This statistic shows the biggest cities in Rwanda in 2022. In 2022, approximately **** million people lived in Kigali, making it the biggest city in Rwanda.

Accessibility to major cities dataset is modelled as raster-based travel time/cost analysis, computed for the largest cities (>100k habitants) in the country. This 500m resolution raster dataset is part of FAO’s Hand-in-Hand Initiative, Geographical Information Systems - Multicriteria Decision Analysis (GIS-MCDA) aimed at the identification of value chain infrastructure sites (or optimal location).

Population in largest city in Rwanda was reported at 1287952 in 2024, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Rwanda - Population in largest city - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

This layer features the locations of the major cities of Africa. It is a filtered view of the World Cities layer, with just the cities intersecting with the continent of Africa.The popup for the layer includes a dynamic link to Wikipedia, using an Arcade expression.

This map features the locations of the major cities of Africa, displayed at multiple scale levels. The layers are a filtered view of the World Cities layer, with just the cities intersecting with the continent of Africa.The popup for the layer includes a dynamic link to Wikipedia, using an Arcade expression.

The raster dataset consists of a 500 m score grid for vegetables storage location, produced under the scope of FAO’s Hand-in-Hand Initiative, Geographical Information Systems - Multicriteria Decision Analysis for value chain infrastructure location. The location score is achieved by processing sub-model outputs that characterize logistical factors for selected crop warehouse locations: • Supply: Crop. • Demand: Human population density, Major cities population (national and bordering countries). • Infrastructure/accessibility: main transportation infrastructure. It consists of an arithmetic weighted sum of normalized grids (0 to 100): ("Crop Production" * 0.4) + ("Human Population Density" * 0.2) + (“Major Cities Accessibility” * 0.1) + (“Regional Cities Accessibility” * 0.2) + (”Asset Wealth” * 0.1)

In 2023, Gabon had the highest urbanization rate in Africa, with over 90 percent of the population living in urban areas. Libya and Djibouti followed at around 82 percent and 79 percent, respectively. On the other hand, many countries on the continent had the majority of the population residing in rural areas. As of 2023, urbanization in Malawi, Rwanda, Niger, and Burundi was below 20 percent. A growing urban population On average, the African urbanization rate stood at approximately 45 percent in 2023. The number of people living in urban areas has been growing steadily since 2000 and is forecast to increase further in the coming years. The urbanization process is being particularly rapid in Burundi, Uganda, Niger, and Tanzania. In these countries, the urban population grew by over 4.2 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year. The most populous cities in Africa Africa’s largest city is Lagos in Nigeria, counting around nine million people. It is followed by Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Cairo in Egypt, each with over seven million inhabitants. Moreover, other cities on the continent are growing rapidly. The population of Bujumbura in Burundi will increase by 123 percent between 2020 and 2035, registering the highest growth rate on the continent. Other fast-growing cities are Zinder in Niger, Kampala in Uganda, and Kabinda in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

PhD Research: Urban growth is a factor known to intensify local flooding. By orienting urban development, land use planning may contribute to reduce flood risk through regulatory constraints. Two case studies were developed to determine the extent to which such strategy may be effective: Kigali, Rwanda (where land use regulations are stringently applied) and Kampala, Uganda (with much less effective institutions but important infrastructure investments over the last decade). Both cities are mid-sized (one to two million inhabitants), they share a physical context of hilly terrain and low-lying flood prone valleys but with divergent policy and institutional organizations.

Two main hypotheses were investigated based on the case studies. The relations between the physical system, through recurrent flooding, and the human settlement pattern were first explored. Urban growth is one cause of increased flooding but, in turn, flooding was thought to contribute to the urban pattern's evolution. Secondly, and based on this premise, a land use management system (with regulation a prominent component) was proposed as a flood risk mitigation strategy: these questions hinged around the feasibility of land use controls in the specific context of the cases (mid-to-large cities in Sub-Saharan Africa) and of their cumulative impact over the long run.

