The Study On Spatial Difference And Influencing Factors Of Urbanization Development In Africa

Africa has a vast territory and a large population.In the past half century,the urban population has increased rapidly.It has become one of the fastest growing regions in the world.The rapid development of urbanization in Africa has become a global focus.However,the number and scale of urban population in Africa are in the form of mechanical increase,which is seriously divorced from the level of productivity.And there is a serious over-urbanization phenomenon.Therefore,based on the index of urbanization rate and urbanization quality,this paper probes into the spatial differences and influencing factors of urbanization in Africa and proposes corresponding policy recommendations.Based on the domestic and foreign research results and a large number of data,the content and conclusions of this paper are as follows:Firstly,this paper makes an analysis about current situation of urbanization in Africa.It systematically analyzes the driving force of population,economy,policy,history and culture,ethnic conflicts and wars in the process of urbanization in Africa.Urbanization in Africa faces challenges such as urban poverty,unemployment and the informal economy,lagging urban infrastructure construction and inadequate public services.Secondly,based on the latest statistics of the World Bank,the spatial differences of urbanization in various regions of Africa are studied in terms of urbanization level and development stage,urbanization development process,urban grade scale,industrial layout,and so on.The spatial correlation of urbanization in Africa is analyzed by spatial auto-correlation method.The study found that there are large differences in the urbanization development process in various regions of Africa.Northern Africa has the highest level of urbanization,followed by Central Africa,Western Africa and Southern Africa,and Eastern Africa has the lowest level of urbanization.The spatial distribution ofurbanization levels in African countries has a positive spatial connection,but the distribution of urban population in Africa is unbalanced.Thirdly,considering the singularity of urbanization rate,the representative indicators in term of economic development,social development,population factors,infrastructure are selected as evaluation indicators of urbanization quality.The principal component analysis method is used to evaluate the quality of urbanization in African countries,and the comprehensive score of urbanization quality is calculated.The spatial distribution characteristics of urbanization quality in African countries are summarized by the cluster analysis and spatial auto-correlation analysis.It is found that the level of urbanization quality between different regions is quite different.The quality level of urbanization is the highest in the coastal areas of northern and southern Africa,moderate in the central and western regions,and the lowest in the eastern region,and the distribution of urban urbanization quality scores shows a significant spatial positive correlation.By comparing the scores of urbanization quality with urbanization rate in the spatial distribution and making regression analysis based on the two variables,the study found that there are serious Over-urbanization phenomena in African countries,that is,the quality and speed of urbanization in Africa are extremely uncoordinated,and the development of urbanization quality is far behind the growth of urbanization speed.Finally,based on the spatial econometric model,the paper makes an empirical analysis on the factors affecting the spatial difference of urbanization development in Africa.The results show that the infrastructure,economic openness and industrial structure have significant positive correlation with the development of urbanization in Africa.However,the impact of economic development on urbanization development is not significant.Therefore,some suggestions are made to promote the coordinated and sustainable development of urbanization in Africa.