World Bank: Pakistan is 88% Urbanized

The World Bank researchers have recently concluded that 88 per cent live in urban areas. Their conclusion is based on satellite imagery and the Degree of Urbanization (DoU) methodology. The official Pakistani figures released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) put the current level of urbanization at 39%. The source of this massive discrepancy is the government's reliance on administrative boundaries rather than population density and settlement patterns, according to the World Bank working research paper titled  "When Does a Village Become a Town?". 

Urbanization in Pakistan. Source: World Bank

Urban areas are characterized by high population density, while rural areas are sparsely populated with more open space. Major differences include urban areas having more commercial development, diverse job opportunities, and a faster pace of life, while rural areas often focus on agriculture and have a slower pace of life with closer-knit communities but may face challenges with limited access to services. 

The World Bank’s Paper suggests that secondary cities and peri-urban areas — rather than megacities — are the primary drivers of recent urban expansion which are systematically overlooked in official Pakistani classifications. This discrepancy between functional and administrative classifications has significant fiscal and planning implications.

Pakistan's official data grossly underestimates urbanization, with Islamabad showing only 47% urban population compared to 90% under the DoU, while figures in Balochistan, Punjab, and Sindh are more closely aligned. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the DoU estimates the urban population at nearly three times the official 15%, while Islamabad is mostly dense urban, and other provinces show mixed suburban and peri-urban growth. The report finds that Pakistan’s urban landscape has transformed dramatically over the past two decades. Since the early 2000s, a growing share of the rural population has left agriculture, transforming previously rural settlements into new and vibrant urban centers. Unlike Afghanistan, India and sub-Saharan Africa, the agriculture sector is no longer the top employer in Pakistan. Services sector is now the top employment sector in the country.

Top Employment Sector in Each Country. Source: Visual Capitalist

The policy research paper finds that misclassified areas reduce property tax revenues and undermine the planning and provision of critical public services. It also distorts spatial socioeconomic indicators, masking the true extent of urban-rural disparities and complicating the design of effective, evidence-based public policy.

Urbanization Comparison of Developing Nations Based on DoU Method

The DoU method facilitates cross-national comparisons, as it provides a consistent criteria. Application of the DoU reveals that, despite variation across urban typologies, the proportion of the population residing in urban areas exceeds 70 percent in all examined countries. The list (fig 2) includes Brazil and Pakistan (98% each). Bangladesh (79%), Egypt (83%), India (77%) and Mexico (82%).

The paper finds that Pakistan is among only a minority of countries that use purely administrative definitions to identify urban areas. Changing how the country determines urban areas to include population density, service access, and other urban characteristics will allow it, as the DoU shows, to account for a varied urban landscape. Recognizing the existence of areas between dense cities and rural villages can help to establish a staggered expansion of the areas subject to property taxes. Updating the urban classification could increase property taxes sevenfold, and new technologies can help modernize cadaster systems. Besides supporting the reclassification of what areas are urban, satellite data offers additional possibilities to identify properties and update the cadasters.

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PEACE Cable: Pakistan's Tenth High Bandwidth Submarine Cable Ready to Go Live

Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) cable, a  96 TBPS (terabits per second), 15,000 km long submarine cable, is now ready for service. This brings to 10 the total number of submarine cables currently connecting or planned to connect Pakistan with the world: TransWorld1, Africa1 (2023), 2Africa (2023), AAE1, PEACE,  SeaMeWe3, SeaMeWe4, SeaMeWe5, SeaMeWe6 (2025) and IMEWE. PEACE cable has two landing stations in Pakistan: Karachi and Gwadar. SeaMeWe stands for Southeast Asia Middle East Western Europe, while IMEWE is India Middle East Western Europe and AAE1 Asia Africa Europe 1. 

PEACE Cable. Source: Cybernet

PEACE is a privately owned submarine cable that originates in Karachi, Pakistan and runs underwater all the way to Marseilles, France via multiple points in the continent of Africa.  It is being built as part of the Digital Silk Road sponsored by China. Cybernet is the local landing and global connectivity partner of PEACE Cable System in Pakistan. It is designed to enable high-speed access to a variety of content, cloud computing, gaming and video streaming platforms.  

Map of Submarine Cable Connections to Karachi, Pakistan. Source: TeleGeography

The PEACE Pakistan-Egypt segment connects Karachi, Pakistan and Zafarana, Egypt, spanning a total length of 5,800 km. The landings of Karachi and Zafarana were completed in March and December 2021 respectively, according to a press release of PEACE Cable International Network Co., Ltd. In addition, the Mediterranean segment of PEACE linking Marseille, France, to Abu Talat, Egypt, a 3,200km long project, has also achieved RFS in March 2022. Therefore, the route from Pakistan to France of the PEACE cable system is now fully constructed and ready for use.

