“Rapid population growth raises the stakes for African governments”
I share Edward Miguel’s cautious optimism: the new millennium has started out well for Africa. Democracy is making steady progress, with genuinely contested elections more common and the press increasingly free. GDP per capita is growing at an average rate of 3 percent per year—not East-Asian miracle levels, but quite respectable for any developing country, and a sea change from the previous several decades in Africa. Foreign investment is rising; inflation has dropped in most countries; debt has fallen; and foreign exchange reserves have risen. High commodity prices have been a big driver of African growth, but there is evidence that the current boom is more broadly based. The explosive growth of cell phones (from 7.5 million users in 1999 to 100 million today), which are making markets more efficient and alleviating Africa’s curse of bad transportation networks, shows how technology and entrepreneurial innovation can radically change the economic environment. Finally, rapid economic growth in the rest of the developing world, particularly China and India, can only be to Africa’s advantage, and not only by raising commodity prices. As other countries get rich, there will be more demand for expensive sport shoes, and fewer people in the world poor enough to stitch them—and so the jobs (and millions like them) may migrate to Africa.
I also agree with Miguel that political developments on the continent will be critical to determining whether current growth in Africa will hold: war, instability, or a return to inept governance can easily stall gains for several decades.
But Miguel is silent on an important issue affecting Africa’s economic future: population growth. Start with the numbers: While world population as a whole has grown by a factor of 2.6 since 1950, in Africa it grew by a factor of 4.3. In 2005, 753 million people lived in sub-Saharan Africa. The United Nations forecasts that between 2005 and 2050, the population of Africa will increase by a factor of 2.3. In Kenya, the country on which Miguel focuses, population grew from 13.5 million in 1975 to 35.6 million today, and is forecast to reach 84.8 million by 2050.
The primary reason for Africa’s rapid population growth is what demographers call a “stalled demographic transition.” In the decades following World War II, mortality rates on the continent declined rapidly as medical and public health technologies from rich countries rapidly diffused. Historically, and in other parts of the world, such mortality declines are usually followed, within a generation or two, by similar declines in fertility to a level commensurate with relatively stable population. But in Africa the decline in fertility has been very slow, with the number of children per woman falling from 6.7 to 5.3 between1950 and 2005. By contrast, fertility in Southeast Asia fell from 6.0 children per woman to 2.5 over the same period.
The reasons declining fertility has trailed so much behind declining mortality in Africa are not fully understood. Cultural factors—including the low status of women—are clearly at work. The fact that Africa experienced a decline in mortality at a level of income much lower than the rest of the world is probably part of the story, too. Furthermore, mortality levels have not fallen as low as elsewhere in the developing world. Family planning’s departure from the international development agenda while fertility in Africa was still high may also have played a small role.
Rapid population growth has produced sufficient “demographic momentum” that even if the current fertility rate declines precipitously, population will continue to grow quickly for several generations. Indeed, the UN forecast assumes a relatively steep fall in fertility, from its current level of 5.3 children per woman to 2.5 by 2050. If fertility does not fall so quickly, population growth will be even higher.
Thus, failing some catastrophe of unprecedented proportions, Africa is going to experience a huge increase in population over the next several decades. How will that population growth affect economic development? Discussions of this issue tend to fall into one of two camps: apocalyptic and dismissive. The middle-ground view—that rapid population growth makes development more difficult, but not impossible—is surprisingly unpopular.
The most obvious dimension along which population growth will matter is food. Africa already skates along the edge of food shortage. In 2005, 29 percent of children under five were underweight. Africa is currently a small net importer of grain, but with food prices on international markets scaling new heights, food grown outside the continent is unlikely to fill many bellies.
All this would be a recipe for disaster if Africa could not grow enough food for itself, but in fact it can. For a variety of reasons, African agriculture is extraordinarily unproductive in terms of food output relative to land and labor resources used. The yield of maize—one of the region’s primary food crops—per acre planted has been unchanged in sub-Saharan Africa since 1975; over the same period yields more than doubled in every other region of the developing world. Per-acre grain yields in Kenya, which is among Africa’s most productive countries, are two-thirds the level of India, and slightly more than half those in Mexico.
