Sub-Saharan Africa’s rapid population growth alarms experts, governments
LAGOS, nigeria — In a quarter century, at the rate Nigeria is growing, 300 million people — a population about as big as that of the present-day United States — will live in a country the size of Arizona and New Mexico. In the commercial hub of Lagos, where the area’s population has by some estimates nearly doubled over 15 years to 21 million, living standards for many are falling.
Lifelong residents like Peju Taofika and her three granddaughters inhabit a room in a typical apartment block known as a “Face Me, Face You” because whole families squeeze into 7-by-11-foot rooms along a narrow corridor. Up to 50 people share a kitchen, toilet and sink — though the pipes in the neighborhood often no longer carry water.
At Alapere Primary School, more than 100 students cram into most classrooms, two to a desk.
As graduates pour out of high schools and universities, Nigeria‘s unemployment rate is nearly 50 percent for people in urban areas ages 15 to 24 — driving crime and discontent.
Last October, the United Nations announced the global population had breached 7 billion and would expand rapidly for decades, taxing natural resources if countries cannot better manage the growth.
Nearly all of the increase is here in sub-Saharan Africa, where the rise in population far outstrips economic expansion. Of the roughly 20 countries where women average more than five children, almost all are in the region.
“The pace of growth in Africa is unlike anything else ever in history and a critical problem,” said Joel Cohen, a professor of population at Rockefeller University in New York City. “What is effective in the context of these countries may not be what worked in Latin America or Kerala or Bangladesh.”
Across sub-Saharan Africa, alarmed governments have begun to act, often reversing longstanding policies that encouraged or accepted large families. Nigeria made contraceptives free last year, and officials are promoting smaller families as a key to economic salvation, holding up the financial gains in nations like Thailand as inspiration.
Nigeria, already the world‘s sixth-most populous nation with 167 million people, is a crucial test case, since its success or failure at bringing down birthrates will have outsize influence on the world‘s population. If this large nation rich with oil cannot control its growth, what hope is there for many smaller, poorer countries?
“Population is key,” said Peter Ogunjuyigbe, a demographer at Obafemi Awolowo University in the small central city of Ile-Ife. “If you don’t take care of population, schools can’t cope, hospitals can’t cope, there’s not enough housing — there’s nothing you can do to have economic development.”
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