is a small, sad zoo. There are around ten interesting restaurants. There are a couple dance clubs. Many of the interesting things here are way too expensive to be of use to the average person. Heck, most of this is too expensive for me. Of course, this is just the stuff that interests ex-pats. But athough a Cameroonian might come up with a different list of interesting things here, I don’t think it would be all that much longer. I’m sure Lagos is a lot more dynamic, but it makes up for it with huge increases in crime.
The reason why these cities are considered the most expensive is not because they are full of shiny wonderful things. It is because consumer goods are so rare and need to be imported with scare foreign capital, and people here are either poor or megarich- there is no middle class market. There are two supermarkets carrying foreign goods here (and all goods are foreign because very little is manufactured here.) A box of popsicles is $20.00. A regular plastic ice chest is $80.00. A night of mediocre sushi will set you back $40.00. Even regular goods that Cameroonians use are absurdly expensive. A used mini fridge smuggled from Nigeria goes for around $160.00, an obscene price where much of the population lives on less than a dollar a day. Rent prices of modern apartments (running water, some security, etc.) are geared exactly to the embassy per diems.
Now I don’t spend a lot of time in Yaounde. But I do spend a lot of time in my local provincial capital, a small city in the center of a large agricultural area. I live in a small town, and the capital is our “big city”. I’ve found that relationships with “the city” are pretty different than what we have in America.
People move around a lot. For example, it is not at all unusual for a high school student to live in a rented room in a city or village far away from their family. It’s also not unusual for children to bounce around between relatives in far flung places. For example, almost every student spends their summer vacation back in their village or in the village of an aunt or grandparent or something. “Visiting” a city often means staying there a few months. For example, when a woman gives birth, she goes and lives with her family for a few months. Since most jobs are in the informal sector, there is a lot of flexibility to move around. Since family ties are strong, a person is welcome whereever they have family. Also, trade is almost all in the informal sector. Your food and stuff is moved on the same mini-busses that move people around. So there is a lot of city-village movement related to the transport of goods.
People’s connection to their villages are strong. There is not a single person in Cameroon that does not have a village they identify with. People living in cities often build houses in their villages, so villages are littered with huge but empty houses. Nearly all of my students would go “au village” every weekend. Part of this is that even city dwellers here have fields they must maintain. The rest is because the extendended family and traditional life is focused on the village, and family is the most important thing for most people. To live away from your family is like living with your arm chopped off. I often get asked why I did not bring my mother with me here.
For women it is a little different. For example, teachers are not assigned to their own communities, but rather to whatever places need them. They usually leave their wives at home, seeing them on vacations. I know men who have lived apart from there wives for decades like this. One major problem with girls education is that people don’t want to send girls to live in the cities (secondary education facilities are rare in villages) where they might encounter corrupting influences.
Anyway, I work with high school students, and for part of my work I ask them about goals. A lot have expressed a desire to move to America. I don’t think any have expressed a desire to move to Yaounde or even Garoua in the future. Few even expressed a desire to be rich- most focused on the families they would like to have and the work they would like to do (which is often quite modest- high school kids here dream of being butchers.)
Anyway, I live in North Cameroon- world capitol of calm- and I’m sure it’s different in the South where people are a little more driven. But still, a person’s relationship to cities and villages here are complex, and much different from how they’d be in America.
To be fair, those are statistics for expatriate employees of multinational corporations. In New York London, Paris, Tokyo, etc, such people enjoy a standard of living that also applies to a statistically-significant percentage of the local population. The average globe-trotting executive is going to find a lifestyle in the above world cities that is subject to market forces. Nice apartment / house, top-drawer restaurants, culture, shopping, schools for the kids – these are things where the business exec will find him / herself in a comfortable environment.
In Douala, however, such an executive is going to find themselves within the top 0.1% of income-earners, with the only “local” competition being those with strong political connections. The exec is going to need air-conditioning at home, an imported car (and driver – with the inherent upkeep costs), and several other accoutrements that are totally alien to any of the young Cameroonian men who may have moved from even sven’s town to the Big City. I’ll bet that the linked site includes calculations for joining (or using) a Golf (or other expat-related) Club, plus occasional trips to a first-world city (probably Paris, for Douala). Since the market for such services is so limited – expat execs, wealthy tourists, and highly-connected locals – the prices can be absurdly high.
All of the above makes cities like Douala much more expensive for an expat than it would be for a local. [This is also why the Big Mac index is often misleading.] Of course, Douala is still the most expensive city in Cameroon for a local to live in, but it’s nowhere near the factor that your link would imply, Anne.