Human Settlements

Human settlements (circa 2000)

Despite the central importance of rural households as targets for investment in more productive farming, information on the size and location of larger human settlements is also important for a number of reasons. First, large towns in rural areas often serve as key market locations (import or export) and service providers for the rural sector. Large and often rapidly growing urban conurbations generally represent major food marketing opportunities. The maps below show the distribution of centres of population of greater than 20,000, 50,000, 100,000, 250,000 and 500,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa.

The distribution and size of human settlements is, in itself, a good starting point for assessing the likely levels of access to product and input markets and and to a range of rural sector services. Human settlement maps are therefore important inputs to the generation of market access maps.