African population will triple

Nairobi - African cities are facing disastrous overpopulation as urban populations across the continent continue to swell dramatically, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

UN-Habitat's The State of African Cities 2010 report warned that African city populations will more than triple by 2050, when 60% of an estimated 1.23 billion Africans are expected to live in urban centres.

The report said that Africa is the fastest urbanising continent in the world, with an urban growth rate of 3.41%.

Yet, as the authors of the report point out, many African cities are already teeming with slums and increasing populations could lead to disaster.

SHOOT: Overpopulation without resources - or in layman's terms, poor folk having large families on a continental scale - is a recipe for large scale social disaster. The answer is education, and economic empowerment or investment, and possibly Africa's resources can still save its people, or substantial fractions of Africans.