Understanding urban development in Africa is important, because it gives an indirect picture of rural development and its failure; this partly explains the rate of urbanization growth in sub-Saharan Africa. People leave their land and go to the cities because the agricultural sector collapses and does not allow for survival. In southern Africa, the agricultural sector is characterized by extreme dualism: the white-dominated commercial sector, consisting of large, capital-intensive farms, co-exists with an impoverished black-dominated smallholder sector, which produces mainly for subsistence.

In the case of Zimbabwe, the recent intensification of the land reform program by the incumbent government has paralyzed the agricultural sector. Those who seek only to occupy farms and not to continue their productivity are strangling organized agriculture, which results in the intensification of the rural-to-urban exodus. At the same time, there is very little industry that can absorb this new labor force in the cities, so people end up creating a parallel economy—the informal sector—which becomes the backbone of and the buffer zone between the formal sector and the rest of society. From this point of view, African cities are actually a reserve of very cheap, desperate and therefore docile labor that can be supplied to the local businesses and transnational corporations. In this way, there is reproduction in another form of the function of cities during colonial times, when cities became pools of landless peasants who had to find wage labor in order to pay taxes in cash.

There is an urban development crisis in Africa—one that is defined by many as a governance crisis, by some as a political crisis, by others as an economic one, while still others see it as a manifestation of Africa's historical path. Economists who at one time thought they had the solution are, centuries later, still as confounded as those who came before them; politicians are confused, delusional, and defensive, while the general populace is frustrated and impatient with the status quo.

Africa is a diverse continent with diverse challenges. It is a product of a history that encompasses the slave trade, colonialism, the First and Second World Wars, the Cold War and its concomitant situation, internal tribal conflicts, and a myriad of post-independence challenges.