The African Century
By Nayyer Ali MD
Africa, outside of Egypt, has not played a huge role in human history. North Africa is a strip of arable coastal land from Morocco to Tunisia penned in by the Sahara to the South. Sub-Saharan Africa is a difficult landscape for humans, with dense jungles, tropical diseases, sparse populations, and a limited supply of plants and animals suitable for domestication. While there have been some kingdoms that were short-lived, sub-Saharan Africa did not produce large scale civilizations that rivaled Egypt, Greece, Rome, Persia, China or India, or the Muslim empires of the Middle Ages. Africa was a source of slaves, gold, ivory, and other resources, but it remained outside of the mainstream of Eurasian civilizations.
This Africa was eventually grabbed by the Europeans in the scramble for colonies in the later 19th century, with only Ethiopia holding on to independence. In the 1950’s a wave of decolonization began with great hope that a new Africa was going to be born, but while the Africans mostly got rid of European rule, their new nations had a tough time creating sustained economic and social development, and governments rapidly became the playthings of corrupt dictators engaged in brutal oppression.
Which brings us to this century, where most of the world’s extremely poor countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. What is to happen to these nations? The era of ignoring the fate of Africa is over. It is extremely important to all of human civilization that Africa gets on track. The reason for this is made clear in the latest updates to the UN Population Bureau’s projections for world population.
In most of the world, population growth has dramatically slowed, and in some countries has even begun to decline. Currently, the globe holds about 7 billion people, 1 billion in Europe and 1 billion in the Americas, 4 billion in Asia, and 1 billion in Africa. But it is in the poorest African countries that population growth remains high, with Total Fertility Rate (TFR, the number of babies born to the average woman) still around 5 births, compared to less than 2 in the US, Europe, and East Asia. Previous projections had assumed that TFR would fall more quickly in Africa, but so far that has not been the case. The UN is projecting that TFR will decline, but much more slowly than previous estimates for the rest of this century. Using these new numbers, the UN sees global population in 2100 to be still around 1 billion in Europe and 1 billion in the Americas, 5 billion in Asia, and a whopping 4 billion in Africa. Africa is expected to double twice in the next 80 years. This will mean the total world population will reach 11 billion!
Since 1950 all Third World countries have experienced massive population growth, but the amount has varied depending on the speed of economic growth and the quality of government policies such as family planning services. In the best countries, population will go up 4-5 fold between 1950 and 2100, and in the less well-run places, it will rise 10 fold. But in Africa, it is projected to rise 20 fold, an unbelievable increase and one that these nations will be hard-pressed to provide for adequately.
Some examples illustrate this point. From 1950 to 2100 China will go from 550 million to 1 billion, while India goes from 375 million to 1.5 billion. Iran will go from 17 million to 77 million, Syria from 3 million to 38 million, Turkey from 21 million to 85 million, Bangladesh from 37 million to 173 million, Brazil from 53 million to 190 million, Mexico from 28 million to 151 million, and Pakistan from 37 million to 350 million. The Chinese, with their one-child policy kept their population from exploding to possibly 2 billion people.
Compare those results with what the UN thinks will happen in Africa. The Democratic Republic of Congo will rise from 12 million to 380 million, Ghana from 5 million to 75 million, Mozambique from 6 million to 135 million, Niger from 3 million to 192 million, Kenya from 6 million to 142 million, Tanzania from 7 million to 303 million, and Nigeria will explode from 37 million to 800 million people.
It is hard to conceive how these countries will be able to function with this level of population explosion. But these projections are just that. They are based on the big assumption that all of these countries have high TFR’s for several decades. This can be altered. We know how to bring down TFR rapidly. It requires educating girls, higher living standards and more prosperous economies, more urban societies, later age of marriage with more time spent in education by both sexes, reducing infant mortality, and making family planning services available to even the poorest citizens. All of these things can be done, but it requires reasonably competent governments, a prerequisite that up to now has been woefully absent in Africa.
Just look at Nigeria and compare it to Pakistan. The two countries are similar in many ways. They both began 1950 with roughly 37 million people equally poor, and both have seen their populations grow to about 200 million. But TFR is much lower now in Pakistan, and so Nigeria is projected to double twice in the next 80 years, while Pakistan is not expected to double even once. Pakistan cannot claim to have benefited from extremely wise and gifted leadership over the last 70 years. But it has done a reasonably good job of development, with the economy growing about 5% per year. With that, Pakistan has almost wiped out extreme poverty, and half the population can now be considered middle-class. It has a very vibrant domestic economy, and it has attracted over 50 billion in investment by China in CPEC. Most Pakistanis have access to electricity, and the average citizen consumes 500 kilowatt hours per year. Pakistan has about 25 gigawatts now of installed electric generating capacity, and this is likely double by 2030.
Nigeria on the other hand is in a total mess. There is a very weak domestic economy and there has been a total failure to build modern infrastructure. Nigeria has about 5 gigawatts of power capacity only. What makes this failure so surprising is that Nigeria did not lack money. It is a member of OPEC and has extensive oil resources. Over the last 40 years, Nigeria has earned over a trillion dollars from oil exports. What happened to all that money? Unfortunately, it did not go to build up the country. It was essentially stolen by one government after another in patronage and corruption.
What Africa needs most of all is good governance. If these countries could get decent and effective leadership, many of their problems could be solved or at least mitigated. And in the next 30 years, population pressures can be dissipated with a sharp decline in TFR.
Africa’s population is going to surge regardless in the next century. The question is: will Africa double its population once or will it do so twice. One doubling can be handled, two will be a disaster. The world should help African states, particularly the large ones where most of the population growth will happen, to get on the fast track of development.
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