Telecom Services Subscriptions in Pakistan as of June, 2022. Source: PTA

Number of broadband subscribers and demand for data has seen rapid double digit growth in Pakistan over the last several years. Number of broadband subscriptions has grown to 119 million, representing 53.92% of population. Per user data consumption has nearly tripled from 2.1 gigabytes per month in 2017-18 to 6.1 gigabytes per month in 2020-21. As of June 2022, it exceeds 7 GB per subscriber per month. Telecom service providers are responding to it by increasing the capacity of the Internet by laying more and higher bandwidth fiber cables and adding faster speed equipment. Ookla’s data reveals that the median mobile internet connection speed in Pakistan increased by 3.43 Mbps (+26.5%) in the twelve months to the start of 2022.

Per User Data Demand Growth. Source: Pakistan Telecom Authority 

Pakistan Per Subscriber Per Month Data Use

Worldwide Mobile Data Use Per Subscriber Per Month. Source: Statista

Cybernet, the landing partner of PEACE in Pakistan, claims it has built the country’s state-of-the-art, Cable Landing Station in Karachi, which will allow global carriers, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), content providers and virtually all IT-enabled firms to tap into the submarine cable capacity at easily accessible interconnect points across Pakistan. 

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Coup Topples Morsi, Pak Seeks TTP Dialog, MQM's Altaf in Trouble

Egypt and Pakistan have both been in the news in the last few days. Egypt's military generals staged a coup against President Mohammad Morsi while denying it was a coup. Pakistan sought dialog with the TTP even as its citizens continued to suffer heavy casualties in terrorist attacks launched by the Pakistani Taliban and their sectarian allies across the country. Reports from London indicate that the British police have found credible evidence to link MQM chief Altaf Husain with money laundering and Imran Farooq's murder.

Here's a summary of this week's Viewpoint From Overseas discussion:

1. Military Coup in Egypt:

Egypt's first democratically elected president Dr. Mohammad Morsi was forced out by the Egyptian military in a coup. The military said it was responding to the wishes of the protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo.

The protesters who demanded the removal of Dr. Mohammad Morsi are people who did not vote for him in the first place. These are people who say "My way or highway" and don't understand the democratic process. They agree on very little other than the removal of a man they did not want to be the president. The generals saw this as an opportunity to grab power after barely a year of free and fair election won by Morsi , and sought to restore the privileged position of the military.

I fear a violent reaction from the Brotherhood and its allies to this coup which has been welcomed by retrograde Arab dictators ranging from Syria's Assad to Saudi King Abdullah and the Qatari rulers.

2.  Dialog with Pakistani Taliban:

Pakistan's political leaders signaled their weakness yet again by continuing their pleas for dialog with the TTP and its sectarian allies in response to more horrific attacks on many more civilian and state targets across the country.

The question one needs to ponder is what will Pakistani leadership talk with the TTP about? And what is it ready to concede in return for peace?

The TTP have repeatedly made it clear that they want the implementation of their version of Shariah which rejects Pakistan's democracy, constitution and its various state institutions, including the parliament and the judiciary.

Do Pakistani leaders want a repeat of what happened in Swat after ANP signed a peace deal with the TTP in 2009?

Do they remember that the Taliban unleashed their reign of terror on the people of Swat in the name of "Nizam-e-Adl"? Are they willing to accept it across the country?

The second major demand of the Taliban is for Pakistan to cut ties with the United States.

Pakistan is in the middle of another IMF bailout right now.  Would the IMF, dominated by the US and its allies, bail Pakistan out now or in the future if it accepted the TTP demand to cut ties with the West?

In fact, the US and its allies are Pakistan's biggest trading partners. How long can Pakistan, or any other country, survive by cutting ties with the US? Do the anti-American demagogues in Pakistan know what is happening to Iran, a country with a lot more resources than Pakistan, under US-sponsored sanctions? Do they know that Iran and Syria are among the world's fastest shrinking economies?

Is it better to first use overwhelming military force against the TTP to weaken them to make them see reason before starting a dialog?

Back in 2009, Pew Poll indicated that 53% of Pakistanis supported military action against the Taliban in Swat.

Support for the use of the Army against the Taliban is 35%, up from 32% last year, while 29% oppose it. down from 35% in 2012. Can the support for decisive military action against the TTP be increased by Pakistani political leadership?

What needs to be done to increase support to use decisive military force against the Taliban?

3. Altaf Husain in Trouble:

There are unconfirmed reports that the British Police have found credible evidence of MQM chief Altaf Husain's involvement in murder and money laundering after several days of searches, seizures and interrogations in Dr. Imran Farooq murder case in London and elsewhere.

Would the British government actually go all the way and charge Altaf Husain? Or would it just use the threat of such charges to influence MQM's behavior in Pakistani politics to protect British interests in Pakistan, particularly in the important port city of Karachi? Can Altaf Husain continue to lead the MQM if he is formally charged ad prosecuted?

