Celebrating world population day to “enhance awareness of population issues, including their relations to the environment and development”- https://www.un.org/en/observances/world-population-day/background

“Dramatic population growth has been driven largely by increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age, and has been accompanied by major changes in fertility rates, increasing urbanization and accelerating migration. These trends will have far-reaching implications for generations to come”. - https://www.un.org/en/observances/world-population-day

South Africa, with an estimated total population of 55.7 million people, is characterized by diversity and change. With its rich cultural heritage, economic, political, social and even geographical diversity is evident throughout the nine provinces of the country. Population distribution across the 1,2 million square kilometers is highly unbalanced with most South Africans living in metropolitan areas. It is expected that the ongoing movement of people from rural to urban areas (towns, cities, and metro’s) will continue to increase (DPSA, 2016). Currently, the landscape of rural areas generally depicts scattered pockets of populated settlements, more generally known as tribal, traditional or farm areas.

The following image gallery is a showcase of infographics and maps describing South Africa’s diversity and continuous change with a specific focus on population distribution and provincial migration patterns which were derived from the 2016 Community Survey (Statistics South Africa) and Census 2011 Community Profiles in SuperCROSS.

The infographics show provincial migration patterns from province of birth to current province of enumeration. Gauteng and Western Cape have the highest number of in-migrations. Those who moved to Gauteng were mostly from Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal, and Eastern Cape. Eastern Cape and Gauteng contributed to the high in-migration numbers of Western Cape. Provinces with a significant out-migration trend includes both Eastern Cape and Limpopo, followed by KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

Also have a look at our map gallery for individual (per province) in- and out-migration maps.