BMC Public Health 2009, 9:465 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/9/465 own right and a risk factor for many other diseases is on the increase among urban populations of sub-Saharan African, with a higher increase among the urban poor. The results also suggest that in the near future, obesity among urban women might take epidemic proportions in devel- oping countries. It should be noted however that the wealthier and more educated individuals are still the most affected by obesity and overweight. Given the chronic nature of most diseases associated with obesity and by extension the huge cost of treatment, the prospects look grim for the already under-funded and ill equipped Afri- can health care systems to deal with a new epidemic alongside existing ones such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. As rightly pointed out in a WHO report, Afri- can countries cannot afford to say "we must tackle the other diseases first; we are poor nations, we cannot afford to deal with chronic diseases" [2]. Like several other public health chal- lenges, overweight and obesity should be tackled and pre- vented early before it gets out of hand as envisioned in the WHO Global strategy on diet, physical activity and health, ensuring that people have access to healthy diets and get involved in physical activities [11]. Unfortunately preven- tion efforts are yet to be embraced on a large scale in Africa as it has been in the developed world, and near absence of these in the global Millennium Development Goal (MDG) does not help the situation [46]. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors' contributions AKZ participated in the conception of the idea of this manuscript, conducted most of the literature review and writing the background section and writing the discussion sections. He also participated in the interpretation of results. JCF framed the research question investigated, conducted the data analysis, contributed in the writing of the paper and provided the overall guidance. RO partici- pated in the literature review and contributed in the writ- ing of the result section. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Additional material Additional file 1 Sample Size per country and urban-rural residence. Additional file 1 contains a table that shows the sample size for each country for survey 1(earlier survey) and survey 2 (later survey) and the overall total. 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