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In most of Africa those residential groups are based on descent groups known as clans and lineages, the latter being segments of the former. The significance given to descent groups varies, but they are important in providing for heirs, successors, and marital partners.

In the second half of the 20th century that pattern began to change—rapidly in the urban and poverty-stricken areas, more slowly in those areas less affected by economic and political development. In cities and in major labour-supplying areas, such as most of Southern Africa, the joint or extended family gave way to the independent nuclear family of husband, wife, and children. There is also a tendency toward the breakdown of family structure because of labour migration—the younger men moving to the cities, leaving women, older men, and children in the impoverished homelands. John F.M. Middleton John Innes Clarke The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Demographic patterns

Africa has the most rapidly expanding population of any region in the world, even though the continent’s birth and death rates are also the world’s highest. There was some decline in overall death rates in the latter half of the 20th century, but infant and child mortality rates remained high, and average life expectancy at birth actually declined somewhat during the 1990s. On average, Africa’s population is increasing at about 3 percent per annum, and that growth rate is associated with an increasingly youthful population: in nearly every African country more than two-fifths of the population is younger than 15 years of age.

The great majority of the working population is still engaged in subsistence agriculture and in the production of cash crops. In most countries the proportion of the total population dependent on agriculture is at least three-fifths.

The remainder of the working population is divided mainly between a rapidly growing service sector (including civil servants, members of the armed forces, police, teachers, health workers, and those engaged in commerce and communications) and an increasing number of mining and industrial projects; in only a few countries, however, do those latter activities employ more than one-tenth of the workforce. Underemployment, particularly in the agricultural sector, is widespread, and unemployment has risen, especially in urban areas.

Participation in labour by women varies considerably from country to country. There are generally fewer women in paid employment than men, though a large proportion of women in sub-Saharan countries are engaged in subsistence agriculture—if only part of the time. Women are also employed in the civil service, trading (especially in western Africa), domestic service, and to an increasing extent in light industry. Population distribution

Africa has more than one-eighth of the total population of the world, distributed over a land area representing slightly more than one-fifth of the land surface. Such desert areas as the Sahara, Kalahari, and Namib, however, have reduced the amount of habitable land, and such factors as climate, vegetation, and disease have tended to limit the evolution of densely populated areas where agriculture is practiced. With the advent of the colonial era, the African continent was divided into small geographically and politically based units that took little or no account of ethnic distribution. Those political boundaries persisted, and the continent continued to be characterized by a large number of countries with predominantly small populations.

Population density of Africa.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Wide variations in density occur from country to country in Africa and within countries. In general, the most densely populated areas are found bordering the lakes, in the river basins (especially those of the Nile and Niger), along the coastal belts of western and North Africa, and in certain highland areas, while settlement is the most sparse in the desert and savanna areas. Thus, Rwanda and Burundi, situated in the East African highlands, are the most densely populated countries in Africa, while Western Sahara, Mauritania, and Libya in the Sahara and Botswana and Namibia in the Kalahari and Namib are the least densely populated. Settlement patterns

Traditional African patterns of settlement vary with differences in landscape and ecology, communications, and warfare. The most widespread pattern has been that of scattered villages and hamlets—the homesteads of joint and extended families—large enough for defense and domestic cooperation but rarely permanent because of the requirements of shifting cultivation and the use of short-lived building materials. Large mud-adobe villages are traditional in much of the western African savanna, but over most of Africa housing consists of mud and wattle with roofs of thatch or palm leaves.

Mauritania: hutMud-and-thatch hut, Mauritania, West Africa.© Kirsz Marcin/Shutterstock.com

Large towns were not widespread in the continent until the 20th century. Towns dating from precolonial times are found mainly along the Nile valley and the Mediterranean fringe of North Africa—where many date from Classical times (e.g., Alexandria, Egypt) and the late 18th century (e.g., Fès, Morocco)—and also in western Africa, in both forest and savanna zones, where they were the seats of governments of kingdoms. Timbuktu (Mali), Ile-Ife (Nigeria), Benin City (Benin), and Mombasa (Kenya) all date from the 12th century, while the Nigerian city of Kano has prehistoric origins. Two other Nigerian cities, Ibadan and Oyo, became important cities only in the 19th century.

The more-traditional towns differ in form, function, and even population characteristics from the many towns and cities established under colonial rule as administrative, trading, or industrial centres and ports. The latter cities are found throughout Africa and include Johannesburg, Lusaka, Harare, Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, Nairobi, Dakar, Freetown, Abidjan, and many others; often, as in the case of Lagos or Accra, they are built onto traditional towns. Typically the focus of in-migration from an impoverished hinterland, they are ethnically heterogeneous. Many have grown to become the largest cities in their respective countries, dominating their national urban hierarchies in size as well as in function.

Mostly rural for centuries, Africa has rapidly become more urbanized. Although it is still the least urbanized of the continents, Africa has one of the fastest rates of urbanization. Thus, the total population living in towns—which was only about one-seventh in 1950—grew to about one-third by 1990 and about two-fifths in the year 2010. Generally, the level of urbanization is highest in the north and south, and it is higher in the west than in the east and nearer the coasts than in the interior.

The largest cities include Cairo, Alexandria, and Al-Jīzah, Egypt; Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Lagos, Nigeria; Casablanca, Morocco; Johannesburg, South Africa; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and Algiers, Algeria. Many other large cities are seaports along the coasts or central marketing towns, linked by rail or river with a coast. Examples of seaports are Accra, Ghana; Lagos; and Cape Town, South Africa. Examples of large inland cities are Ibadan and Ogbomosho, Nigeria; Nairobi, Kenya; and Addis Ababa.

There have been many movements of population within the African continent, from outside into the continent and from the continent outward. The major movement within the continent in historic times has been that of the Bantu-speaking peoples, who, as a result of a population explosion that is not fully understood, spread over most of the continent south of the Equator.