Population et inclusivité

Projections made in 2024 indicated that global population growth would reach 0.85% in 2025. Since the late 1980s, the pace of population growth has gradually slowed. This slowdown became particularly pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Although there was a brief rebound after the pandemic, global population growth has since resumed its downward trend. Over the next quarter-century, the rate of population growth is projected to halve.

Over the past 25 years, the world population has increased by 2.1 billion people. Almost all of this growth has occurred in developing economies, mainly in Asia and Oceania (1.1 billion) and Africa (0.7 billion). In 2025, five out of every six people worldwide lived in a developing economy.

Within a decade, the population of developed economies is projected to start declining, while the population of the rest of the world will continue to increase. By 2050, the proportion of people living in what are today classified as developing economies is expected to be six in seven. Most of this population growth is projected to occur in Africa. Africa’s share of the global population is projected to increase from 19% to 26% by 2050. 

All over the world, a growing proportion of the population lives in urban areas. In 2025, 80.4% of the world’s population was estimated to live in cities or towns. Africa’s urban population share is lower than in other regions, but it is also there that it has grown fastest in recent years. In the decade preceding 2025, the urban population share increased by almost 3 percentage points in Africa. 

According to the new and more internationally comparable metrics produced by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and published on UNCTADstat, the world appears more urbanised than previously estimated based on national definitions. The data suggest in particular that Africa and Asia are more urbanised than previously estimated and have levels of urbanisation closer to those of other regions.