← Into Africa
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- [00:02]
A
By the year 2050, one in four people on the planet will be African. The choices that we make now across Africa will shape the world's collective future. Welcome to the Youth Bloom, where we explore the stories, the trends, and the issues we face in the present that will define the coming decades. I'm your host, Katherine N. Suzuki. Africa's population is projected to reach 2.5 billion people by 2050. That would mean that one in four people in the world will be African by 2050. This is a projection with vast implications that I'm still wrapping my head around, hence this podcast. And today I'm joined by Dr. Jennifer Schuba, President and CEO of the Population Reference Bureau and one of the foremost experts in the field of political demography. Jen, welcome.
- [01:13]
B
Thank you, Katherine. So glad to be talking to you.
- [01:16]
A
Let's just start from the basics. We know that Africa's population is projected to reach 2.5 billion people by 2050. We're currently at 1.5 billion. How do demographers and experts like you project population growth?
- [01:33]
B
Fertility plays a really big role in those projections. So if we think about population change, and in this case, size is the question, but we also sometimes think about composition, et cetera. So population size, there's just three ingredients of population change. It's births, deaths and migration, in or out migration. When we're doing these long term projections, those fertility trends, they really do the heaviest work for us. It's math, right? So if you think about the way that populations will grow exponentially because you might have a very large cohort of childbearing ages, and so we see them go throughout their life course. So if we have a big boom in babies in a certain year, we know that by the time they're of reproductive ages, how many babies they have will really matter for charting the course of population size. So there are disagreements, though, of course, about how you arrive at those assumptions about fertility, because that's really what it is. You're making some guesses, educated, informed guesses, but guesses about what those trends will do in the future for life expectancies. Let's leave fertility aside for a minute. On the mortality part of things, the how long do we live? We've had some general linear improvements in terms of life expectancy, and so those will factor in to any projections about the future. You know, if you're looking at a relatively poor country, for example, most of their gains in the mortality sphere are going to be gains in infant and child mortality versus, if we're thinking about a really high Income country, if they're having improvements, it's often at the end of life, adding extra years onto the end of life there. One of those affects fertility and the other one doesn't. If you're adding numbers of years onto the end of life, well, frankly, that doesn't really interact as much with those fertility trends. But if you have gains in infant and child mortality, what you're essentially doing is, and rightly so, helping people live to their reproductive ages. So migration, of course, can be an incredibly powerful force, often very difficult to predict. And so that's tough when we're factoring in assumptions on that. But the really big mover in terms of population size is fertility trends, I imagine.
- [03:40]
A
And I suppose that in the African countries that have the highest rate of population growth, it's these gains that we've made in race, reducing infant mortality and maternal health. Would you say that's true?
- [03:53]
B
I mean, the population growth, it is affected positively by helping people live longer into their reproductive years. You're going to see some additions from that. Sub Saharan Africa in particular is the region in the world of highest fertility rates. So they are well above what we call replacement level. Just think of replacement as roughly 2, 1 to replace each parent. And so there are, of course, many countries in sub Saharan Africa that still have rates well above replacement, and therefore those populations are growing incredibly rapidly. So when we tend to make these guesses about how large the population of Africa will be in the future, we're making guesses about how quickly fertility rates will actually continue to fall. And we're making pretty standard assumptions about the pace at which we'll be able to tackle infant and child mortality. So there's less question about the death part of things, and there's a lot more questions about how fast do you really think it will fall? Because in other parts of the world, it fell really rapidly, from high to low. There's a lot of discussion among demographers about whether or not some African states are in a stall. That's the word that they would use. Using the word stall tells you right there that there was an assumption that it would fall quickly. And therefore, if it is not falling quickly, therefore, that must be a stall. So when we're projecting out to 2050, we have to take a look at each of these places and make some guesses about the pace at which we'll see those declines happen.
- [05:17]
A
I mean, this conversation is incredibly fascinating to me because it almost seems like there are two different conversations happening. We're in sub Saharan Africa, we're planning and thinking ahead about our population growth. And in most of the remainder of the world, the conversation is now about population decline and depopulation and so on. Would you mind giving us an overview of what is driving this inverse process in the rest of the world?
