Demography / The World Bank / Africa’s Population Set to Double by 2036

WASHINGTON, USA, July 17, 2008/African Press Organization (APO)/ — Africa’s population is growing at twice the rate of other regions. In the following interview, John May, a demographer at the World Bank, discusses the effects of population growth on Africa’s development agenda and what the Bank is doing in response.

What is rapid population growth?

JM: The sub-Saharan population is growing at the rate of 2.5 percent per year as compared to 1.2 percent in Latin America and Asia. At that rate, Africa’s population would double in 28 years. The reason for the fast population increase in Africa is the rapid decline in infant and child mortality, whilst fertility levels have remained high and are decreasing only slowly

Today, African women bear 5.5 children on average during their lifetime, except in Southern Africa. The key issue is the lag between the infant and child mortality decline, on the one hand, and the fertility decline, on the other. The AIDS epidemic, despite all the development problems it brings to Africa, will not fundamentally change the demographic equation. For the first time in about two decades, the U.N. Population Division estimates that no one African country will experience a negative population rate of growth as a result of HIV/AIDS. This is because programs on HIV/AIDS are showing some results and estimates about the epidemic have been recalculated downwards. However, successes are still fragile and should not lead us to be complacent.

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Demography / The World Bank / Africa’s Population Set to Double by 2036
APO-SOURCE : The African News Source