TY - JOUR
AU - Westcott, Nicholas
AB - The debate about global demography has tended to either marginalize or sensationalize Africa, a continent where the population is growing as fast as it is stagnating elsewhere. Edward Paice sets out to remedy that neglect and oversimplification present the facts and draw some practical conclusions. His book is a monument of industry, a mine of information and invaluable reading for anyone who wants to understand the scale and implications of Africa’s demographic growth for the continent itself and the world at large. Paice has compiled information and statistics from a wide range of sources in order to analyse the structure and dynamics of Africa’s growing population over the past 70 years, since 1950, and the prospects for the next 30 years to 2050. He judiciously evaluates competing estimates from the UN Population Department and the Wittgenstein Centre for Population and Global Human Capital (in chapter 8) and tries to disentangle how Africa’s population change is seen from what is actually happening. There is no question, however, that Africa’s population remains the critical variable in global population projections up to 2050 and beyond: other continents have broadly ‘stabilized’, Africa has not—yet. Paice explores the range of factors, including the position of women and the role of education (chapters 7, 10, 11 and 12), that underpin Africa’s continued population growth, and underlines the differences in growth rates between different countries and regions. He concludes that a ‘demographic transition’, where the birth rate trends downwards towards replacement rather than expansion and population numbers stabilize, is still some way off in Africa as a whole. At one extreme, Niger, which currently has 10 times its population in 1950 (24 million compared to 2.6 million), is projected to have 25 times that number by 2050 (p. 20). At the other end, in much of southern Africa, there is a consistent trend towards lower growth. In the meantime, the ‘dependency ratio’ (proportion of non-working-age to working-age population) will continue to rise as workers have to support more children and, to a lesser extent in Africa, retirees (p. 29). Coronavirus disease, while raising the death rate, has also raised the dependency ratio by killing more older people. Urbanization will continue to accelerate, but its impact on population growth is mixed and unlikely to change trends powered by other forces (chapter 13). The book emphasises that perceptions matter as well as facts and devotes a lot of attention to how Africa’s population growth was perceived. In the 1970s and the 1980s, western panic about global overpopulation led to active campaigns promoting ‘family planning’, especially contraception. Paice demonstrates that these had little impact on population trends and have themselves provoked a political reaction from a number of African analysts and politicians, including Museveni and Magufuli, urging their citizens to have more children not less to strengthen the countries and overcome Africa’s historic underpopulation (chapter 2). In the 1990s, the emphasis shifted 180° to the argument that population growth would deliver a major ‘demographic dividend’ to Africa, its youthful population providing a major stimulus to economic growth, this becoming an integral part of the ‘Africa rising’ narrative. Paice’s conclusion (chapters 14–16) is that argument for a demographic dividend is now made primarily for political–rhetorical purposes rather than having any demonstrable basis in fact. There are both costs and benefits from a growing population, and other factors will determine whether this helps or hinders economic growth. He equally rejects the revived ‘crisis narrative’ that predicts a demographic disaster driving conflict and forced migration: it is all more complicated than that (chapter 19). But there is no question over the challenge that population growth creates to find jobs for the ever-growing number of young people entering the jobs market. This is the focus of the book’s later chapters. Paice is sceptical of those who argue that individual entrepreneurship and a thriving informal sector will generate adequate job growth to absorb the numbers—this has not been the experience to date in any of the major African economies, including South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya or Ethiopia (chapters 17 and 18). His conclusion is that African youth are likely to become more politically active in seeking policies that will respond to their needs, posing a challenge to existing ruling elites. Whether this will accelerate democratic change, exacerbate conflict or stimulate greater migration, Paice does not try to predict. Taking a strictly empirical approach is both the book’s strength and weakness. There is scope for more exploration of the causes and consequences of Africa’s extraordinary demographic growth, even though this trespasses on the more politically controversial ground. To understand why Africa’s total fertility rate remains so high would need more attention to the anthropological literature that looks at the micro-dynamics of African families in their lived environments and the economic rationale for large families in poor countries, where the more children you have, the more chance that one at least will find a job and be able to look after parents in their old age. Paice cites African demographers who have argued that the continent’s continued high fertility rate is entirely rational and by no means exceptional compared to other continents when they faced similar conditions (p. 122). But this deserves further exploration as the policy response of African governments needs to be based on a deeper understanding of the dynamic. Trying to discuss population growth with Niger’s then-President Issoufou some years ago drew a blank: ‘It is growing too fast, we know, but we cannot discuss these things in public’, he told me. Similarly, the potential consequences of this past and projected future growth raise important questions touched on only very briefly in the final chapter (chapter 20). Admittedly, that is not the author’s main purpose even if it is the reader’s interest to know. It leaves plenty of scope for future research into the extent such population growth will feed internal and external migration, potential conflict over scarcer resources and greater innovation in agriculture and urban business. Paice’s book nevertheless provides an essential foundation, helpfully bringing together a vast amount of the most recent research on African demography and adjudicating it with a professional and dispassionate eye. The debates will continue, but on a better-informed basis. © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
TI - Book Review
JO - African Affairs
DO - 10.1093/afraf/adac023
DA - 2022-06-29
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/book-review-Gvu3bZjGaC
SP - 501
EP - 503
VL - 121
IS - 484
DP - DeepDyve
ER -