Some of Africa’s low agricultural productivity is due to climate and geography, but a good deal is man-made. Sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa, accounts for only 1 percent of world fertilizer use. Only 20 percent of the area sown in maize uses modern varieties, compared to more than 50 percent in South Asia and Latin America. Irrigation is rare (4 percent of farm land, as opposed to 37 percent in Asia), even where it is technically feasible.
Why does a region capable of providing for itself maintain such poor agricultural practice? The problem lies in the economic and institutional arrangements that determine farmers’ options. African governments spent much of the post-independence period creating institutions—such as marketing boards and price controls—that disadvantaged farmers for the benefit of city dwellers. Fertilizer use stagnated in the 1980s as governments removed subsidies in the face of massive budget deficits. The private sector has not filled the vacuum left by the dismemberment of parastatal—state-owned and partially state-owned—companies; facilities to advance credit to farmers to pay for fertilizer and seeds, and to provide insurance against bad weather that would make borrowing possible, have not developed. Because of its unique ecology, Africa has been unable to make much use of agricultural technology that raised productivity in most of the rest of the world, and its governments—weak and with other priorities—have not built the research infrastructure necessary to tailor crops to local conditions.
In addition, pressure to feed a growing population has led to shortening of fallow periods and overgrazing, which have degraded soil quality. The area of land under cultivation has increased by 80 percent since 1960, with much of the newly cultivated land of marginal quality. Three quarters of farmland in sub-Saharan Africa has suffered significant depletion of soil nutrients
The good news is that to the extent that low agricultural productivity is a man-made problem, it can readily be fixed. The Millennium Villages project has shown that providing fertilizer and improved seeds to African farmers can have an enormous positive effect on agricultural productivity. The yield gap between typical farms and demonstration plots using best available techniques is a factor of three. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa is working to develop improved seeds, educate farmers, and improve the distribution systems for agricultural inputs.
A second dimension along which population will matter is urbanization. Africa is the least urban continent, but also the most rapidly urbanizing, with urban populations growing at 5 percent per year. Seventy percent of Africa’s urban population lives in slums, with most living in improvised dwellings of scrap lumber, corrugated metal, and plastic sheeting. Terrible crowding along with a lack of sanitation and clean water make urban slums hotbeds for disease. And yet for the majority of residents, this lifestyle represents an improvement over the rural poverty they fled.
Once again, rapid urbanization can be a recipe for disaster, but it does not have to be. Largely a problem in governance and institutions, improving living standards in African cities requires spending on infrastructure and the political will to grant slum dwellers ownership of the land on which they currently squat. Even more significantly, urban poverty will only be ameliorated by the creation of an institutional environment in which private businesses can thrive. The vast number of informal enterprises present in the typical urban slum is testament to the entrepreneurial energy of the residents as well as the legal environment that makes opening a formal business impossible. But only formal businesses, which have better access to credit and can use the legal system to enforce contracts, are going to grow large enough to create jobs. The world is awash in capital that would readily flow to Africa to take advantage of abundant cheap labor, if there were good governance. Low corruption and rule of law are crucial.
Rapid population growth will make good governance harder to achieve. It puts great strain on government finance, as schools and infrastructure must be provided for ever more people. More directly, higher population exacerbates land scaracity, which is a potentially explosive issue. Land shortages are thought to have been one of the preconditions for the horrific ethnic violence that exploded in Rwanda and Burundi in the mid-1990s, and the recent post-election violence in Kenya was driven by politicians exploiting a widespread sense of injustice regarding the distribution of land. Urbanization may also hinder the establishment of good governance. Urban slums, lawless to begin with, and well stocked with young men who have little to lose, are potential flashpoints for political violence, as was the case in Kenya.
Neither food shortage nor urbanization need spell disaster for Africa, but they raise the stakes for the performance of African governments. If governments tack back toward old dysfunctional ways, they are unlikely to head off catastrophe. Political violence will scare away the foreign donors who are investing in the future of African agriculture, as well as the foreign trade and capital required to provide jobs for urban slum dwellers.
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About the Author
David N. Weil is Professor of Economics at Brown University and Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He is co-director of the NBER project on African development success.
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