This year, several articles in mainstream papers have sounded the alarm that the global human fertility rate will soon cross below the point needed to keep the population constant. Anxiety that our species is about to die out seems a bit premature, given that we’re still predicted to add another three billion to the world population before levelling off. Furthermore, these reports always gloss over a key outlier because it undermines the case for our imminent extinction: Africa.

In middle Africa, three-quarters of the population endures moderate to severe food insecurity

A leading reason that continental Europe is shifting to the political right is popular concern about mass immigration. So I’m putting Europeans and their short-sighted representatives on notice: you folks haven’t seen anything yet.

Forgive the blitz of arithmetic, but these numbers are eye-popping (and thanks to Paul Morland and Edward Paice of the Africa Research Institute and the UN population database). Regionally, Africa’s are the only population projections the UN has steadily been obliged to raise. In 1950, there were 200 million Africans, just over a third of the number of Europeans (550 million). Currently about 1.5 billion, Africa’s population should reach 2.5 billion by 2050 and almost four billion by 2100, when Africans will constitute about 40 per cent of our species, outnumbering Europeans six-to-one.

This is the UN’s ‘medium’ population estimate, which assumes Africa’s birth rate subsides to just below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. But the UN’s ‘high estimate’ envisages Africa’s total fertility rate (TFR) staying above 2.5 and the population rising to 5.4 billion by 2100. By then, some 43 per cent of the world’s under-18s would be African. Demographic momentum would likely ensure the continent’s population keeps growing into the next century.

During the historic fecundity of the 19th century that facilitated colonialism, the European population doubled. In the same length of time, 1950-2050, Africans will have increased by a factor of ten. Eight African countries will have increased by a factor of 15; Niger – where women still average 6.7 children and the population doubled in the past two decades – by a factor of 25.

Experts regard it as inevitable that as poor countries develop, the birth rate drops. But last year, Africa’s TFR was 4.2, sub-Saharan Africa’s 4.6. This fertility rate has barely changed for 70 years. Africa is not getting with the programme.

Take Nigeria, whose population is expected to rise from 225 million now to about 375 million by 2050, vying with the US to become the third-most populous country in the world. Nigeria still has a TFR of 5.1. Twenty years ago, its TFR was 6.0 – so the decrease in family size has been slow. Yet half the country lives in extreme poverty, one of the highest rates on the continent.

Are elevated birthrates simply due to inadequate provision of contraception? Probably not. For example, in West and Central Africa in 2015, women averaged 5.5 children. But they undershot their desired family size by half a child. They’d rather have had six. Most Africans don’t accidentally have big families. They want big families.

READ MORE