Spatially explicit prospective simulations of urban growth, up to the year 2030, were developed for both Kampala and Kigali to understand the impacts of flooding and land use regulations; additionally, a set of scenarios for Kampala was specified to explore the potential feedback effect between exposure to recurrent flooding and urban development patterns. The main lessons derived from these simulations were: in Kampala, which has until the present expanded without strong land use controls, the implementation stringent land use regulations (envisioned already in their strategic plans) would likely result in a more compact growth; however, in Kigali, the land use plan may have the unintended consequence of promoting sprawling patterns. Kigali was revealed to be a smaller urban system than Kampala, with the transitory benefit of not being yet impacted by recurrent flooding due to the scale of processes configuring urban growth. As for Kampala, (1) while land use planning may reduce exposure to flooding, it is unlikely to impact runoff generation and (2) explicitly incorporating feedback between flooding and urban growth makes visible a difference introduced by land use planning: under trend (unplanned) expansion, exposure to flooding is unlikely to constrain urban growth; however, under the double restriction of recurrent flooding and land use controls, much less new development is exposed to flooding.

The scenarios were carried out using a cellular automata of urban growth, specifically designed to be integrated with the flood model (implemented in OpenLISEM). Important characteristics of the model included: a continuous response variable, in the form of a land cover fraction value (built-up fraction for urban development but also vegetation, bare soil, and water fractions to complete the description of the landscape), a suitability based allocation procedure to mimic urban agents' locational preference, and the potential to explicitly account for several supply scenarios (which was especially important when considering the relation between population growth and densification in the scenarios). The suitability index was defined by a neighborhood effect, accounting for the immediate context of each potential development location, as well as ancillary variables representing accessibility, physical characteristics (slope and wetlands location), and informal settlements location.

The cellular automata model was developed using the Upper Lubigi sub-catchment of Kampala. The model was then expanded, calibrated, and validated for the metropolitan areas of Kampala and Kigali. Calibration was based on the application of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm to determine the relative importance of each factor in the suitability index and using the land cover maps to simulate potential supply. Simulations using 2000 (for Kigali) and 2001 (for Kampala) as baseline years were generated for a 15 year period; for each simulated time step, landscape metrics were calculated. An intermediate year for which independent land cover maps were available (2009 for Kigali, 2010 for Kampala) was used for validation. The calibration approach proved useful in producing patterns that better replicate the evolution of urban growth patterns, relative to random parameters and data. However, some degree of equifinality was discovered in the model, since the uncertainty introduced by parameters was found to be less important than the amount of information (relevant spatial determinants) when validating the model.

The scenario assumptions on the presence of a feedback (for Kampala)...

UNOSAT code FL20230504RWA, GDACS Id: 1101977 This map illustrates satellite-detected surface waters in Kigali City, Southern, Northern, Western, and Eastern Provinces, Rwanda as observed from a Sentinel-1 image acquired on 5 May 2023 at 05:45 local time. Within the analyzed area of about 6,000 km², about 54 km² of land appear to be flooded. Water extent appears to have increased by about 34km² since 3 May 2023. Based on Worldpop population data and the detected surface waters in the analyzed area, about 34,600 people are potentially exposed or living close flooded areas mainly along the Nyabarongo river, the potentially exposed population is mainly located in Southern Province with ~11,000 people, and Eastern Province with ~6,000 people
This is a preliminary analysis and has not yet been validated in the field. Please send ground feedback to United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT).
Important note: Flood analysis from radar images may underestimate the presence of standing waters in built-up areas and densely vegetated areas due to the backscattering properties of the radar signal.

Mauritius had the highest population density level in Africa as of 2023, with nearly *** inhabitants per square kilometer. The country has also one of the smallest territories on the continent, which contributes to the high density. As a matter of fact, the majority of African countries with the largest concentration of people per square kilometer have the smallest geographical area as well. The exception is Nigeria, which ranks among the largest territorial countries in Africa and is very densely populated at the same time. After all, Nigeria has also the largest population on the continent.