Africa’s Population Boom: Dividend, Burden, or the Question That Defines the Century
B y 2050, Africa will be home to approximately 2.5 billion people, roughly one quarter of the global population. By 2100, the median projection puts the continent’s population at between 3.5 and 4 billion, more than any other region on Earth. [1] These numbers are not projections in the speculative sense. They are the almost certain demographic consequence of fertility rates that, while declining, remain substantially higher than any other major world region, combined with significant reductions in child mortality that have sharply increased the proportion of children who survive to working age. The political and analytical conversation about what this demographic trajectory means for Africa oscillates between two poles. The optimist framing, dominant in development economics and international investment literature since roughly 2010, presents Africa’s youth bulge as a demographic dividend: the economic windfall that accrues to a society when a large cohort of working-age adults sup...