Taming Urban Sprawl? Infrastructure’s conditional impact on urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa

Urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is accelerating rapidly but remains spatially uneven and often disconnected from infrastructure provision, public services, and labor market opportunities. This study examines whether and under what conditions infrastructure development is associated with urbanization patterns across 42 SSA countries over 2005–2023. We use a multidimensional Infrastructure Development Index covering transport, electricity, ICT, and water and sanitation. The findings indicate that higher levels of infrastructure development are associated with slower urban growth, suggesting that improved rural and peri-urban conditions may ease migration pressures toward major cities. However, this association varies across country contexts. In economies with stronger labor market absorption or higher educational attainment, the negative association becomes weaker, implying that employment opportunities and human capital shape how infrastructure relates to urbanization dynamics. Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that the strength of this relationship differs across the urbanization distribution, with more pronounced associations among both low-urbanizing and highly urbanized countries. Overall, the results suggest that infrastructure alone does not uniformly shape urban growth. Complementary investments in education and employment are essential for promoting balanced and sustainable urban transitions in SSA.