Thread by @washingtonpost

Growing at unprecedented rates, and shaped by forces both familiar and new, dozens of African cities will join the ranks of humanity’s biggest megalopolises between now and 2100. wapo.st/3qMEwKV

Several recent studies project that by the end of this century, Africa will be the only continent experiencing population growth.

Thirteen of the world’s 20 biggest urban areas will be in Africa, as will more than a third of the world’s population. wapo.st/3qMEwKV

In each of the following African cities, we examine common themes — migration, inequality, foreign investment, conflict and planning — that underlie this transformation across the continent. wapo.st/3qMEwKV

Set to become the world’s most populous city, Lagos faces all the challenges rapid growth poses, which can be boiled down to one: planning. wapo.st/3qMEwKV

For half a century now, displacement by catastrophe has been the main driver of growth in Khartoum, Sudan.

Greater Khartoum’s population has octupled while a succession of wars, famines, droughts and floods have ravaged Sudan’s countryside. wapo.st/3qMEwKV

Like many port cities, Kenya's Mombasa is infused with distant cultures.

Port cities like this one are layered with evidence of how budding empires, in the Arab world, Europe and now China, sought to remake them. wapo.st/3qMEwKV

Poverty is a symptom of systems that entrench inequality.

In Kinshasa, Congo’s capital city and home to at least 15 million people, those systems — erected by departing colonizers — are still firmly in place. wapo.st/3qMEwKV

Ivory Coast’s biggest city, Abidjan, is a cosmopolitan patchwork of neighborhoods where flavors, languages and histories overlap.

As Africa’s population grows, Abidjan and other cities across the continent will reap the dividends of that growth. wapo.st/3qMEwKV