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"THE amazing, surprising, Africa-driven demographic future of the Earth," read the headline on the Washington Post article online on July 16 this year.
Of course I was going to read this. Any startling alteration in African population will definitely have to be factored in when planning for economies at country and regional level, right?
And it sure sounded startling: “The United Nations Population Division, which tracks demographic data from around the world, has dramatically revised its projections for what will happen in the next 90 years. […] Africa will see a population explosion nearly unprecedented in human history,” read the opening paragraph.
Nearly unprecedented? Wow.
Well, this is what the press release from the UN Population Division actually said: "According to the UN’s medium-variant projection, the population of Africa could more than double by mid-century, increasing from 1.1 billion today to 2.4 billion in 2050, and potentially reaching 4.2 billion by 2100.
"Rapid population increase in Africa is anticipated even if there is a substantial reduction of fertility levels in the near future. The medium-variant projection assumes that fertility will fall from 4.9 children per woman in 2005-2010 to 3.1 in 2045-2050, reaching 2.1 by 2095-2100.
"The gap for Africa between the high and low variants of the new projections, corresponding to half a child more or less per woman compared to the medium variant, amounts to roughly 600 million people by 2050 (2.7 vs. 2.1 billion) and potentially 3.2 billion people by 2100 (6.0 vs. 2.8 billion). [My emphasis – that’s a huge difference, isn’t it?]
This is incredibly broad-brush painting, of course. As so many of us have had to remind people from the northern hemisphere, Africa is not a country. It is certainly not a homogenous region, not even within countries.
A savvy Nigerian, commenting on the WP article, noted that there can be profound differences even from province to province: “Female literacy is the best predictor of fertility rates. In Nigeria's South, female literacy levels can be as high as 90%, while in the North, they can be as low as 5%.”
Therefore chances are you’d have fertility rates dropping quite dramatically in the South, not so in the North.
So I went to look at the charts to figure out where the growth was coming from. I looked at Total Fertility Rate, which is expressed as the average number of children per woman.
The USA is roughly replacing its population, at an average number of children per woman of 2.06; the UK, like much of Europe, is below, at 1.88.
There’s a common belief that South Africans have a high birth rate – anytime an issue about poverty is raised, you can be sure some commenter will say: “Why do these people have so many children if they can’t afford them?”
But we actually have quite a low birth rate at 2.55, below the southern Africa regional average of 2.64 (we’ve come a long way, baby: in the 1950s, the region was at 6.28). Northern Africa has halved, from 6.20 in the 50s to 3.07 now.
And despite countries like Somalia (which started out in the 50s at 7.25 and is now at 7.10), even East Africa has dropped from 7.01 to 5.38.
Troubled Western Africa hasn’t done so well, going from 6.35 to 5.73 (Niger, ranked lowest last year on the UN’s Human Development Index, is doing particularly badly).
But it’s in the battered centre of Africa that you see the really shocking figures: 5.99 in the early 50s, 6.17 today. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has gained half a child, so has Chad, and Equatorial Guinea has stayed more or less the same.
We all know what’s happening in the DRC; Chad, of course, is desperately poor, has been plagued by ongoing political upheaval and violence (not to mention a spillover from their neighbour’s Darfur crisis) and is regarded as a ‘failed state’ by the Fund for Peace NGO.
Equatorial Guinea has one of the worst human rights records around, plus its oil riches have benefited so few that more than half the population doesn’t have access to clean drinking water.
Political instability and violence drive fertility up for all sorts of reasons, not least the fact that both contraception and female education drop off the list of priorities.
And things can change within a decade – who, after all, at the end of World War II would have predicted that Italy would have a birth rate below replacement level by 1975, dropping even lower today (1.39)?
Who’d have thought that Korea, whose birth rate climbed into the 60s to 6.33, would be at 1.23 today?
So Africa is not doomed to an inevitable population explosion. These charts are useful because they tell us where to concentrate our efforts.
We (African countries and northern countries together) need to focus on driving change in the countries with the highest fertility rates, targeting women’s education and rights as well as brokering peace.
It would pay off for the economic future of all the countries in the continent – and, of course, it would be good for the over-stretched planet as a whole.
