African Capitals With the Fastest Growing Population

African capitals are growing at very different rates. Some already have several million residents and continue to expand, while others are much smaller but record faster percentage growth. The latest comparable city series from the United Nations changes the ranking substantially from older capital-city datasets.

If total population is the measure, cities such as Cairo, Luanda, and Kinshasa dominate. A ranking by annual population growth produces a different order. Abuja, N’Djaména, Lusaka, Luanda, Bamako, and Dodoma are among the current capitals with the highest recent rates in the UN World Urbanization Prospects 2025 city series.

This article uses the UN’s 2025 capital-city identification together with its annual DEGURBA city population series. The population figures refer to harmonized urban-city areas rather than municipal or metropolitan administrative boundaries, so they should not be mixed directly with census figures using different geographic limits.

Fastest-Growing African Capitals in the WUP 2025 Series

The table uses mid-2025 city population estimates and the change from 2024 to 2025 in the same World Urbanization Prospects 2025 series. It covers current African capitals that can be matched directly to the UN series for cities with at least 50,000 inhabitants.

Population boundary: WUP 2025 uses the Degree of Urbanization (DEGURBA) method, which identifies contiguous high-density urban areas using a standardized spatial definition. These figures are therefore not necessarily the same as city-proper, municipality, province, federal district, or metropolitan-area populations.

Why the Ranking Changed

Earlier versions of this comparison used a UN capital-city dataset with growth rates linked to a 2015 reference point and population figures from 2018. That produced rates such as 6.01% for Kampala and 5.61% for Bujumbura and Malabo.

The World Urbanization Prospects 2025 Revision supplies annual city estimates from 1975 through 2050 under a standardized geographic method. Using the latest comparable 2024–2025 interval removes the mismatch between an older growth-rate reference and a later population year.

It also changes which cities belong in a current-capital ranking. Gitega, not Bujumbura, is Burundi’s political capital. Equatorial Guinea now requires a separate treatment because its capital changed after the UN’s mid-2025 reference date.

What the Updated Ranking Shows

Abuja

Abuja has the highest 2024–2025 rate in this capital comparison at 3.41%. Its standardized WUP 2025 city population is about 1.37 million.

That figure may look lower than estimates for the wider Abuja metropolitan region or Federal Capital Territory. The difference comes from geographic boundaries. The UN DEGURBA city estimate follows a contiguous high-density urban footprint and should not be read as the population of the entire FCT.

N’Djaména and Lusaka

N’Djaména records 3.09% growth and a 2025 city population of about 1.93 million. Lusaka follows at 3.07% with about 3.51 million residents under the same standardized city method.

The similar rates hide a large difference in population base. A little over 3% growth in Lusaka represents a larger numerical increase than the same rate would produce in a city below two million.

Luanda

Luanda stands out because it combines a high rate with a very large population. The WUP 2025 series places the city at about 11.37 million residents with 2.89% growth over 2024.

At that scale, even a rate below 3% translates into hundreds of thousands of additional residents over a year. This is why ranking only by percentage can hide the scale of urban change in very large capitals.

Bamako and Dodoma

Bamako and Dodoma both show growth of about 2.88%, yet their population sizes are very different. Bamako has roughly 4.24 million residents in the WUP city definition, compared with about 269,000 for Dodoma.

Dodoma remains Tanzania’s official capital, while Dar es Salaam is the country’s much larger commercial center. Dar es Salaam should therefore not replace Dodoma in a ranking specifically limited to national capitals.

Kampala

Kampala remains one of Africa’s faster-growing large capitals, but its updated figure is no longer the 6.01% rate shown in the older dataset. The 2024–2025 WUP 2025 city series gives Kampala a population of about 4.88 million and growth of 2.73%.

The lower percentage does not mean Kampala stopped expanding rapidly. It reflects a newer reference period and a different UN city-definition system, so the old and new rates should not be presented as measurements from the same series.

Juba, Yaoundé, Lilongwe, Nouakchott, and Mogadishu

These capitals form a fairly close group, with recent growth between 2.58% and 2.69%. Their population bases range from about 391,000 in Juba to more than 5.1 million in Yaoundé.

Mogadishu is also large under the standardized city boundary, at about 4.40 million residents. Nouakchott reaches about 1.56 million, while Lilongwe remains below one million in the WUP 2025 city estimate.

