Enno MUNZEL

The thesis aims to study the urban system and the territorial economic development of a developing country to be defined at the start of the project. The massive urbanization of developing countries is prompting an organization of economic activities and growth dynamics between cities that does not follow the theoretical predictions developed from the historical experience of developed countries (Glaeser and Henderson, 2017 ; Duranton, 2014).

Recent work has shown that urbanization in developing countries is often independent of industrialization processes (Gollin et al., 2015). Cities in developing countries often survive thanks to the large size of informal activities, especially service or small manufacturing, which generate low income and offer little protection. We also observe large cities with exponential growth accumulating higher urban functions linked to the knowledge economy (innovation, higher services, etc.) as well as production activities usually dedicated to lower-ranking cities. Medium-sized cities therefore struggle to define their place in the urban system while the size of large cities explodes at the top of the hierarchy.

The first chapter aims to explore a recent published database on urban growth dyanamics ofthe entire African continent. The heterogeneity of the data provided by national statistics presents a problem for comparing and analyzing urbanization across countries. To encounter comparison problems the recent database of the Africapolis project provides a database reuniting harmonized census data from over 9000 African agglomerations from the past 70 years.