Get ready! Africa's relentless population growth will put it at the centre of world affairs

Mathew Otieno

September 12, 2023 8 Reactions

The story is not uniform across the continent, of course. Some African countries, like South Africa, now have near-replacement fertility, at 2.34 children per woman, while just across the border, in Mozambique, the average woman gets 4.71 children. Africa has the world’s most fertile country, Niger, whose women can expect to have nearly 7 children each, and one of the least fertile, Mauritius, whose 1.35 child per woman fertility is nearly as bad as greying Japan’s 1.26.

The main drivers of Africa’s continuing growth will be its medium- and large-sized high-fertility countries, like Nigeria, the DRC and Tanzania. Nigeria alone is expected to add nearly as many people as it currently has (almost 220 million), to have nearly 410 million by 2050, making it the world’s third-most populous country. By 2100, it might very well have more people than either China or India.

Myopic media

Unfortunately, Africa’s seemingly runaway population growth has not received much nuanced reporting around the world. As we noted in the opening, there were no headlines when the continent overtook China. Much of the little coverage it does receive, especially in the West, tends to focus on the need for its sky-high fertility to be brought down to earth, lest it gives rise to a potential catastrophe.

Never mind that Africa has nearly ten times the landmass of India, and 65 percent of the world’s stock of uncultivated arable land; and that the African land that is cultivated is hardly as productive as it could be. The continent, in short, has the capacity to feed and clothe orders of magnitude more human beings than it currently has, perhaps even the whole planet.

Other coverage, like an April piece from The Economist, desperately clutches at any indications, however faint, that the growth might be flagging. Never mind that this has happened multiple times in the past, like in the mid-2000s, when demographers celebrated the appearance of transitions afoot in parts of the continent, only for their hopes to be dashed when the pace picked right up again. It’s unlikely that this will be the last time.

All the while, Africa’s population growth train chugs along energetically, heedless of global trends, cementing, with each new baby and delayed death, its central place in the near-term future of the human race. And while the growth may very well let up over the coming decades, that still wouldn’t take away the continent’s momentum for the rest of the century. Africans were once the only humans on earth; they seem set to be the majority once again.

What effects this growth will have on concerns of global import, like geopolitics, international trade and climate change, remain to be seen. There are too many factors up in the air for an erudite conclusion to be drawn just yet. What isn’t in question is that Africa will play a central role in the planet’s trajectory over this century. The rest of the world cannot afford to ignore the continent any longer.

“Sheer weight of numbers must bring about a reimagining of African countries and their populations,” notes Edward Paice, director of the Africa Research Institute, in an article for The Guardian. Mr Paice is the author of Youthquake – Why African Demography Should Matter to the World, from which most of the insights in this article were drawn.

It is definitely worth your time.

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Mathew Otieno is a Kenyan writer, blogger and a dilettante farmer. Until 2022, he was a research communications coordinator at a university in Nairobi, Kenya. He now lives in rural western Kenya, near the shores of Lake Victoria, from where he's pursuing a career as a full-time writer while concluding his dissertation for a master's degree. His first novel is due out this year.

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