For a country of about 102 million people, this distribution of city sizes is remarkable, noting that the true population of Addis is likely larger yet:
| Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | 2,757,729 |
|---|---|
| Dire Dawa, Ethiopia | 252,279 |
| Mekele, Ethiopia | 215,546 |
| Nazrēt, Ethiopia | 213,995 |
| Bahir Dar, Ethiopia | 168,899 |
It is striking that the population is still about 80% “rural,” even with ten percent growth for a decade or so.
It seems that most people don’t want to leave their villages. Given that apparent constraint, many of the somewhat larger villages have evolved into mini-cities with very limited infrastructure and density, but lots more consumption. And Addis still is not so crowded, which makes it quite pleasant. We’ll see how this pans out, but I had never seen this “enhanced rural” model before and it is worthy of more attention. Here is one account of what is going on:
An entire town is to be built here — with a school and a training center where the farmers from the surrounding area can learn new skills, which they can then put to use to earn money. The newly founded municipality, which is to gradually grow to around 15,000 residents, is called Buranest. The idea behind the project is that the city must come to the farmers in order to keep the rural population from flooding into the cities…An entire network of this new type of settlement is to be built as part of Ethiopia’s Nestown project — half village, half town.
Just for a point of comparison, the tenth largest city in the Philippines, total population about 103 million, has 675,000 inhabitants and even the fifth largest city, Cebu, has almost a million people.
Ethiopia’s per-capita income of $1800 in PPP terms is about the same as that of Bihar – the poorest of all Indian states (which is at $2200 or so).
Bihar is a province in Northern India with a population of 99MM people. About the same as Ethiopia – which has 102 MM people.
While Ethiopia is the cradle of Christianity in some ways, Bihar is the cradle of Buddhism, as well as late Vedic / post-Vedic Hinduism. Buddha was born in Bihar. So were many ancient Hindu seers and lawgivers.
Interestingly Bihar is also every bit as rural as Ethiopia. Its largest city, Patna, is about the same size as Addis Adaba. Followed by some very small cities.
Patna : 2.1 MM (as of 2011, arguably closer to 3MM now)
Gaya : 470K
Bhagalpur : 410K
Muzaffarpur : 393K
In all, 6 cities above 300K, including Patna.
Striking similarities!
Another striking similarity is that Bihar too has shown a strong growth in last 15 years or so. The annual growth has been in excess of 10% during this period. One interesting fact about Bihar is that while Bihar is the poorest state of India, its capital Patna has a pretty high PCI. It’s higher than cities like Hyderabad and Bangalore!
I wasn’t aware of the high PCI of Patna. That’s surprising.
I believe that Thailand and South Korea have similar distributions.
Thailand came to my mind as well.
67m total
Bangkok 5m
next largest ones 400, 300, 250k and then many around 200k inhabitants.
Paying lots of workers to build big city infrastructure costs too much, and the high costs kill jobs.
Only by slashing labor costs by killing jobs and slashing wages can profits increase to drive growth in population chasing the high profits.
It is not totally clear to me that private land ownership is legal in Ethiopia.
“when one looks at the land ownership in Ethiopia, the ground (surface earth) is not subject to private ownership (see Article 40(3) of FDRE constitution). Land belongs to the state and the people, and is not subject of sale and exchange. This means that it is futile to classify the land paradigms in Ethiopia from pure ownership perspective. Rather, the land right provided, as termed in the RLAUP, is known as “holding right.” It is less of ownership in that the holder lacks the power of sale and exchange”
There is no private land ownership in Ethiopia — except, of course that there is: they call it a leasehold (just like in England, where technically you don’t own the land your house sits on).
So, when you say you ‘own’ a house, or a land, what you have actually done, is buy the right from the government for a lease period (40 years/99 years…etc.). And if you do sell, you’re not selling the land, but the house (so, that in Addis you sometimes have a mud hovel changing hands for millions, because of the value of the land it sits on, and its location).
Now, in actual fact, in the case of a house, you do own it (sort of), as it is relatively unlikely the government will decide to take it off you after the lease period ends (although they may decide to multiply the annual lease times ten… but that’s another story).
Where this whole question gets a lot, lot more complicated in Ethiopia, is in the countryside, where farmers’ rights to their land is always open to question.
This in turn prevents them from using them as collateral, and some have argued keeps them thus in poverty, and also is a disincentive for them to practice proper husbandry (as the local officials can take it off them tomorrow). In turn, the defenders of this public ownership argue that this prevents rent seeks and investors stripping poor peasants of their only asset (although the question is precisely if this makes their land an assset or not).
Of course, a corrolory to all this is that this probably prevents mass exodus of the peasantry to the cities…
This public ownership has roots both in the Marxist/Maoist background of the Derg regime, and the current government, but more deeply still, it harks back to the centuries old practise in Ethiopia of feudal lords and kings divvying out land to tax the many (by way of tithies) and express their pleasure to the few by granting them domains (always leaving the possibility of snatching them back at the drop of a hat, least anyone should get to comfortable or petulant).
To resume: plus ça change, moins ça change.
(You’ll have to forgive me, but I’ve forgotten how that translates in Amharic.)
Maybe the power laws have gotten thrown off by the legacy of colonial borders? It looks like within a stone’s throw of Ethopia you have a city of 1.1 million (Hargeisa) and a few others in the 250-500,000 range (Djibouti, Galkayo, Al-Qadarif).
Who needs cities when one has donkeys? The tourists love them.
Scratching my head, again. Maybe TC believes he has found the exception to challenge (prove) the rule with, which is probably the single most common reason researchers research, but I have my doubts. It isn’t as if Ethiopia suddenly appeared as if transported from some alternate universe or time. That is, I’m guessing people are people there as much as here. So, the question is: for the (many apparently based on comments in this thread) countries with a singularity in population density distribution (i.e. most populous city) what are the causes of the distortion of the normal (pun?) distribution?
Surely, the jobs offered by an urban economy are little different in Ethiopia than in NYC, Berlin, or Beijing. Nor is it likely that the problems with poor rural life are much different for Africa as for India or China. So, I find it plain silly for TC to imply that the dearth of movement from rural to urban is due to “quality of life” considerations. Ridiculous, should be subject to ridicule.
SOURCE – MARGINAL REVOLUTION UNIVERISITY
Comparing “city” populations probably isn’t the best. It would be better to look at urban population, or if that isn’t possible then metro populations.
Looking at the link for the Philippines, for instance, has 6 of the 10 largest cities in the Metro Manila agglomerate. Or for a US example, Los Angeles is ~3 million people though the urban/metro population is somewhere between 12-18 million depending on definitions.
Regardless, that’s a pretty fascinating distribution of city populations for a country with 100+ million people.