Africa’s population is growing very fast, thanks to high fertility rates and increasing life expectancies. What will Africa’s countries do with this large cohort of young people in the prime of their lives? Jonathan Katzenellenbogen sketches out a high road and a low road, and throws in some free advice into the bargain.
Nowhere in the world is the population growing as fast as in sub-Saharan Africa. The region’s population will double in size, reaching nearly two billion in less than 30 years. With this burgeoning population, the sub-continent can reap either a demographic dividend with productive young workers or a catastrophe of massive joblessness, overcrowded schools and hospitals, and violent civil strife.
At an estimated 2.45% a year, population growth in sub-Saharan Africa is more than double the world average of 1.16% a year, and far greater than that of Latin America and the Caribbean at 1.15%. By 2040 the region’s population will have doubled from its estimated 860 million in 2010, according to a forecast by the United Nations (UN) Population Division.
Growth of this magnitude, if left unchecked, can squeeze precious resources and spark riots and civil wars. The people in the Sahel are facing increasing food shortages verging on famine, made worse by drought, climate change and high population growth. Kenya and Uganda, with large populations concentrated in fertile areas, face land wars as rival groups scramble for scarcer fields. A “land-tenure bomb”, with an increasing number of often-violent conflicts over usage rights, has already burst in Burundi.
High fertility kindles a youth explosion that challenges governments to satisfy skyrocketing demands for food, housing, education, health services and jobs. More than one in four Africans—nearly 218m people—remain undernourished and more than 40% of children under five, almost 55m, are malnourished, according to the United Nations Development Programme.
Schools are straining under massively increased enrolments due to rapid population growth and the scrapping of fees. In many countries, hospitals and clinics are also overflowing. About 43% of sub-Saharan Africa’s population is under 15, compared to a world average of nearly 27%.
Contrast this with the past experience of countries in other parts of the world where large young populations drove economic growth and boosted prosperity. As legions of young people entered the workforce, they had fewer children to support because of declining fertility rates. The older generation was less of a burden because there were more young people to take care of them.
This favourable numerical relationship between the non-working-age population and the working age population, known as the dependency ratio, allowed the large labour force to save more. The increase in savings raised national productivity as the accumulated capital was invested, both in productive assets and in better health and education for the following generation. The increasing GDP per head also increased domestic demand, which in turn allowed production to expand. This demographic dividend helped countries to lift millions of people out of poverty and build a middle class.
But these benefits depend on the ability of economies to absorb the extra workers and provide employment for them. They also depend on good timing, where fertility rates decline more or less at the same time as life expectancies increase. In Africa, it is not clear that either of the two conditions is being met. Here, capital-intensive resource exports, rather than labour-intensive manufacturing, underpin economic growth. And although life expectancies are increasing, fertility rates seem to be declining much more slowly.
Case in point: sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s highest total fertility rate (TFR), the average number of children women bear during their reproductive lives. At an average of 5.1 children per woman for the period 2005–10, the sub-Saharan TFR is more than double the world average of 2.5 and far higher than the replacement level of 2.1. In contrast, Europe’s rate of 1.5 and China’s of 1.6 are below replacement level and means their populations will shrink.
There are small signs of hope. Sub-Saharan Africa’s TFR is dropping, albeit very slowly. During the 1990s, it decreased by 0.34 points and during the next decade by 0.32. The United Nations Population Division projects a gradual drop to 2.18 births per woman by the end of this century, which should be slightly above the replacement level.
These fertility declines have occurred in Africa’s more developed countries and in urban areas. Fertility rates in North Africa, South Africa and Botswana are below 3. In Nigeria, women in urban areas have a TFR of 4.7 whereas those living in the countryside average 6.3 births.
Despite these hopeful signs, the fertility decline is unevenly spread and may be stalling. During the 1990s, there was no meaningful drop in fertility rates in about two-thirds of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, according to John Bongaarts, a demographer at the Population Council in New York. For the six years beginning in 1992, the drop in fertility was 70% greater than for a similar period beginning in 1998, showing a substantial slowing down in the rate at which fertility declined.
Kenya, Malawi, Somalia and Zambia are among the countries experiencing stalls in their fertility decline, according to the UN Population Division. For the past decade, Kenya’s fertility slowed to around 5 children per woman. The fertility decline in Nigeria, with Africa’s largest population at 160m, may also be slowing down. The country’s total fertility rate in 2008 of 5.7 births per woman is about the same as in 1991, according to data from the Nigerian Population Commission.
Women are spending less time breastfeeding, thereby increasing their chances of pregnancy. This, combined with the lower priority assigned to family planning in many countries in the 1990s, may have also contributed to the slower pace of declining fertility.
The stall in Africa’s fertility downturn is unusual as fertility rates usually drop rapidly early in a transition and slow down well into the process. Countries with similar levels of fertility saw drops in their rates far faster than those taking place in Africa. Once a fertility-rate decline is under way it normally continues until the replacement level of the population is reached.
Fertility rates often decrease with economic growth and increase with economic contraction. Dr Bongaarts suggests that poorly performing economies and rising mortality due to HIV/AIDS were behind the stall in the fertility drop in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Africa’s economic environment, which has greatly improved in the last ten years, provides cautious optimism. Despite the current international recession, the sub-continent’s GDP per head in real terms jumped more than 60% from 2000–2010, according to the World Bank. During the same period, six of the world’s ten fastest growing economies were in sub-Saharan Africa, mostly due to the increasing demand for commodities. But if this demand were to drop and economic growth were to slip below population growth, GDP per head would plummet.
The challenge for African governments is to educate and find jobs for its masses of unemployed youth. With almost 200m people aged between 15 and 24, Africa has the world’s youngest population, according to a report released last May by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and other groups. Youth unemployment in sub-Saharan Africa is estimated to be more than 20%. High levels of youth unemployment pose a major risk to political stability, as seen in last year’s Arab Spring.
How does Africa realise the dream of the demographic dividend? The place to start is in the continent’s swelling cities. In 2010 close to 37% of sub-Saharan Africans lived in urban areas compared to 28%
20 years ago. The UN Population Division predicts more than 50% will be living in the continent’s metropolises by 2040.
Urbanisation has been found to bring about a significant lowering in fertility rates. People living in cities are for the most part better educated, have a higher chance of finding work and usually marry at a later age, factors which contribute to reducing fertility rates.
Education and wealth also contribute to declining fertility. Nigerian women with a tertiary education average 2.9 births, while those with no education average 6.7. Women in the highest wealth quintile had four births on average compared to seven for women in the lower two wealth quintiles.
Better leadership that promotes smaller families also plays a significant role. The World Bank recommends investing in girls’ education and passing and enforcing laws that protect gender equality. Better educated girls and women who know their rights have fewer babies.
Another obvious remedy is to improve family planning services and to fill the gap in unmet contraceptive demand. Contraceptive use is the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa of all developing regions. Unmet demand is also the highest in the developing world as reflected in a World Bank survey. Women are often reluctant to ask their husbands to use contraceptives.
As Africa’s cities expand, governments also need to improve infrastructure to bolster higher demand for housing and jobs. With better access to electricity, for example, couples are likely to spend more time watching television.
