The Population Optimism and Development in Africa (Wild Thought)!

On the 12th of October 1999 the world population was officially at 6 billion. In the year 2013 it will reach7 billion and in the year 2054 it will be 9 billion and stabilize at 10 billion by 2200 according to the United Nations. Developing countries currently account for 80% of the global population. Asia accounts for 61% of developing world’s population driven by giants such as India and China. The global annual rate of population peaked at 2.04% p.a. in the 1960’s and declined to 1.33% by 1999. The population of the developing world is currently growing at a rate of 1.59. The most notable of the growth rates is Africa which exceeds 2.3% p.a., being the highest growth rate in any major area of the world.

My “wild” reflection focuses on Africa and its quest for development given the current annual growth rate of 2.3%. Many demographic writings a decade a go did not regard the high rates of population in poor countries a worrying matter. But this seems to have changed in the recent writings (Dasgupta 1993). Confronted with data (especially panel data from different countries-developed and developing), and depending on how they are proxied, the link between population and development is not unequivocal. As already advanced, population is a source of labor, it creates demand, it’s a source of savings and investment etc (off course, from a purely economistic point of view). On the hand, population causes a strain on the available resources, especially is a large part of it is ‘unproductive’, that is people who are not working and but are consuming- a typical example of most of the developing countries. Off course, as it is the case with the latter, if the population grows faster than growth (especially economic growth) then we expect a definite negative relationship between the two. Which brings in the issue of policy, that is, the need to develop policies that will ensure population growth is commensurate to growth.


The policies, according to Sen and others need to take care ‘initial conditions’. People are initially provided with capabilities, then (i) they are empowered with the ability to angage in productive activities, create more opportunities; (2) they are also empowered to make decisions about their relative sizes of their families (education is key functioning here). For the latter argument, another text writer, Micheal Todaro agrees with Sen that investing in human capital, especially education is the top priority to deal with this policy issue. Todaro reasons it very simply… for instance, a girl who has primary school education, is well empowered to plan her family….she understands the importance of trees as she will not go all over cutting them and educated farmers conserve the environment more than the uneducated ones. Todaro calls this as social benefits of education. Educated people too plan better the number of their families.


In summary, both population growth which is not accompanied by equal growth leads to poverty, which is a sign of underdevelopment. In resource economics issues of carrying capacity also play a major role. Seminal work on population includes Malthus (1798) essay on the principle of population and Boserup (1965) criticized Malthusian theory on the basis that it ignored the role of technological changes occasioned by population pressure, thereby reversing the Malthus argument that growing population would expand into more marginal land, and returns to labour would inevitably decline. Morrison shows that the industrial revolution helped the world break from this trap in 1800. Could the ever growing population be a blessing for Africa when productivity is very low and poverty levels are escalating? Isn’t this what happened in Asia? Is the problem in Africa the population or “the conditions” as spelt by Armatya Sen?