Population, Family Planning, and the Future of Africa
Population, Family Planning, and the Future of Africa In most
African countries, over half the population is under the age of
15. Even if all of those countries were to shift to having just
two children, beginning tonight, their total populations would
continue to grow for another two decades. Nevertheless, there is
hopeful evidence of progress. Africa's colonial legacy-
exploitation, artificial borders, too many small and unviable
countries after independence-is the chief source of a catalog of
misfortunes that is by now familiar: civil and regional
conflict, famine and hunger, land degradation, corruption and
ill health. Economically, sub-Saharan Africa lags pitifully
behind all other developing regions. Its GDP per-capita growth
rate during the 1990s was actually negative. In 2002, the
nations of sub-Saharan Africa, with 688 million people, managed
a collective gross domestic product of $319 billion-a per-capita
average of well under $2 per day. With 11