Ndirangu, Mwaura, Author of Kenya Today

“Populations are so dispersed that it’s very difficult for innovation to occur”

Most economic development comes from an increase in population. When you study nations like ancient Egypt and you ask yourself, why did these people develop so much while the rest were still living in the Stone Age, the first thing you discover is that the population congestion around places like the River Nile or the Euphrates, or the Indus River in India, forced them to come up with solutions to all the problems they created, because necessity is the mother of invention. It’s the same thing with Africa. In Africa you find the populations are so dispersed over a wide area that it’s very difficult for any kind of innovation to occur. We have a very rigid border system in Africa. My attitude is that people should be able to move from wherever to wherever without any complication, without any trouble, because immigrants help economies grow. 

Chris 
Ogedengbe
, Director of programme support and services, Population Council, Nigeria

“We cannot 
meet the nutritional needs of these people”

The current total fertility rate of Nigeria is 5.7 children per woman. At that rate, the population will double in 15-20 years, from 130m to 260m. In the northern region, girls get married at a tender age; at 15, 70% of them are married, many to older men, and so they become vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. If the population of Nigeria doubles, would it able to provide basic things for the people, especially vulnerable people aged under 15 and over 65? We cannot meet the nutritional needs of these people. Even to get the fertility rate down from 5.7% to 4.7% will take a lot of effort on the part of government, NGOs and international agencies. There will be a population explosion. There is no way we can disassociate politics from our way of life, and population is a factor. The issue is the quality of the population. If the quality is high, definitely we will have a more manageable democracy. 

Jean-Pierre Guengant
, Resident representative, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Burkina Faso  

“Economic development will be very difficult to realise”

The population in Sub-Saharan Africa increased from 100m in 1900 to 770m in 2000 and may reach 2bn by 2050. Such unprecedented growth, driven by high fertility, has been a strong handicap to having the human capital of good quality needed for development. The poorest have on average six children or more. The urban classes, better educated, about three. The problem is that nobody seems ready to say: “Look, having too many children will put all of us back.” At the present pace of very slow fertility decline, it will take 100 years or more to achieve what Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia have achieved over the past 50 years: demographic transition and women’s reproductive rights. Continued high population growth in a global context of recession definitely makes economic development, education and health for all very difficult to realise.