African Population

1. African Population Africanization of the world? The gestation and answer to a question.

2. Characteristics of African population • 901 million people in Africa in 2005. • Africa has fastest-growing population of all the continents but there is a difference between North Africa and Africa south of the Sahara. • Populations in most other regions of the world are declining or beginning to decline. • Africa was 8.8% of world population in 1950. • Africa is 13.8% of world population in 2005. • Africa will be 20.3% of world population in 2050.

3. Characteristics of African population • On average, each woman bears 5 children and sometimes 8. • Population increase best explained not by increased fertility but by fewer children dying in infancy. Infant mortality rate is still high (12% on average) but variable: • 18% of all children die before age 1 in Sierra Leone. • 6% of those in Senegal die before age 1. • The geographic pattern of population growth is not uniform across the continent.

4. Characteristics of African population distribution The population of Africa is clustered in certain areas and most of the rest of Africa is sparsely populated. • Sparsely settled regions (<10 persons per mile2). • Deserts of the north and southwest. • Swampy plains in southeast Angola, Zambia, and DRC. • The tsetse-ridden plains of the Congo watershed. • Densely settled regions (between 100 and 1000 per mile2). • Have economic value out of all proportion to their extent. • Contain about half of Africa’s population on <5% of its land area.

5. Six major population clusters • The Nile valley and delta in Egypt. • The Gulf of Guinea coast. • Hausaland. • Ethiopian highlands. • Lake Victoria region. • The southern Transvaal industrial and mining region. Casablanca Alexandria Cairo Dakar Kano Addis Ababa Ibadan Abidjan Lagos Kinshasa Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Durban

6. Characteristics of African population • Advantages to high populations and population growth: • Greater supply of labor. • Market demand. • Disadvantages to high population and especially rapid population growth: • Housing shortage. • Problem of food supply. • Land shortage. • Cost of education. • Poverty. • High dependency ratio: children under 15 make up more than 40% of the population in some countries.

7. Most regions of Africa are growing rapidly. • Some countries are increasing at a significantly higher rate than others. • Others are growing much more slowly.

8. Influences on child-bearing • Level of development. • Percent of the population in agriculture. • Urbanism. • Religion or other ideology. • Prevalence of gonorrhea. • Length of breast feeding. • Pronatalist position of government.

9. How can we understand African population growth and change?

10. Explanations of Population Growth • Malthus’ theory. • Neomalthusian theory • Technocratic theory. • Marx’s theory. • Boserup’s theory. • Demogaphic transition theory.

11. Malthus’ Theory of Population and Development • Thomas Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). • Quality of life and population size are inversely related. • Population size in any given area is limited by the available food. • Available food is relatively fixed by the quality of the land (the “carrying capacity”). • Food production can only increase arithmetically while population increases geometrically. • Population grows until it reaches and then exceeds the limits of the resources then dies off.

13. Neomalthusians • Similar to the Malthusian theory except disaster is averted in the short term by: • Movement of a population to new areas where unexploited resources can be tapped. • New technological inventions which permit higher population densities to be supported. • BUT disaster is supposed to strike as Malthus stated when: • There is no more available land or, • Technological innovation lags behind population growth.

15. The technocratic theory of population • Sometimes called the “cornucopian” theory. • Associated with the noted Economist, Dr. Julian Simon. • Accepts basic tenets of Malthus and Neomalthusians. • BUT holds that advances in technology will mitigate any population problems we may experience in the future.

17. The Boserupian Theory of Population • Ester Boserup (d. 2004). • Opposite to Malthus. • Population growth causes technological change which can raise the carrying capacity(development). • As population grows, technology will change in order to support the increased population. • Population growth causes society to change so that more people can be supported -- thus avoiding the Malthusian crisis. • Population growth causes increases in development.

18. Boserup’s stages of agricultural development • Forest fallow. • Bush fallow. • Short fallow. • Annual cropping. • Multicropping.

19. Eleven dimensions of change along the Bosrupian continuum

20. Marxist Theory of Population • The population “problem” is a reflection of unequal access to resources between the classes of society. • If we redistribute wealth, access to resources, and opportunity equally to all then the population “problem” evaporates. • But Marx believed that capitalism needs overpopulation (the “reserve army of the unemployed”) to keep wages low and profit margins high. • The population problem will disappear after capitalism is overthrown and communism rules.

21. Theory of the Demographic Transition • Based on the experience of most European countries and Japan. • Basic assumption is that economic development causes population growth. • Economic development also limits population growth as part of a process over time. • Other areas of the world are hypothesized to undergo the same process as Europe did as economic development progresses.

22. The Stages of the Demographic Transition

23. Literacy, an aspect of development, has a profound impact on the average number of children a woman bears.

24. The coming African demographic century?

25. The world population is increasing at a decreasing rate

26. Africa’s population is still rapidly growing • The population of Africa (esp. SSA) is the last large one to begin the demographic transition. • It is growing faster than any other population in the world. • It will continue to be the fastest growing region of the world to the end of this century.

27. By 2050 the population of Africa will be close to 2 billion

32. The demographic momentum of Africa • By world standards Africa’s population boom is tardy. • But in this case the last will be first. • Pull factors: to maintain it’s economically-active population, Europe must bring in millions of people from abroad. • Push factors: Africa’s robust population growth and the continuation of developmental disparities between Europe and Africa will push Africans to migrate.