Hello. First video of our first week of the course, the first video in a long series that will bring us, during twelve weeks, to explore African cities. We begin the course, this week, with Mali. Welcome to the participants of Bamako. To begin, first off, some figures on the urban population of the world. Today, in the world, we have more than 50% of people that are urban dwellers. But, pay particular attention, it's a statistic reality that is not the same on all continents. And particularly, the African continent is one of the least urbanized continents since the figures for 2011 give us less than 40% of people in Africa who are urban dwellers. We must keep going down since, if we look by large African regions we see that we have notable differences between East Africa which is urbanized at 23.7% and North Africa which is at more than 50%. So, there also, we have enormous disparities and if we take examples of countries we come across Ethiopia, 17%, while the Ivory Coast is at more than 50, like all the countries of North Africa. So we see that, behind this figure of 50% we have realities that are extremely different and differentiated. Before we jump in, week after week, in the detailed content of the course, we are going to show major challenges of urbanization in Africa. We will try to give some answers. We will address the issue of population increase. We will address the question of economic development, urbanization versus development. We will address, of course, the issue of climate change. We will also address the question of urban periphery. And finally, we will address the question of generalized mobility. So we have, at the same time, an urgency since the number of people is increasing extremely rapidly, so we must confront this development, this evolution of the population, and then, at the same time, another challenge is that we find ourselves in the situation of an urbanization without necessarily an economic development. We know that the model of European cities, particularly, whether in the secondary or tertiary, we know that the development of the urbanization happened with an economic development. We find ourselves, in a number of African cities, there are of course exceptions, all the cities are not the same, but we have figures where we can find an urbanization without any economic development. The next challenge, the question of climate change. Very in fashion, certainly, but it means that at the environmental level, at the climate level, we have major changes that are expected and so, the cities will have to either confront these changes or not. But it's a new challenge, and it's without a doubt one of the most important challenges today for the African city. A little quiz before we continue. How many more people will live in African cities in the next 20 years? Answer one, answer two, answer three. Answer one, 250 million more urban dwellers. Answer two, 150 million. And answer three, 400 million. Well done, the answer is 250 million. Indeed, there are now approximately, in 2011, 610 million urban dwellers, in 2035 there will be 250 million more, approximately 860 million urban dwellers in all of Africa. Why this question? This means that the challenge of urban peripheries will be great since these extra 250 million city dwellers, in the next couple of years, will not all live in the city center, will not all increase the density in the city but they will continue to make the city less dense, will continue to spread out more and more in the peripheries. And so the challenge is great. Finally, the last challenge which we must confront, will be the issue of generalized mobility. Actually, increasingly, people are mobile, people move and that poses a certain number of questions, we are not going to say problems but rather questions about the way in which we are going to plan the city in the years to come. There you have it, we are wrapping up our short introduction by a view of Brazzaville. I leave you to get familiar with the program in the next 12 weeks on the Coursera website. And as for me, I'll see you in next video.