- Fin24
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own.
Of course I was going to read this. Any startling alteration in African population will definitely have to be factored in when planning for economies at country and regional level, right?
And it sure sounded startling: “The United Nations Population Division, which tracks demographic data from around the world, has dramatically revised its projections for what will happen in the next 90 years. […] Africa will see a population explosion nearly unprecedented in human history,” read the opening paragraph.
Nearly unprecedented? Wow.
Well, this is what the press release from the UN Population Division actually said: "According to the UN’s medium-variant projection, the population of Africa could more than double by mid-century, increasing from 1.1 billion today to 2.4 billion in 2050, and potentially reaching 4.2 billion by 2100.
"Rapid population increase in Africa is anticipated even if there is a substantial reduction of fertility levels in the near future. The medium-variant projection assumes that fertility will fall from 4.9 children per woman in 2005-2010 to 3.1 in 2045-2050, reaching 2.1 by 2095-2100.
"The gap for Africa between the high and low variants of the new projections, corresponding to half a child more or less per woman compared to the medium variant, amounts to roughly 600 million people by 2050 (2.7 vs. 2.1 billion) and potentially 3.2 billion people by 2100 (6.0 vs. 2.8 billion). [My emphasis – that’s a huge difference, isn’t it?]
This is incredibly broad-brush painting, of course. As so many of us have had to remind people from the northern hemisphere, Africa is not a country. It is certainly not a homogenous region, not even within countries.
A savvy Nigerian, commenting on the WP article, noted that there can be profound differences even from province to province: “Female literacy is the best predictor of fertility rates. In Nigeria's South, female literacy levels can be as high as 90%, while in the North, they can be as low as 5%.”
Therefore chances are you’d have fertility rates dropping quite dramatically in the South, not so in the North.
So I went to look at the charts to figure out where the growth was coming from. I looked at Total Fertility Rate, which is expressed as the average number of children per woman.
The USA is roughly replacing its population, at an average number of children per woman of 2.06; the UK, like much of Europe, is below, at 1.88.
There’s a common belief that South Africans have a high birth rate – anytime an issue about poverty is raised, you can be sure some commenter will say: “Why do these people have so many children if they can’t afford them?”
But we actually have quite a low birth rate at 2.55, below the southern Africa regional average of 2.64 (we’ve come a long way, baby: in the 1950s, the region was at 6.28). Northern Africa has halved, from 6.20 in the 50s to 3.07 now.
And despite countries like Somalia (which started out in the 50s at 7.25 and is now at 7.10), even East Africa has dropped from 7.01 to 5.38.
Troubled Western Africa hasn’t done so well, going from 6.35 to 5.73 (Niger, ranked lowest last year on the UN’s Human Development Index, is doing particularly badly).
But it’s in the battered centre of Africa that you see the really shocking figures: 5.99 in the early 50s, 6.17 today. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has gained half a child, so has Chad, and Equatorial Guinea has stayed more or less the same.
We all know what’s happening in the DRC; Chad, of course, is desperately poor, has been plagued by ongoing political upheaval and violence (not to mention a spillover from their neighbour’s Darfur crisis) and is regarded as a ‘failed state’ by the Fund for Peace NGO.
Equatorial Guinea has one of the worst human rights records around, plus its oil riches have benefited so few that more than half the population doesn’t have access to clean drinking water.
Political instability and violence drive fertility up for all sorts of reasons, not least the fact that both contraception and female education drop off the list of priorities.
And things can change within a decade – who, after all, at the end of World War II would have predicted that Italy would have a birth rate below replacement level by 1975, dropping even lower today (1.39)?
Who’d have thought that Korea, whose birth rate climbed into the 60s to 6.33, would be at 1.23 today?
So Africa is not doomed to an inevitable population explosion. These charts are useful because they tell us where to concentrate our efforts.
We (African countries and northern countries together) need to focus on driving change in the countries with the highest fertility rates, targeting women’s education and rights as well as brokering peace.
It would pay off for the economic future of all the countries in the continent – and, of course, it would be good for the over-stretched planet as a whole.
- Fin24
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own.
