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Shanto, 
Ethiopia
The UN expects Shanto to count as a city from 2030, with 57,356 people. This is a projection: in 2025 it did not yet meet the UN's rule for a city.
The UN measures every city in the world the same way, by where the buildings are rather than where the boundary runs, so this figure and Shanto's own can differ widely. What counts as a city here.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Shanto grew
Where Shanto had 10 people in 2030, it had 64.7 in 2050.
On the UN's projection it will have 371,120 people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes 250,000 people between 2040 and 2045. The UN first counts it as a city in 2030, when it passed 50,000 people.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: each column is one of the UN's five-yearly estimates, 1975 through 2050, and taller means more people. Where a column is hatched the year has not happened yet. The strip under the columns is the UN's own confidence in each figure, palest where it is least sure; where it is blank the city was not on the list at all.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Shanto through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Shanto in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Ethiopia · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Ethiopia and its 259 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Addis Ababa). Shanto is ringed, drawn at its 2030 size, in colour; the other cities are grey. Neighbouring countries are outlines.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2050, Shanto covered 173 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 11 km² of it. That is 28 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 5 by 5 metres. Since 2030, its built-up land has grown to 10.5 times its size, and its people are 6.5 times as many.
How to read this: the outer pale square stands for all the land the city covers, and the solid square inside it for the part with buildings, roads and the like on it. All three squares share a scale, so you can compare them by eye. A hatched one is a year the UN has projected.
Of every 100 people in Ethiopia
Its share of Ethiopia
Of every 1,000 people in Ethiopia in 2050, 2 lived in Shanto, which is 371,120 people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares, one for every 1,000th person in Ethiopia; the coloured squares live in Shanto. The grey rest live in other cities, in towns or in the countryside.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In Ethiopia, 2025
- 59 Addis Ababa6,705,705
- 937 Adama584,854
- 1107 Bahir Dar498,735
- 1146 Dire Dawa483,674
- 1230 Shashamane452,945
- 1250 Hawassa444,909
- 1257 Bishoftu442,776
- 1327 Jijiga422,225
- 1448 Gonder392,767
How to read this: names are in order of size, the leading number being each city's rank among all 12,138 in 2025; the bars share a scale within a list. A jump in the ranks means a city under 300,000 people, which is not given a page here.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Shanto are the UN's own, at five-year steps, every one of them projection, because the UN does not expect it to count as a city until 2030. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one Shanto publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.
Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries