'Every day's a fight' Daily commutes into rapidly growing African cities

Africa is a rapidly urbanising continent.

- Carlos Mureithi Nairobi Rachel Savage Johannesburg Eromo Egbejule Abidjan

Since 1990, the proportion of people who live in towns and cities has risen from 28% to 44%, according to the World Bank. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development predicts the continent’s urban population will double to 1.4 billion by 2050.

In many cases, public transport has not kept up with this growth, with hours-long traffic jams a feature of many metropolises. While some cities have light railways, such as Addis Ababa and Lagos, and others have public bus networks, many commuters rely on private minibus taxis.

“This has got to do largely with the colonial planning systems that have been adopted and inherited on the continent,” said Mfaniseni Sihlongonyane, a professor of development planning and urban studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. “Urban areas were segregated and hence fragmented, so formal transport provision was largely intended for the formal city or... the ‘white area’.”

Poor planning meant that people moving to cities had largely not been catered for, he said. “It’s very hard to travel around our cities in South Africa and even in Africa.”

Guardian correspondents spoke to local people about the challenges of their daily commute.

It is 6am on a Wednesday in the district of Kibera, where colourful, art-covered buses are lined up outside shops. “Hamsini hamsini Ambassadeur,” a conductor shouts, giving the price of 50 Kenyan shillings, about 30p, for the ride to a landmark hotel in the city centre. He bangs his vehicle’s side as passengers enter.

These privately owned vehicles, matatus, are the most popular form of transport in the Kenyan capital, a city of almost 5 million people. More than 10,000 of them move commuters into, out of and around the city every day.