As the Population Increases, What Is Africa's Role?

           The global population recently reached eight billion people.  Sometime early on November 15, the eight billionth person – a baby girl in a Manila hospital – was born, reaching the new global population milestone.  Of course, this is an estimate as there also was an infant born the same day in the Dominican Republic. Whichever child was first, the designation was merely symbolic anyway.

Among developing countries, five of the nine countries with the largest anticipated populations in 2100 are in Africa: Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Egypt.  For quite some time now, there has been an organized effort to reduce what is incorrectly assumed to be an African population bursting at the seams.  However, my colleague. Kwame Fosu, in his landmark 2011 study of depopulation efforts in Africa, Depo Provera: Deadly Reproductive Violence Against Women, reported that the overpopulation of Africa is a misconception:

·                         Africa has a normal rate of population growth. In 2011, Africa’s 55 countries had a total population of 1,032,532,974, which is 3.3 times that of the United States with a population of 315,510,000 people.

·                       Africa’s 55 countries have a landmass of 11.7 million sq. miles-- that is 3.3 times that of the United States with a landmass of 3.5 million sq. mi. Most African countries have low or average population densities and can sustain higher populations.

·                       In Africa, there is an ongoing "Land Grab" of considerable areas of land by Western and industrialized nations to feed and fuel the rest of the developed world. However, as academics, economists, and government officials preposterously postulate that
Africa is overpopulated and cannot support itself, Africa’s arable lands are pillaged for pennies an acre displacing its people.

·                       Nevertheless, international agencies and organizations have been hard at work using various techniques to limit Africa’s normal population growth when Africans live in healthy environments that are rich in minerals and abundant in arable land with the lowest carbon footprint on the globe.

“The African continent is far from overcrowded, and it is only in major cities inflated by urban migration that one could gain such a skewed perception. Most of Africa is rural with areas sparsely populated that lack of infrastructure, public services, and meaningful job opportunities in the agrarian sector,” Fosu wrote. “That issue, now conflated with the predatory land-grab by developed countries exacerbates the urban influx of formerly subsistence farmers to overcrowded African cities in search of work.”

            Actually, global population growth is slowing. This year, the world’s population increased by just 0.8%, whereas in the 1960s, it was rising three times that rate every year. At the current rate, the UN estimated peak in the world’s population would reach 10.4 billion or so, arriving sometime between 2080 and 2100, before the growth rate begins to decline.

            By 2050, some estimates say the average births per woman will be 2.1, down from 2.3 in 2021. The number of countries whose population is expected to shrink by 1% or more between 2022 and 2050 is 61. The expected median age of the world’s population in 2100 is 41-42 years, up sharply from 21 in 1970.

            According to population researcher Jennifer D. Sciubba, editor of the newsletter A World of 8 Billion, alarm over the growth of the world’s population may be exaggerated.

            “I actually think there’s a greater than 50% chance we don’t get to 10.4 billion because I think fertility will continue to fall quickly where it’s high and because I foresee persistent super low (below 1.5 children per woman) fertility in much of the world,” she writes.  “I know a lot of future growth will be population momentum, but I’d put us closer to right at 10 billion than the 10.4 billion to UN currently projects.”

            In fact, as early as 2070, eight of the nine top population growth countries will have many “hot zones” – areas where the annual mean temperatures will be above 29ºC (84.2ºF). Daily life without cooling technology would become extremely difficult, access to water could become scarce and disruptions to agriculture would be severe. Consequently, migration would become inevitable, with millions of people leaving their overheated villages and towns in search of a milder climate. Much of this migration will trend northward – from Africa and the Middle East toward Europe and from Central and South America to North America.           

          For northern countries, such migration would replace the lost population by societies with shrinking birthrates. It would meet the anticipated labor shortages, even with mechanization. Yet it would exacerbate Africa’s brain drain problem, drawing some of the best and brightest and most able away from a continent planning on an economic and technological boom.

           And what about the dangers to the many Africans seeking to leave dangerous conditions in their home countries who then find even more dangerous conditions on the way to what they hope will be a better life elsewhere? So many thousands of Africans have lost their lives going across the Mediterranean Sea or the Sahara Desert or been enslaved or kidnapped and held for ransom along to way. Eritrea was at one time the fastest-emptying country in the world (overtaken after its peak by South Sudan). What will be done to help alter the negative conditions under which they live or to safeguard their exit?

           So, while Africa isn’t unduly contributing to the global population boom, those who want to limit the continent’s population may get their way without overt efforts to curb its growth. Thus, there will be a struggle between those nations that want replacement workers and African countries who will need its best and brightest to stay home and help with the continent’s development.

            In the United States and other developed countries, professionals from Africa and other emerging markets already play major roles in providing medical, legal and financial services. As the low birth rate in these countries continues to diminish the skilled workforce, draining such professionals from their home countries, how will this impact the effort to advance Africa through industrialization? Medical, educational and management structures in Africa will need those skilled workers leaving the continent. Better pay, more comfortable conditions and enhanced working conditions already provide the pull for African professionals to leave the continent. Add to that the push of conflicts, poor infrastructure, the lack of supplies with which to perform work and spotty power resources, and you have the perfect conditions to deplete Africa of valued workers and supply them to the industrialized world.

           African leaders must understand this phenomenon and be prepared to combat it, or the future they dream of won’t become their reality.

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