Addis Ababa

Addis Ababa records a lower percentage rate than the capitals above it, but its population base is much larger. The UN series places the Ethiopian capital at about 6.71 million residents in 2025 with 2.44% growth over the previous year.

This is another case where population size changes the meaning of the rate. A 2.44% increase applied to a city above six million can add more residents than a higher percentage in a much smaller capital.

Gitega

Gitega is the current political capital of Burundi and belongs in a present-day capital ranking. Its standardized WUP 2025 city population is about 198,000, with growth of approximately 2.35% over 2024.

Bujumbura remains Burundi’s largest city and main economic center, but using it as the current national capital would preserve an outdated classification.

Growth Rate and Population Gain Measure Different Things

A percentage ranking does not show which capital added the largest number of residents. Luanda illustrates the difference clearly. Its rate of 2.89% is below Abuja’s 3.41%, yet Luanda’s population base is more than eight times larger.

The same pattern appears elsewhere. Addis Ababa, Yaoundé, Kampala, Bamako, Mogadishu, and Lusaka can add large numbers of residents even when their percentage rates sit below the top of the table.

Cairo provides an even stronger size example. WUP 2025 places its standardized city population at about 25.57 million, while its 2024–2025 growth rate is much lower than the leaders. Kinshasa is estimated at about 10.94 million. Neither needs to rank first by percentage to experience a large numerical population change.

Equatorial Guinea: Why Malabo Is No Longer Ranked as the Current Capital

The World Urbanization Prospects 2025 capital-city table has a mid-2025 reference date. At that point, Malabo was still the capital of Equatorial Guinea, so its appearance as a capital in that dataset is historically correct for the data year.

That status changed on 2 January 2026. Decree-Law No. 1/2026 declared Ciudad de la Paz, in Djibloho Province, the capital of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea. The decree also provided for state institutions and government services to move to the new capital.

Capital Status and City Definitions Matter

• Burundi: Gitega is the political capital. Bujumbura remains the country’s largest city and principal economic center.
• Equatorial Guinea: Ciudad de la Paz became the capital on 2 January 2026. Malabo belongs only in explanations of the mid-2025 dataset or earlier periods.
• Tanzania: Dodoma is the official capital. Dar es Salaam remains the larger commercial and urban center.
• Côte d’Ivoire: Yamoussoukro is the official capital, while Abidjan remains the country’s largest city and main economic center.
• South Africa: Pretoria serves as the administrative capital, Cape Town as the legislative capital, while the country’s judicial institutions are distributed rather than fitting a simple single-capital model.

These distinctions affect rankings because a list of the largest African cities is not the same dataset as a list limited to current national capitals.

Why WUP 2025 Population Figures Can Differ From Other Sources

World Urbanization Prospects 2025 introduced a globally standardized city definition based on the Degree of Urbanization. A city is identified as a contiguous area meeting population-density and total-population thresholds rather than simply following a municipal boundary.

This creates some large differences from administrative statistics. A municipal government may cover only part of the continuous urban area, while a province, district, or metropolitan region may extend far beyond it. Neither number is automatically wrong; they describe different geographic units.

For that reason, the population column in this ranking should be read specifically as the WUP 2025 DEGURBA city population at mid-year 2025. It should not be relabeled as city proper, municipality, metropolitan area, or capital district unless those boundaries happen to match.

Data Notes

• The capital reference comes from the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects 2025 capital-city dataset, with later capital changes applied where necessary.
• The population figures are mid-2025 estimates from the WUP 2025 DEGURBA city series.
• The growth column shows the change between the 2024 and 2025 annual city estimates in the same series.
• WUP 2025 also publishes annual city growth-rate data for 1975–2050 in File 23.
• The DEGURBA definition identifies cities through population density, population size, and spatial contiguity rather than national administrative boundaries.
• The city growth rate is not the same as a country’s population growth rate or national urbanization rate.
• Very small capitals without a matching city record in the UN series for cities of 50,000 inhabitants or more cannot be ranked on the same city-growth measure without introducing another dataset.
• Malabo is retained only as a historical mid-2025 capital reference. Ciudad de la Paz has been Equatorial Guinea’s capital since 2 January 2026.