Rural–Urban Migration in West Africa: Towards a Reversal? Migration Trends and Economic Situation in Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire

摘要

Although Africa is still the continent with the nhighest urban growth in the world, this paper nshows that, in some African countries, rural noutmigration is tending now to decrease, or at nleast to stagnate, while urban outmigration is non the rise. These trends are so sharp in Côte nd’Ivoire that the country is experiencing a npattern of counterurbanisation (i.e. the level of nurbanisation is decreasing). Results are based non a proposed method to build a history of nmigration using retrospective data from nnational migration surveys. A review of nliterature is also provided on the potential nexplanations of the observed trends. nCopyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.