Abstract :
The current lure of most of the able bodied segment of the population by the bright lights of the city and its promise of a better life has not always been the rule in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the pre-colonial times with the exception of the civilizations of Old Ghana, Mali and Songhai which flourished in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there is very little recorded urban living in Sub-Saharan Africa except with regard to old towns on the East African seaboard. It can threfore be argued that the urbanization in Old Ghana, Mali and Songhai was on account of the contact with the Northern African countries through the gold and salt trade across the Sahara Desert while the urbanization in the towns such as Mombasa, Lamu, Malindi and Zanzibar was on account of the sea trade with the Arabs and the Europeans on their way to India and China.