Here's a video discussion on the above topics:



Egypt's Morsi Ousted by Military; Hazara Carnage; Dialog with Taliban; MQM Boss Altaf Husain's Troubles from WBT TV on Vimeo.

Here's a BBC2 documentary about British investigations into possible murder and money laundering charges against MQM Chief Altaf Hussain:


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Stop and Smell the Roses in Pakistan

By Mona Eltahawy

NEW YORK -- As an Egyptian whose country’s military dictators are either taken by God or an assassin’s bullet, I envy the Pakistani people their ability to now use the term “former president.”

As former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf contemplates how his friends in the U.S. administration dropped him quicker than you can say “hot freedom fries,” for those of us from the Muslim world -- awash in military dictators who have friends in high places in Washington -- his exit from Pakistan’s frenetic political stage is miraculous.

The naysayers will remind us of all the “ifs” and “buts” that remain for Pakistan. For starters, Musharraf’s two main rivals, who engineered the threatened impeachment elbowing him towards resignation -- Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari -- are nowhere near perfect leaders, especially since the only factor uniting them is now contemplating the real estate of exile sites in Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Sharif -- the former prime minister swept aside by Musharraf’s bloodless 1999 coup -- was himself in exile until last year when he returned home vowing political revenge. He wants to try Musharraf for treason. Meanwhile, Zardari, the widow of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has taken a more conciliatory line.

They might disagree on Musharraf’s future, but what they do have in common is ignominious histories of corruption -- a reminder that dictators like Musharraf are experts at stifling the life out of their country’s politics, and leaving poor alternatives to their rules by coup d’état.

We will be reminded that the Taliban and al-Qaeda and all those other scary figures Musharraf dutifully fought as part of his card-carrying membership in the ‘war on terror’ are now celebrating in every cave that straddles Pakistan’s troubled border with Afghanistan.

Last year, militant friends of the newly insurgent Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies slaughtered hundreds of Pakistanis in waves of suicide bombings across the country. But much like his fellow Muslim dictators befriended by Washington, Musharraf just perfected his technique of using them as Islamist boogeymen.

My country’s President Hosni Mubarak points to the Muslim Brotherhood. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas points to Hamas. But neither can beat having Osama bin Laden allegedly hiding somewhere in his country!

Although he presented himself as a secular leader, Musharraf gave free rein to those same Islamists that he was warning the West about, because they were a foil to Pakistan’s vibrant liberal community.

It’s unclear who will become Pakistan’s next president but there’s no doubt that the ruling coalition’s challenges are many, now that Musharraf is out of the picture: fighting inflation, reducing the gap between rich and poor, and continuing to fight militancy in the nuclear-armed country. For Pakistan, politics has been a rollercoaster ride since its birth in 1947, as a partition from India.

But let’s stop for a moment and appreciate what has just happened in Pakistan: The Constitution and the justice system of a Muslim country were about to impeach a sitting president who was once head of the armed forces. Rather than face such accountability, that president resigned.

To further put Pakistan’s achievement in context consider that had he insisted on fighting impeachment, Musharraf faced charges of violating the constitution and gross misconduct. Why?

Because he imposed six weeks of emergency rule and fired dozens of judges last November, when the Supreme Court met to decide his eligibility to stand for re-election for a third term as president while still army chief.

Egypt has lived under emergency rule for each and every one of Mubarak’s four terms in power straddling 26 years. In 2006, his regime showed a similar allergy to an independent judiciary. Mubarak’s regime disciplined two senior judges and arrested and beat dozens of their supporters when the judges had the temerity to press for an inquiry into electoral fraud during the 2005 parliamentary elections which Mubarak’s party swept. The elections were marred by violence, several deaths, and plenty of intimidation.

Just like Musharraf, Mubarak recognized the dangers of an independent judiciary -- which in many Muslim countries constitutes the most potent secular opposition. But don’t hold your breath for Mubarak’s impeachment any time soon.

“Let’s hope we can learn from this in Egypt,” my dad told me as we discussed Musharraf’s resignation. “It will tell our dictators ‘you are not more powerful than the people’.”

It will also signal to our various dictators that no matter how tight you are with Washington, no matter how well you have managed to persuade your American friends that you’re the only thing that stands between them and Islamist lunatics, they will look away when your people have had it with you.

For years Pakistan has been home to much that ails the Muslim world -- coups, dictatorship, militancy, and corruption. Let’s recognize it now as home to judges and lawyers who won their stare-down with the dictator.

And let’s remind Sharif, Zardari and whoever becomes Pakistan’s next president:

“Hey, those same judges and lawyers against whom Musharraf foolishly picked a fight and lost are there keeping an eye on you, too.”

To the people of Pakistan -- I salute you!


Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning New York-based journalist and commentator, and an international lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues.

Copyright ©2008 Mona Eltahawy – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 19 August 2008
Word Count: 843