Also known as: Habagatang Dabaw, Katimugang Davao
Davao del Sur is a province in Region XI (Davao Region). Population 705K (PSA 2024 census), 1 component city + 9 municipalities, 232 barangays total, land area 2,163.98 km². Provincial capital: Digos City (component city; the independent, geographically adjacent Davao City is not part of the province).
Davao del Sur is a province in Region XI (Davao Region). Its capital is Digos City (component city; the independent, geographically adjacent Davao City is not part of the province).
Davao del Sur had 705,129 residents in the 2024 census (PSA 2024 Census of Population (POPCEN 2024), reference date July 1, 2024). That is the most recent official count. There is no 2026 census result, so any 2026 population figure is an estimate.
Davao del Sur covers 2,163.98 km², per the PSA Philippine Statistical Yearbook figure used on this page.
Davao del Sur has 1 component city and 9 municipalities (10 LGUs under the province), per PSA's Philippine Standard Geographic Code (2Q 2026), and 232 barangays. Davao City is a highly urbanized city located within Davao del Sur but administered independently of the province, so it is not counted above; counting it, there are 2 cities in all.
Davao del Sur's 1 component city is Digos City. Its 9 municipalities are Bansalan, Hagonoy, Kiblawan, Magsaysay, Malalag, Matanao, Padada, Santa Cruz and Sulop. Davao City is a highly urbanized city located within Davao del Sur but administered independently of the province, so it is not counted above; counting it, there are 2 cities in all.
Davao del Sur is easy to misplace on a map because of its name: many assume it includes Davao City, the region's dominant metropolis immediately to its north. It doesn't, and never has administratively — Davao City was chartered independently in 1937, three decades before Davao del Sur was carved out of the old, undivided Davao province in 1967. The two shared only a transitional congressional-representation arrangement between 1967 and 1984, fully resolved by the 1987 Constitution. What remains true is that Davao City's southern boundary runs directly against Santa Cruz, Bansalan, and Digos City — the province's capital — so growth pressure and infrastructure demand from Metro Davao spill directly into Davao del Sur's northern LGUs even though the two have entirely separate planning authorities.
The province itself is compact: one component city, Digos, and nine municipalities, most of it built around two economic engines. Cavendish banana plantations, part of a Davao Region export industry worth well over a billion dollars a year, dominate the northern and central municipalities, while rice farming around Magsaysay, Matanao, and Hagonoy and coastal fisheries in the Malalag Bay area anchor the south. Layered on top of both is Mount Apo — the Philippines' highest peak — whose slopes host regulated ecotourism trekking, active geothermal power development, and a protected natural park that Republic Act No. 9237 extends across seven cities and municipalities in two provinces and two administrative regions at once, governed by a single joint management board.
That multi-jurisdiction board is one of the clearest real examples anywhere in the Philippines of land-use planning that cannot be resolved at the single-LGU or even single-province level. Mount Apo is also geologically active enough to matter for planning purposes: PHIVOLCS classifies it as a potentially active volcano, and a magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck Magsaysay municipality directly in 2021. For Davao del Sur's provincial planning office, coordinating CLUP submissions across ten LGUs means reconciling plantation agriculture, smallholder rice farming, coastal fisheries, geothermal energy development, and volcanic and seismic hazard zoning — all inside a province that most outsiders assume is just the rural half of Davao City's name.
Key industries: Cavendish banana export production, Rice/palay farming, Coastal fisheries (Malalag Bay), Mount Apo ecotourism, Geothermal energy
More on the regulatory framework: CLUP explainer · RA 7160 explainer · SGLG explainer · full glossary. Working a CLUP review cycle? Run the CLUP readiness self-check or see CLUP compliance monitoring.
Davao del Sur's provincial planning office coordinates CLUP submissions from Digos City and 9 municipalities that sit across genuinely different land-use economies — banana export plantations, smallholder rice farms, coastal fisheries, and a geothermal-and-volcanic hazard zone around Mount Apo — while also managing constant boundary confusion with the independent, non-affiliated Davao City next door. Nova Gov's pilot program is designed to help a provincial planning team hold one consistent picture of where each of those 10 LGUs' CLUP submissions actually stand.
Digos City and Davao del Sur's 9 municipalities are managing banana plantations, rice farms, fisheries, and a shared volcanic protected area — all while sitting next to an independent Davao City that isn't part of the province's planning process. See how Nova Gov's pilot program approaches multi-LGU CLUP coordination.
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