Social and environmental challenges

Northern Africa’s high rates of urbanization date to the 1930s, but accelerated from the 1950s onwards. Development policies adopted in the 1960s led to an exodus from neglected agricultural communities and a flow of manual labour to newly established urban industry. However, since the late 1970s the broader economic policies that informed regional, national and urban development growth strategies were heavily influenced by preconditions for funding support from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Although the resulting market-oriented economic reforms led to high rates of GDP growth across much of the sub-region they also caused higher socioeconomic inequality and marginalization, further entrenching and exacerbating existing structural inequalities, especially in the sub-region’s cities. 29