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South Africa
Urban population

Urban population refers to people living in urban areas as defined by national statistical offices. It is calculated using World Bank population estimates and urban ratios from the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects. Aggregation of urban and rural population may not add up to total population because of different country coverages.

Global rank#24out of 217 countries
Go to rankingOpenglobal ranking and map

Historical trend

41 M33 M24 M16 M7.7 M196019932025South Africa · 2025: 41.32MSouth Africa

Analytical takeaways

  • South Africa records 41.32M for Urban population in 2025, ranking #24 globally out of 217 countries.
  • Urban population increased from 7.68M in 1960 to 41.32M in 2025, a gain of 33.64M.
  • The country sits in the top quartile of the global distribution for this metric, making the page useful for leader-oriented high-intent searches.

Comparison

Use the comparison tool or canonical pair-vs-pair pages to compare this country on the same indicator.