- [05:43]
B
Sure. And yeah, it is really tough. I mean, if somebody gives me only 30 seconds to describe world population, I basically just have to pick one of those, right? Because they are just two very different things that are true at the same time. And that's really hard for us to grasp, especially because we're used to talking about population in terms of exponential growth. So now we have two out of every three people on the planet live somewhere with below replacement fertility. There are dozens and dozens of shrinking countries in the world today. That's in stark opposition to when we see this tremendous growth and this doubling in 30, 35 years of some of our highest fertility countries. And so I think it's most useful for us when we're going to say something like declines in fertility rates, to actually separate that one will be a decline from very high, let's say six, seven, maybe even five, six, seven children per woman to too low, around replacement or below. The other is declines from roughly replacement level or just below it, to very far below. And that's where there's a lot to learn these days. And that's what we're really seeing. So I think many people are familiar that South Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world, probably around 0.6 or 0.7. Official numbers have been 0.7. Unofficially, I've heard that they're moving to. It's really more like 0.6 children born per woman. In Taiwan, you're looking at one child per woman on average. Singapore, same thing. Even in Finland now is 1.3 children born per woman. And so over time, of course, absent extremely mass migration, like really, really mass migration, the deaths outnumber births and a country's population begins to shrink. And the same way we have momentum for growth, we have momentum for depopulation as well. Because we're back to math. How many people are there of reproductive ages in a society? So even if you see a spike in birth rates, the population can continue to decrease.
- [07:36]
A
That's so fascinating. And now to just almost switch back. Whenever I think about, you know, Africa's population growth, I'm struck by something that I guess is fairly obvious, which is countries in Africa are of course not the first to experience rapid population growth in recent decades. Countries like India, Vietnam and Pakistan come to mind. What were the economic and social and political impacts of rapid population growth in these countries or elsewhere in the world.
- [08:06]
B
That's a great question and I'm glad you pointed that out about India. I was reflecting before we got on here together about how Africa really has not figured prominently in the global population history. But it recently, I would say we're at this point right now where it's receiving an outsized amount of attention when it comes to population. Even a fixation perhaps on Africa's population growth. Even during the population boom era, which let's call this the 1960s and 70s, the population boom era, Africa received quite little attention compared to other places. Africa as a whole had two thirds the population of India in the 1970s. And so there was the real fixation on India also, partly because India was one government. And if you're going to think about, you know, dealing with population, Africa, you're thinking about, of course, many, many governments here. So what do we know about countries that have rapid population growth and their economic or social or political outcomes? There are only a few things that we really know and many more things that are our questions. We know that. And maybe I'll give you a different answer than other people would because I'm a political scientist and economists will give you a very different answer. But I would say we know that governments could really ride the wave of there always being new people entering the labor market and therefore established systems that relied on that. I mean, that brings us to India now is the low replacement fertility rate. So what does that mean for their future in East Asia? Countries that had they had this rapid economic growth, Think about, as we used to call them, of course, the Asian tigers. Population structure, age structure really benefited those countries. More people of working ages relative to child and old age dependence. And that played a role. Economists would differ on what percentage of the role. But you know, you see estimates up to about 20% and really driving that economic growth in those places. But it wasn't that demography was destiny. And so to bring India back into it, there have been a lot of questions about, well, will India really reap the benefits of its demographic dividend? The dividend is something though that you only get if you invest. We know this for many money we might put in our own account. So it's not automatic. You have what's called this window of opportunity. And it's a window because the way that population change happens over time is again very driven by these changes in fertility trends in particular, but mortality as well. The average age of a country changes over Time, the proportions of people who are of working ages and older age dependence change over time. So this window is really open when you've got a lot of people in the Middle Ages and it closes because you become top heavy, you go through this transition from very young to much older societies. And while you're in this window, you could reap a dividend. India, though, I would say really hasn't. Latin America, economists will also say, did not take full advantage of its demographic window of opportunity to reap the kind of dividend and economic growth that it could have. So we're left with the question, if we get to this stage for African nations, will they reap that dividend? Maybe.
- [11:17]
A
Before we go any further, actually, would you mind defining or explaining in a bit more detail what a demographic dividend is?
- [11:24]
B
What do we know about what sets this country up for success? I think it's a mistake to think that it will just be population age structure. And I think that's where often analyses will fall short. It's not just that, oh, because you'll have so many people of working ages, therefore your economy is going to be really strong and you'll maximize that. In East Asia they really had emphasized building a human capital foundation. So in terms of education and skills, that was really strong literacy, all of this. Export oriented economies are also helpful. Having good governance is helpful. Political stability is incredibly helpful for this dividend because you want people to want to invest. So fdi, all of these things come together. There's a lot of governance and economic policies that you need to have to take full advantage of your working age population. I think that's where we can have these questions. And I would be really curious what you would think as well. When you look at African nations, you know, where are the places that are perhaps best set up for taking advantage of a potential window of opportunity? In terms of demography, depending on how fast the fertility rates fall in these countries, the window is really short. So you might only have a couple of decades to reap that economic growth. And so you'd want to go ahead and put in place the types of policies now to capture the potential gains in the future.
- [12:48]
A
Yeah, the shortest answer is that I'm very concerned. I've been thinking about this. I've been talking to a lot of experts and I mean, Africa, huge continents, a lot of different states.
- [12:58]
B
Right.
