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 By 2020, Sub-Saharan Africa's urban population will approach 440 million, or 46 percent of its projected total of 952 million. Today, Africa's urban areas account for 34 percent of the total population of 611 million and are credited with 60 percent of the region's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Municipalities, however, capture only a small percentage of GDP - on average less than US$ 15 per capita per year - in revenue, creating disparity between the requirements for municipal governance and available resources.
Global economic processes have stalled in Sub-Saharan Africa with severe consequences for its urban areas. Africa is the only region in the world without a true newly industrializing economy. The failure to industrialize can partly be explained by external factors, but a variety of domestic factors must also be taken into account, including economic policies, the effects of personal rule, historical legacy, the role of the state and low levels of literacy. Structural adjustment, which has created shortages of imported materials, reduced investment, retrenched the public sector and led to declining effective demand, has badly affected urban-based manufacturing. Large-scale manufacturing, which created an impressive volume of jobs in the Asian and Latin American regions, has generated only a small number of employment opportunities in urban Africa and, consequently, the informal sector continues to remain the largest source of employment in the region.
 Nonetheless, there is a forward movement. In recent years, national governments across Africa are increasingly adopting decentralization as one of their primary strategies for development. Africa has also spawned an 'associative' sector built on local solidarity movements. Several countries in Africa have revised their constitutions and passed legislation that supports the participation of excluded and disadvantaged groups, especially women.
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