The Birth of the Billionth African

This year Africa's population finally reached a billion, making the continent the second most populated after Asia, mirroring its geographical size as the second largest continent after the latter. This is undoubtedly a historic milestone with profound implications for Africa's economies, polities, societies, cultures, and ecologies, as well as for the continent's geopolitical and geostrategic standing and significance.

It is a phenomenal development with a very complex history. To put it simply, this represents a culmination of  social transformations in recent decades in which Africa has resumed its comparative patterns of population growth and restored its global demographic weight brutally disrupted by the horrific disasters of the Atlantic Slave Trade and European colonialism.

It is only about a decade ago, in 1998, when Africa's population (at 781.3 million) reached 13% of the world's population the same percentage as it was two and half centuries earlier in 1750. By then the slave trade was already ravaging the western regions of the continent. According to United Nation's estimates, Africa's average annual population growth rate was a mere 0.1 percent between 1800 and 1850, and 0.4 percent from 1850 to 1900. The population of the rest of the world grew slightly faster, so that Africa's share of the world population declined from 11 percent in 1800 to 8 percent in 1900.

Joseph Inikori, the distinguished and award winning Nigerian economic historian, has argued that there would have been 112 million additional people in Africa at the end of the 19^th century had there been no export slave trade. Besides the 15.4 million Africans who were forcibly taken to the Americas and the millions more who died enroute to the coast and across the Atlantic, the slave trade also altered the age and sex structures of the remaining populations, and the patterns of marriage, all of which served to depress fertility rates. Thus the Atlantic slave trade produced tens of millions of ‘lost people' for Africa including those who physically disappeared and the unborn generations.

The Atlantic slave trade was followed by colonialism, which also brought its own demographic depredations on the continent. Colonialism entailed an encounter between Africa and Europe that encompassed multiple spheres (from politics, economy, and culture to sexuality, psychology and representations), spatial scales (from the local and individual colonial territories to sub-regions and the continent as a whole), and social groups and inscriptions (from the colonizers and colonized to class and gender). Despite their differences, colonial economies were exceedingly coercive and wasteful of human lives and wellbeing.

The use of coercive and exploitative labor practices to build and sustain colonial capitalisms resulted in appallingly high mortality rates due to poor working and living conditions and brutality in the centers of colonial production. For example, in the Belgian Congo, French Equatorial Africa, and Portuguese Africa it was normal for up to one-fifth of workforce to die a year. King Leopold's Red Rubber kingdom, which left 10 million dead, remains to this day the site of Africa's and one of the world's worst genocides. During World War I and World War II, more conscripted African troops died from poor conditions than combat. The colonial agrarian economy encouraged cash crop production at the expense of food production, which led to the growth of hunger and famines. According to one exhaustive study of African medical history, the period from 1900 to 1930 was the unhealthiest in African history.

Decolonization was undoubtedly a great achievement for African and other colonized peoples, one of the monumental events of the 20^th century. It is revealing that Africa's demographic recovery began in the 1950s and accelerated from the 1960s. The continent's record of performance since independence, its efforts to achieve the five historic and humanistic agendas of African nationalism--decolonization, nation-building, development, democracy, and regional integration--is extremely complex and uneven across postcolonial periods, countries and regions, social classes, economic sectors, genders and age groups, which fit neither into the unrelenting gloom of the Afro-pessimists nor the unyielding hopes of the Afro-optimists.

What can be said with certainty is that postcolonial Africa has undergone profound transformations in some areas and not in others. Development remains elusive amidst the rapid economic growth of the early post-independence era, the debilitating recessions of the lost structural adjustment decades, and the tentative recoveries of more recent years. But the African population is much bigger than at independence, registering the world's highest growth rates despite all the calamities of war, disease, and natural disasters; it is more educated, more socially differentiated, and more youthful than ever. This is an eloquent reflection of both the socioeconomic achievements and challenges of postcolonial Africa, that the continent has made huge strides in investing in the welfare of its peoples and has a long way to go.

