The slowing in population growth in Africa has been less than anticipated
The comments are better than the article itself.<p>From: NdiliMfumu  Dec 14th, 03:10<p>Today&#x27;s problems with overpopulation are directly related to Mankind&#x27;s evolution, as are many other modern discontents:<p>Prior to the modern era (especially, prior to the beginning of organized agriculture in the Middle East, 12,000 years ago), Mankind was a predominantly nomadic beast who wandered about, following natural herds and eating whatever fruits, nuts and other small vegetables he could find, whenever he couldn&#x27;t fell another water buffalo or gazelle.<p>In this condition, food was generally scarce, disease common and rampant, children frequently taken by the passing lion or wave of dysentery, and the population constantly under threat. It made sense for us to evolve to be continuously fecund, always seeking meat, salt and sweets (fruits), and to avoid anything foul, bitter or unduly acidic. People tended to be lean and stringy, eager to sock away a bit of fat or sodium for the next dry and desperate week ahead.<p>We were not used to regular access to food, drink, salt or sugar, nor were we quite used to seeing our numbers grow.<p>Ah, then, we learned settled agriculture and everything began to change. Suddenly, there was a much more certain supply of food and drink. Sweets became more commonplace. Salt was easier to come by. And there was ever so much more opportunity for sex, now that the new girl just moved in next door.<p>Over the centuries after the onset of settled agriculture, human populations grew rather steadily. From merely about 25,000 souls in 50,000 BCE, we grew to around 100,000,000 souls around the year 1 CE. This is an intrinsic rate of population growth of only 0.016 % per year. Hardly much, but enough to be very successful as a species over a long period. Yet, it pales in comparison to the modern rate of intrinsic population growth, which has often been above 2.5% per year.<p>What has happened in the meantime? The Industrial Revolution enabled human populations to intensively urbanize, elevating millions from abject poverty, bringing in its train electricity, among other things, and the development of artificial ammonia production. This was critical.<p>Together with artificial fertilizer and increasing agricultural mechanization, farm productivity bounded and food became increasingly cheap in most parts of the world during the last 200 years. At the same time, SANITARY practices (especially, sewage system development and water purification projects) deprived the River Styx of legions of children who would otherwise have died of dysentery and early childhood respiratory illness. All this came about long before modern medicine could penetrate into most parts of the world, and well before antibiotics were developed and could play their role.<p>Between 1800 and 1950 (when penicillin began to become much more prevalent), death rates plummeted and the intrinsic rate of population growth exploded. At the same time, Mankind began to fall ill from diseases of excess: Excess salt leading to hypertension, excess sugar and fat tending towards morbid obesity and adult-onset diabetes, excess nicotine tending to heart attack, stroke and cancer.<p>What we see, here, are very swift cultural, economic and political changes sweeping over the Human Condition, much faster than can be accommodated by the usual evolutionary processes, alone. The Human Genome simply cannot respond quickly enough to doff the tendency to want more: More food, more sex, more sugar, more fat, more stimulation. All those things which for millennia we longed for, now, we have in great surfeit.<p>The tendency for wealthier, urbanized families to have fewer children and to start later is a direct reflection of the population pressure experienced by large numbers of people living in close quarters. We can help this along by encouraging people to continue leaving the countryside: Raise taxes on idle farmland and pastureland, on rural homes, and on train&#x2F;bus rides terminating in the hinterland !<p>Similarly, give families income support and training to relocate into cities. Offer them apartments, jobs, healthcare and continuous education. Pay them to forego having more children, and to educate the ones they have better. Offer particularly young women money and apartments to stay single and childless until they&#x27;re at least 25 years old thereby cutting their fecundity in half. And of course, make reproductive health services, including contraception and abortion services, broadly available, safe and cheap for young women.<p>The current and continuing crisis of world-wide deleterious climate change is, like overpopulation, a direct reflection of our evolutionary challenge and current inadequacy. Were it not for the 7.32 BN of us already alive in such vast numbers, there would be many more fish in the seas, much more oil in the ground and much less carbon in the atmosphere. Time for a thorough-going and purposeful change: Let’s not leave it to evolution, lest we go the way of the dinosaurs !<p>Continuing fecundity in Africa is the direct result of the general lack of urbanization, there, as compared with other continents, as well as cultural values emphasizing fecundity and large families, and the general level of poverty and illiteracy.<p>But this is rapidly changing, as the article points out.<p>As African nations lift themselves from poverty and progressively urbanize, e.g., Nigeria, today, fecundity drops and the intrinsic rate of population growth along with it. Nigerian women, especially those who live in Lagos and other large cities (e.g., Abuja, Port Harcourt, Benin City, Ibadan, Kano, Kaduna) are increasingly interested in getting an education, making money and deferring marriage. Deferring the start of childrearing has a dramatic effect on overall fecundity. Deferring a first pregnancy to the age of 25 cuts an average woman&#x27;s lifetime fecundity in half.<p>The major impediments to successful population control are largely culturally determined resistance -- especially male chauvinism, heterosexism, paternalism and religiously-driven moral imperatives to &quot;be fruitful and multiply&quot; (this, largely an attempt on the part of these religions to secure and increase their numbers by indoctrinating newborns in the faith).<p>But all these impediments tend to fall by the wayside, when young women and families enter into urban areas: The anomie of the cities assists young people in escaping the control of their parents and their clergy. &quot;Traditional values&quot; tend to fall victim to &quot;modernism&quot;. &quot;Contraception&quot; is no longer a dirty word. Liberality and social mobility go hand in hand. Staid and stoic traditionalist parents tend to shut up, when their well-educated daughters are sending home then rent cheque from Lagos !<p>Africa&#x27;s population will bound towards 2 billion or more by the end of the 21st century, but then it will stabilize. By that time, if we&#x27;re lucky, the Earth will host more than 12 BN souls, and we shall be straining the world&#x27;s resources to the limit.<p>If we have some real luck, hydrogen fusion power will replace fossil fuels and nuclear fission, entirely. We will devote the new, cheap and nearly limitless power to cleaning up the environment, sucking the carbon out of the atmosphere and burying it in the deep seas, planting billions of trees, and building tall and narrow cities, leaving vast tracts of open land to the animals, the insects and the other flora and fauna. We shall swing from mile-high elevators much like our distant ancestors swung through tropical forests.<p>And we shall begin to colonize the Moon, Mars and other regions of space, as well.<p>Time for a thorough-going change!