Beyond the concrete jungle: urban growth and natural disasters resilience in Africa

Louis de Berquin Eyike Mbongo (), Alexandre Turpin Iroume a Bouebe () and François Colin Bouhem ()
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Louis de Berquin Eyike Mbongo: University of Dschang
Alexandre Turpin Iroume a Bouebe: University of Douala
François Colin Bouhem: University of Douala

Economics Bulletin, 2025, vol. 45, issue 3, 1142 - 1150

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to empirically analyze the effect of rapid urbanization in Africa on the magnitude of natural disasters. In particular, we study two dimensions of disasters, namely droughts and floods, and capture their magnitude through two variables: total number of people affected and the total number of death. To test this hypothesis, we collected data on 40 African countries over the period 1980-2020 and estimated two models using OLS, Fixed-Effects Poisson estimator and quantile regression. The results suggest that urbanization strongly increases the number of people affected by natural disasters and thus increases their mortality in the African context. Also, the results also indicate the role of economic growth and corruption to tackle the negative impact of natural disasters in Africa. These results underline the urgent need to rethink urbanization policies in Africa to take better account of the risk of natural disasters.

Keywords: Natural disasters; Urbanization; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O1 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09-30
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