Map of Nigeria showing the location of Port Harcourt in Nigeria. Ralph Moore, Chief Oju Daniel Kalio and William Harcourt signed the 1913 agreement for the area now known as Port Harcourt.
Port Harcourt (Pidgin: Po-ta-kot or Pi-ta-kwa) is the capital and largest city of Rivers State in Nigeria.[14] It is the fifth most populous city in Nigeria after Lagos, Kano, Ibadan and Benin.[15][16] It lies along the Bonny River and is located in the oil rich Niger Delta region. As of 2023, Port Harcourt's urban population is approximately 3,480,000.[17] The population of the metropolitan area of Port Harcourt is almost twice its urban area population with a 2015 United Nations estimate of 2,344,000.[7] In 1950, the population of Port Harcourt was 59,752. Port Harcourt has grown by 150,844 since 2015, which represents a 4.99% annual change.[18]
The area that became Port Harcourt in 1912 was before that of a farmland of the people of Rebisi (Ikwerre). The colonial administration of Nigeria created the port to export coal from the collieries of Enugu located 243 kilometres (151 mi) north of Port Harcourt,[19] to which it was linked by a railway called the Eastern Line, also built by the British.[2][19][20]
Port Harcourt's economy turned to petroleum[21] when the first shipment of Nigerian crude oil was exported through the city in 1958.[22] Through the benefits of the Nigerian petroleum industry, Port Harcourt was further developed, with aspects of modernization such as overpasses, city blocks, and taller and more substantial buildings.[3] Oil firms that currently have offices in the city include Shell and Chevron.[23]
^Urban area: Demographia (January 2015). Demographia World Urban Areas(PDF) (11th ed.). Archived(PDF) from the original on 5 August 2011. Retrieved 7 September 2016.