Economy · Urban population · Gabon
Gabon’s urban population rose to 92.1% of population in 2025.
92.1% of population
2025
Up 0.22 pp from 2024.
Updated 8 Oct 2026
In plain words
92.1% of population
What it is. Urban population is the share of all residents who live in places their national statistics office classes as urban. Each country sets its own threshold, usually based on settlement size, density or administrative status, and applies it to census counts and later estimates. The measure says where people live. It says nothing about the size of cities, the quality of housing or services, or whether urban residents have formal work.
Neither way is good in itself. A higher share can mean easier access to jobs, schools and clinics, and it can also mean crowded housing and strained water and transport networks. A lower share can mean livelihoods based on farming or forestry, or slow growth in towns. The latest figure is 92.1% of population in 2025, up from 91.9% a year earlier, a rise of 0.22 percentage points. Since 2016 the share has ranged from 88.5% of population in 2016 to 92.1% of population in 2025, so the current reading is the highest in that span.
Why it matters. With the great majority of Gabon's people living in urban areas, demand for housing, electricity, water, transport and jobs is concentrated in towns. Public spending on city infrastructure reaches most households, while the small rural population is spread across wide areas where services cost more per person to deliver. The share is already high and rising slowly, so further gains will add little to the urban population compared with ordinary population growth in the cities.
| Period | Urban population · Gabon |
|---|---|
| 2016 | 88.5% of population |
| 2017 | 89% of population |
| 2018 | 89.5% of population |
| 2019 | 89.9% of population |
| 2020 | 90.3% of population |
| 2021 | 90.8% of population |
| 2022 | 91.2% of population |
| 2023 | 91.6% of population |
| 2024 | 91.9% of population |
| 2025 | 92.1% of population |
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0) · Licence: CC BY 4.0
How to read this number
- Source
- Who published the figure
- Published
- When they released it
- Verified
- When we last checked it against the source
Every change is logged in Corrections. How the figure is made: Methodology.
Cite this number
Show text
Strata-AF™ Data, Urban population, Gabon, 2025; source World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0), retrieved 8 Oct 2026; https://data.strata-af.com/economy/urban-population/gabon
Data insights · Worked out from the published figures
What this means
Working this out from the published figures…
How this affects you today
Loading the calculator…
Strata AI commentary is coming — reviewed, dated, and generated only from the figures on this page.
Methodology
Share of the population living in urban areas. Unit: % of population.
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (series SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS), retrieved through the World Bank API and published under CC BY 4.0. Updated annually; the World Bank's own source notes apply.