Sub-Saharan Africa: The Population Emergency

<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080108100018.htm>

ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2008) — Sub-Saharan Africa has been experiencing phenomenal population growth since the beginning of the XXth Century, following several centuries of population stagnation attributable to the slave trade and colonization. The region's population in fact increased from 100 million in 1900 to 770 million in 2005. The latest United Nations projections, published in March 2007, envisaged a figure of 1.5 to 2 billion inhabitants being reached between the present and 2050.

The report of a demographic study, coordinated by the Centre Population et Développement (CEPED), commissioned by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), was published recently. The work was performed by a joint team involving scientists from the IRD and specialist academics from Belgium, Cameroon, France and the Ivory Coast (2). They examined the recent and projected future population trends in Sub-Saharan Africa and the relationships between these tendencies and the development of the region. This review effectively demolished some generally accepted ideas, in particular the one that Sub-Saharan Africa is underpopulated.

Today, two out of three inhabitants of this large region of Africa are under 25 years of age (twice the number prevailing in Europe) and, with 32 inhabitants per km2, Sub-Saharan Africa is more densely populated on average than Latin America (28 inhabitants/km2). And although two-thirds of its population still live in rural areas, massive migration to the towns and cities is under way. Thus, whereas in 1960, just one city, Johannesburg, had a population of over one million, Africa now has about 40 of them.

At the present rate of rural exodus, half Sub-Saharan Africa's population would be urban dwellers by 2030. This transition should be met by huge investments in construction of new infrastructures, wastewater drainage and treatment and refuse reprocessing in the great agglomerations, whose management threatens to become more and more problematic. Intra-regional migration, another safety valve for relieving the ongoing densification of the rural sphere, is severely disrupted by the conflicts and crises affecting several host countries.

The possibilities for emigration to industrialized countries are increasingly subject to control and are more difficult, particularly for the migration candidates with few qualifications. Moreover, the risks of population decrease linked to Aids appear to be receding. This factor stems especially from more effective prevention campaigns and improved access to health care. The latest UNAIDS assessments made using more reliable data brought the proportion of the African population infected by HIV to a lower figure, now put at about 5%. No country should therefore see its population decrease owing simply to the Aids epidemic.

A parallel factor at work is fecundity, equal to or higher than 5 children per woman. This is two to three times higher as in the rest of the world, an important factor being that four out of five African women live in countries where there is little access to contraception. Indeed less than 20% of women use modern contraceptive methods, as against 60% or more in Latin America and Asia. The fact that the use of contraception is progressing very slowly contributes to the strong population growth. Yet the control by women and couples over their fecundity remains the essential lever by which Sub-Saharan Africa might achieve its demographic transition.

However, campaigns promoting the balanced family such as those successfully run in other developing countries (Bangladesh, Jamaica for instance) have never really been implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, whereas the overall demographic trend points towards a stabilization of world population, that of Africa is continuing on a substantial rise. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the world's least advanced region in terms of the move towards demographic transition. The area is also behind in the development process. In 2004 for example, only six countries out of 48 obtained a growth rate equal to or greater than 7%, the threshold considered essential for achieving the first MDO--in other words the halving of poverty between now and 2015.

The prime effect of this exceptional, continuing population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is its role as a major handicap to economic and social development of most of the region's countries. The conclusion from the research is that if the African nations want to take up the double challenge of their demographic transition and reduction of their poverty, development policies must be completely rethought. It is by the adoption and implementation of policies hinged on combined actions--involving education, prevention of mortality, equitable access to health care and to family planning--that changes bringing advances and improved living standards could be generated in Sub-Saharan Africa. This perspective makes it imperative to place the population question, one of the crucial issues for the future of most of the countries concerned, at the core of their development policies.

(1) The CEPED is about to become a mixed research unit bringing together researchers from the French Institut national d'études démographiques (INED), the IRD and the Université Paris Descartes.

(2) The Millennium Development Objectives by the United Nations set in 2000 range from the halving of extreme poverty to primary education for all, by way of a halt to the spread of HIV/Aids by 2015.

(3) These studies were conducted jointly with scientists from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), the Institut de formation et de recherche démographique (IFORD) of Yaoundé (Cameroon), the Ecole nationale supérieure de statistique et d'économie appliquée (ENSEA) in Abidjan (Ivory Coast and Université Paris X Nanterre (France).

Adapted from materials provided by Institut de Recherche Pour le Développement.




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author of "The Black Holocaust for Beginners"
Social Activism is not a hobby: it's a Lifestyle lasting a Lifetime
Black Educator
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This report is insufficient.

For one they target many common things but do not report what religious identity this overpopulated group will be ie African Christian Catholic or Mormon or African Muslim etc...

This is rubbish. If anything, there aren't enough people. Over the last few years especially, all the nations I can think of have been shrinking not growing.