According to United Nations data, since 1950 world population growth rates have been as follows (in percentage terms): 1.77 (1950-1955), 1.80 (1955-1960), 1.94 (1960-1965), 2.02 (1965-1970), 1.94 (1970-1975), 1.77 (1975-1980), 1.76 (1980-1985), 1.75 (1985-1990), 1.54 (1990-1995), 1.36 (1995-2000), 1.26 (2000-2005), and 1.18 (2005-2010). During the same periods, Africa's population growth rates have been 2.18 (1950-1955), 2.35 (1955-1960), 2.46 (1960-1965), 2.59 (1965-1970), 2.65 as follows: 1.77 (1950-1955), 1.80 (1955-1960), 1.94 (1960-1965), 2.02 (1965-1970), 1.94 (1970-1975), 2.82 (1975-1980), 2.85 (1980-1985), 2.77 (1985-1990), 2.57 (1990-1995), 2.41 (1995-2000), 2.34 (2000-2005), and 2.29 (2005-2010).

This data reveals that Africa's population growth rates peaked in 1980-1985 and have registered a steady decline since then. Africa's total fertility (number of children per woman) has changed from 6.63 in 1950-1955 to 6.69 in 1970-1975 to 5.65 in 1990-1995 to 4.61 in 2005-2010, while the world average during the same years has fallen from 4.92 in 1950-1955 to 4.32 in 1970-1975 to 3.08 in 1990-1995 to 2.56 in 2005-2010. As for life expectancy, Africa still lags behind the world, but it has witnessed steady improvements.  World life expectancy rose from 46.6 in 1950-1955 to 66.4 in 200-2005, while for Africa it rose from 38.7 to 52.7 during the same period.

Africa has the world's most youthful population, with a median age of 19.1 in 2005 compared to 26.0 for Latin America and the Caribbean, 27.4 for Asia, 36.2 for Northern America, and 38.9 for Europe. Not surprisingly, Africa's population is predicted to continue growing faster than the rest of the world. In forty years, by 2050, it is projected Africa will have nearly 2 billion people (or 21.8% out of the world's 9 billion people) compared to 5.2 billion in Asia, 729 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, 691 million in Europe (down from this year's 732 million), and 448 million in Northern America.   

What does all this portend for Africa, Africans, and the world? Does it entail doom or development, boon or burden? There are of course no shortage of pessimists and optimists. Whatever the answer, it is hard to generalize about Africa's 54 countries whose histories are as diverse as their prospects, and whose futures, like all futures, are not entirely predictable. It is worth remembering how China and India, the emerging economic and geopolitical heartlands of the Asian century, used to be dismissed not so long ago as overpopulated global ghettoes of irredeemable poverty. Coming closer to home, in my own lifetime the idea of African independence, not to mention the demise of the apartheid laagers of Southern Africa, were inconceivable to Africa's many foes and flaky friends.

This is why as a historian, I find crystal-gazing into the future a rather hazardous enterprise best left to soothsayers. However, I tend to empathize with those who believe in the remarkable agency of African peoples across the continent and in the diaspora who overcame the mighty and pernicious forces of slavery, colonialism, and are struggling daily and valiantly against postcolonial misrule and the contemporary forms of global marginalization. So I cannot resist my own prognostication, or rather, project my own fondest dreams for this beloved continent: the billionth African will grow up in a much more developed, urbanized and democratic Africa, an Africa more capable of achieving the enduring goals of African nationalism and progressive internationalism, an Africa that will seek and earn its rightful place in the global concert of peoples and power.  

The following article, commemorating the billionth African, offers intriguing reflections. PT Zeleza, The Zeleza Post

Change Beckons for Billionth African By David Smith

Africa's rapidly growing population projected to see urbanisation, economic growth, health and climate problems

The baby's name and nationality are not known. The child will grow up innocent of having a place in history. But somewhere, this year, that child became the billionth person in Africa, the continent with the fastest growing population in the world.

Climbing from 110 million in 1850, Africa's headcount reached this threshold in 2009, according to the United Nations, although patchy census data in many countries means that no one can say where or when.

By 2050, the population is projected to almost double, to 1.9 billion. Pessimists predict a human tide that will put an unbearable burden on food, jobs, schools, housing and healthcare. Yet optimists sense an opportunity to follow billion-strong China and India in pursuing economic growth.

"It's not a problem," said Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-born British entrepreneur. "Africa is underpopulated. We have 20% of the world's landmass and 13% of its population. We have a bulge of young people and that brings to the marketplace a huge workforce, whereas Europe's population is ageing. We need to focus on education and training."

Africans born today are likely to live not in a village but in a "mega-city" since the continent's rate of urbanisation is the fastest the world has yet seen. Deaths from smoking or car crashes will be a factor as much as the more familiar health issues of malnutrition, malaria and Aids. These citizens will also be vulnerable to droughts, floods and desertification caused by climate change.

