119 - We Are Not Alone: and More Are Coming
In 2058 or thereabouts, the population of the world will soar over 10 billion. The planet reached 8 billion this week, a mere eleven years since the total was 7 billion. According to the UN Division of Population, our global total of people will reach 9 billion by 2037. Then global numbers will begin to decline, but by the end of this century there will still be 10.4 billion of us attempting to prosper and live fulfilling lives on a hotter, crowded, possibly still war-threatened planet.
Next year India, with about 1.4 billion people, will surpass China in the population sweepstakes; China’s immense aging mass of people is shrinking, and will likely fall below 1 billion by 2058.
The explosion of people is being driven not by Asia, where most national numbers are diminishing, nor by the nations of Europe or the Americas. Almost entirely, this week’s announced demographic surges are from sub-Saharan Africa. Countries throughout that region are doubling and tripling their people numbers in this and succeeding decades. Median ages in sub-Saharan Africa will, at best, remain in the mid-twenties throughout the next half-century. That means that fully half of much of Africa will be young, but without good job prospects. Crime rates could soar. So might the joining of insurgencies.
The demographic accelerator is not escalating prosperity. Instead, a key determinant is continued poverty in places where the schooling of girls is spotty and educational failures are accumulating. Improved schooling for girls and young women is almost directly correlated with fewer babies being born. In parts of Africa, women are still birthing five, six, and seven babies per mother. (The African average is 4. 6 children per mother.) In better educated localities those numbers fall to 2.1 per woman, the replacement rate, or even below. That is why nothing is more important for Africa and the planet’s future than the education of girls, preferably through at least secondary school.
In a few African countries girls persist in school at reasonably high rates; in many others they drop out before they even reach the equivalent of tenth grade. Moreover, educational persistence rates (for boys, also) correlate very well with per capita GDP results as well as the rates of annual economic growth. About 10 percent of all African births are produced by mothers under twenty.
Mauritius, the Seychelles, Cape Verde, and Botswana are Africa’s non-oil high earners. Girls are educated well in those nations. South Africa’s per capita GDP is also relatively high for Africa, but would be much higher if its educational system had not decayed dramatically in recent decades. According to local and regional tests, only 30 percent of South African youngsters can read in the equivalent of third grade. And that failure cascades as students move upward in the system.
Because roughly half of Nigeria’s 100 million plus women are still giving birth to five and more babies, and because the resulting female cohort of that baby boom will hardly go to school and then begin delivering their own offspring while they are in the teen years and through their twenties, Nigeria’s population is still exploding.
Nigeria’s total population is estimated to double from today’s 220 million to 500 million in about 2050 and to 700 million or more by the 2080s. By then Nigeria is expected to become the third largest country in the world, after India and China. The United States, now third in line, will be surpassed by Nigeria and become the fourth largest place on earth, with a mere 375 million in 2050 and more than 400 million by the end of the century.
Nigeria’s demographic explosion has long been anticipated. But what is unheralded are population booms in Tanzania (now a mere 64 million), the Democratic Republic of Congo (now 97 million), and Ethiopia (now 110 million). According to UN predictions, Tanzania and the Congo in this century will both more than double to 129 million and 215 million by 2050, respectively. Indonesia will have 317 million people in that year. Ethiopia will not rise so quickly, but the UN anticipates that by 2050 its population will be 213 million. Brazil will surpass them all, but only a little, growing from 212 to 231 million. After 2050, the African places will grow in size beyond Brazil and even approach Pakistan (366 million in 2050).
Poverty and fertility will drive that growth, especially in Nigeria, Tanzania, and the Congo. Likewise, the rest of Africa will also be rising in terms of numbers. Little Malawi, a sliver of a southern African country with 20 million people will shoot up to 48 million in 2050. War torn Burkina Faso, now holding 22 million, will soon have 42 million people. Uganda, now with 50 million, will soon swell to 90 million in 2050. Unlike the rest of the world, most African populations will keep rising throughout the remainder of the century. But there will not be the same increase in jobs, even on farms.
Deaths from Covid-19, from HIV-AIDS, from multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, from malaria, from a host of other endemic diseases, and from pneumonia – the biggest killer of children -- will not slow this increase in numbers of people. Nor will the starvation that is now endangering the Horn of Africa on the heels of a massive drought. Neither will the internecine wars that are convulsing Ethiopia, the Sudan, the Congo, and Mozambique curb demographic growth.
Keeping girls in school is still a key answer. And to some serious extent doing so depends on improving access everywhere to potable water. Legions of girls (not boys) spend a good part of their days fetching water from sometimes distant artesian well or other supply points. Girls would not need to take such treks if water (even in cities) were more readily available. Some young women would still be working the fields with their mothers, but more water is the key to more education, and that in turn is the answer to over-abundant fertility.
Where will the food come from to supply the African peoples? A number of African countries no longer feed themselves; many of the more populous places are already food importers. If and when oil prices fall, even Nigeria and Angola, large producers, may not be able to afford necessary imports. And climate change has shifted expected falls of rain; one time “bread baskets” in Africa like Zimbabwe often lack the rain that growing large quantities of maize requires.
A demographic dividend similar to the one that helped advance Southeast Asia in the last century does not seem likely in Africa. As a consequence, the more the rest of the world can help Africa with family planning, water resources, adaptation to climate change, investments to create jobs, and educational uplift the more we can help the planet and ourselves. The prognostications of the UN Division of Population should both worry and activate us to do more for Africa and the globe.