Also think of all the more powerful and wealthy nations on earth. Do they have tiny populations? There are more people in the London city than in the whole of zimbabwe despite both nations being the same size. Look at the ridicolously small size of the UK. Yet it has 65 million. In Africa the more populous nations are the better economies too. More people, bigger workfore, larger industrial base. More power. And don't even start on food production or arable land because it's a non issue. There is no shortage of either. Simply weakened power forces Africans to invest time in growing luxury items like coffee and flowers and other such foolishness for western markets as opposed to a domestic agriculture base (real power). More people, more power, less slavery.

Westerners with their shrinking, ageing populations have been worrying about too many "ns" for too many years is what the report should have read.

LOL



we need more people, more and more is better. the motto the African grassroots should develop is actually

More Population Explosion Good
More Uncle Tom ng's In Leadership Bad

as using the populations to benefit the continent is not a task for mentally enslaved, brainwashed, bootlicking western educated simpletons. if the continent remains colonized, then the increase in population will only benefit other countries.

Do not believe the hype Africa does not have an over population problem the west does.

But you've left out economic stability as a factor not to mention that the large percent of londerners are of ''ethnic minority'' many being economic refugees, or is that what you're saying? Plenty of Zimbabweans in South Africa/england/france and so on who would still call themselves Zimbabwean if you get me.

actually, immigration today is a human disaster of unprecedented proportions. never before in the history of man have so many people either been forced to migrate or felt going overseas was their only way of bettering their lot. this problem doesn’t appear to be getting better with time, but is getting worse...

a lot of countries are however not treating this problem as a human disaster, but seeing in it a chance to make $$$. they are making money off of what amounts to untold misery for a lot of these displaced people, families torn apart, and such. some are even scoring political points on it, while others are making of immigration a political hot potato...

figure that one out...

there is no reliable source of the numbers involved, but it is estimated that, at around 6 million, Afghanistan has the largest number of people living abroad. they form the largest immigrant group on the planet. countries like Nigeria count millions living abroad, and we can go on to other places and find that the picture is really grim, and getting worse. think about this: the average Nigerian or Ghanaian immigrant to the west is what is called a target worker. they are usually thinking about making enough money to build a house, buy a few cars, and have enough left over to live happily ever after in their land of origin. the story on the other side, when they have achieved all this, is never rosy, as there are those true stories of people who made it in this sense, but the back breaking chores they had to perform had taken their toll on their health. loads of Ghanaians and Nigerians I know know someone back in their country who scored what can only be seen as a pyrrhic victory.

On the other hand, when we look at what that single individual has contributed to the community in which they lived through taxes and profits for the various bosses they worked for, and also through investing the value they made in the same community, we can laugh at the house, the car and some change to buy food for the rest of their years that these people took back to their countries. The contribution these people made to whatever western country they went to is HUUUUGE. They helped support entire families on welfare through life, and some.

most countries around the planet realize the loss such a flow of human beings amounts to for a country, in terms of labour and intellectual drain, and there are currently a lot of projects aimed at attracting people who have gone away to return to their countries.

this is not being done for nothing. population is an issue, and those countries that are triangles standing on its head, with more old people than young people to support the structure, are actually fanning the flames of this disaster because this is the only way they can fill up those factories with the hands required to run the growth economy.

Victims of false utopianism.

The wizard of oz is a brilliant story.

Things are going to get worse when the E.U gears up, we'll be on permanent migrant status with less rights than E.U citizens.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Black Lion Victims of false utopianism.

is it? never read it, never watched the TV version

Quote:

Originally Posted by Black Lion Things are going to get worse when the E.U gears up, we'll be on permanent migrant status with less rights than E.U citizens.

you mean white Europeans vs. black Europeans.

giving equal rights to Africans is the last thing Europeans are going to do. it is actually unfair to do so, if one understands the grand plan. as black people in the western world, and also in those parts that are still colonized, we have less rights than whites, and when it comes down to it, we have no human rights at all.

i know i can win some cases where my rights were not respected, but the victory will be mere going through the motions where the system is concerned, in which case the blow that destroys completely has already been dealt. what I should actually be fighting for if everybody was to be realistic is compensation for all the harm done my person by an order. If they cannot even do the right thing and compensate victims of the Maafa rather than divert the issue then conveniently apologize for slavery, who is expecting them to acknowledge social crime against those considered underdogs in the system?

they have to keep the lie going, keep black folk believing they have as much claim on equal rights and justice as the next white person, whose rights are being eroded as we speak. not saying black people are angels, but all one needs to do to prove we do not enjoy full human rights is take a peek into prison where black people are disproportionately represented and are serving longer sentences for crimes that mean some kind of suspended sentence for white folk. i know i know, this issue has been discussed a lot here, but then it remains a valid reference point for the claim.

It's only an emergency when Black people have babies.Look at what they TRIED to do to us in America.Now as you may have heard there is a baby boom in America well we are 13% of the popluation and 26% of the baby boom...Black people everywhere...HAVE BABIES...