But the children of 2009 will also have opportunities undreamed of by their ancestors. They will almost certainly own a mobile phone, or perhaps two, and eventually get regular internet access. They may be better off - Africa has the fastest economic growth this year outside China and India. They will have tentative grounds to hope for better governance and fewer wars.

If, that is, they can stay alive beyond infancy. Richmond Tiemoko, population and development adviser for the Africa regional office of the UN population fund (UNFPA), said: "The first challenge for the baby ... is to survive because, although it's declining, child mortality is still high. For the young people coming, the challenge is to get a good education so they are fully incorporated in modern society. That depends on government investment in them and their mother, and also in health services to ensure they survive and are healthy."

Africa's population has doubled in the past 27 years, with Nigeria's and Uganda's numbers climbing the fastest. Whereas in 1950 there were two Europeans for every African, by 2050 there will be two Africans for every European. Even China's projected population of 1.4 billion in 40 years will be shrinking, while India will be adding only 3 million a year to its 1.6 billion people. Women in Africa still bear more children than in other regions. The US-based Population Reference Bureau reported this year that, while the average woman worldwide has 2.6 children, in sub-Saharan Africa the figure is 5.3. The world's highest fertility rate is in Niger, where women have on average 7.4 children.

Africa's population continues to rise because of low life expectancy, Tiemoko explained. "Traditionally in all societies, when mortality is high, fertility tends to be high. When people are dying the population tries to offset that by having more children to make sure the survival rate is acceptable. Mortality has largely declined on the continent but is still high."

Whereas globally 62% of married women of childbearing age use contraception, in Africa the figure is 28%.

Tiemoko added: "Women's access to reproductive health services is still limited because of under-development, poverty and sometimes limited education or resources. There's still a demographic momentum ... population will continue to grow for some time, that's why investment in young people, women, vulnerable populations, is crucial."

Sub-Saharan Africa has the world's most youthful population "and is projected to stay that way for decades", the bureau said. In 2050 the continent is expected to have 349 million people aged 15-24, or 29% of the world's total, compared with 9% in 1950. This could pay off as a "demographic dividend" of people of working age.

But access to quality healthcare and education remains the biggest challenge, according to Alex Vines, head of the Africa programme at the London-based thinktank Chatham House. "These services remain poor for the majority of Africans and these are one for the greatest impediments for African growth."

A momentous shift from the countryside is starting, leading to the rapacious expansion of cities such as Lagos and Cairo. But with it comes urban poverty in slums such as those of Kibera in Kenya, and the Cape Flats in South Africa. Vines added: "Africa will become increasingly urbanised, with global mega-cities. This will raise significant logistical and governance and supply challenges, including for international development practitioners such as DfID that has tended to focus its expertise on rural poverty reduction."

Urbanisation has other unwanted consequences. The continent has the most lethal roads in the world: it is predicted that by 2020 more people will die in traffic accidents than from HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria combined.

Heart attacks, strokes, cancers, diabetes, asthma and other chronic diseases caused by smoking tobacco are expected to account for 46% of deaths in Africa by 2030, up from 25% in 2004.

Africa is also already experiencing climate change. By 2020, up to 250 million people on the continent could be exposed to water stress, the UN says, with agricultural yields halved in some countries. The International Food Policy Research Institute predicts that an additional 15 million children will be malnourished. Diseases such as malaria are expected to spread. Population growth could pile more pressure on scarce resources and hinder development. A report by the UNFPA says: "Twenty years of almost 3% annual population growth has outpaced economic gains, leaving Africans, on average, 22% poorer than they were in the mid-1970s."

Analysts say the continent must consolidate its patchwork of small countries and 30 overlapping trade blocs into a single huge market. Today, intra-regional trade accounts for just 9% of Africa's total commerce, compared with nearly 50% for emerging Asia.

Ibrahim, head of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, said: "In Africa we have 53 mini-states with bad communication, bad roads, bad markets. That's the road to disaster ... that's why I put the economic integration of Africa top of the agenda."

There are signs of promise. Africans are buying mobile phones at a world record rate, with takeup soaring by 550% in five years. The internet has empowered civil society to hold governments accountable as never before. Renewable energy technologies, including wind and solar power, rainwater tanks and biofuel cookers, promise to transform lives in rural areas.

"I'm optimistic," Ibrahim said. "We have seen the rise of civil society in Africa and it's no longer feasible to have bad governance all over the place. I envy the billionth baby. I'm sure he or she will live through a much better Africa than the one we've known."

From The Guardian December 28, 2009