- [12:59]
A
But the countries that are expected to have populations that double include the Central African Republic. Chad went through a coup recently. The Eastern DRC is actively in conflict. Mali went through a coup a Lot of the countries embroiled in conflict, Nigeria, coup embroiled in conflict to take advantage of demographic dividend. You know, the starting point is assuming we have legislatures and political figures that can sit down and come up with a very technocratic approach to building that human capital foundation. In a lot of these cases, quite frankly, we're not even there yet, right? We're still in wartime, we're still in conflict. On one hand, I get really excited by the opportunities that our demographics could present, especially at a time when the number of working age people in the rest of the world is starting to decrease. Right? Like there really could be an opportunity for the African workforce to be the future workforce, to put in policies in the present that emphasize, you know, digital skills in schools and vocational skills and so on. But like, I'm really worried, like, I want to be hopeful. But to even get to the point where we can have that discourse is going to require a level of stability that we currently don't have in a lot of the countries that are expected to have like populations that double. And it's not all of them. To be fair, Angola and Tanzania are pretty stable and especially Tanzania. And so Tanzania's got a Vision 2050 that they're building and they've got, you know, experts from the country coming together to build this. And that's great. But yeah, long story short, I'm really concerned and it makes me so sad, right, because back to that window, it almost seems like the window of opportunity is now, right? That if we were to like reform our education systems, for example, and again, invest in that human capital for a child born today, in 25 years, they're going to be the next software developers. Those are really my thoughts. It makes me sad. But there's also hope at the same
- [14:54]
B
time, the stability piece, it's just key because you just cannot plan long term if you don't even know who the leader is going to be in the future. And I think if I would want African leaders to know the ones who will be in power, who are in these stable governments, to not assume a dividend, I think that would be one of my key takeaways, is don't assume a dividend, invest. And I think the biggest mistake would be to just assume that the demography will set you up and you don't have to do the rest of it. And of course it's all going to go hand in hand as well. You know, it is difficult to govern and to have stability in societies that are growing that rapidly. I mean, I'm not one who vilifies population growth. That's just not a position that I would take at all. But we do know that it's difficult. And in fact there's research by political scientists and others that show that you're much more likely to have coups if you are this really rapidly growing and youthful population. So these things, they go together in a feedback loop. The more stability that a country has, the more likely they are to invest in education, opportunities for women to earn money outside the home. Then fertility rates will drop and the economy will grow.
- [16:02]
A
Yeah. And it makes a country more attractive for investment and so on.
- [16:07]
B
Right.
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A
I actually wanted to just dive into what you just said. It was a bit of a throwaway about not criticizing population growth. Truthfully, dare I say I was a little nervous entering this conversation because I know this field can have a lot of like, dare I say, landmines. I am of the conviction that the notion of overpopulation has to do with resource allocation. That it seems that the earth does have enough resources to support the people living here. It's just how resources are appropriated and allocated and misused. Anyways, that's how I'm approaching this. But I am curious how you think about this.
- [16:44]
B
I'm actually really grateful all the time, daily basis to be a political scientist who entered the population realm. And I don't know if all the demographers feel that way about me being in there, but it's because it ended up that politics is the lens through which I view demography. And that is what puts a great check on my ever thinking that demography is destiny, whether it's having to do with aging or population in the environment. And I have a background in environmental studies. I taught that in College for 15 years. And even with that it is so obvious that governance is so important. Population is also very important. I think, you know, if I'm looking at the world through a demographic lens, I'm going to ask different questions, get different answers than I would otherwise. We also need to look at demography through a political lens and realize that certainly it is the case that when you live in a country where 70% of the people rely on fuel wood for heating and cooking, which I don't know what Nigeria's current numbers are, but the last I had looked a couple of years ago, it was really still that high. And they have five children or more women on average, but the size of the land stays the same. There's clearly a relationship between population and resources in the people's immediate lives. So let's not pretend that that's not the case. But we also know that there can be really rapidly growing populations where famine does not break out. And I think the most useful studies for us to borrow from. I love Josh Busby's book, States in Nature, and it's about governance and environment. And he sets up these really nice comparative case studies, even including Ethiopia in a year where they should have had famine and Ethiopia in a year where they didn't. And everything was the same except for the governance part of it. And I think we need more studies so somebody can fund me and Catherine to go look into under what conditions does population growth lead to xyz. I think that's the most useful way to look at things, rather than that there's this deterministic relationship. So I don't want to be naive about it, but I also don't want to be deterministic about it.
- [18:53]
A
That sounds absolutely right to me that, like, there are choices that are personal choices. There are choices that are driven by social, political, economic factors that may lead to population growth or decline, but the function of the state or governance is ultimately a set of choices or the lack of choices that people make. I agree that the most generous interpretation of what is happening right now with Africa's population growth, or the most positive outcome would be a strong, like, African Union and strong multilateral diplomacy, where as a continent, we're like, okay, we have an opportunity. Like, we really have a phenomenal opportunity here. But, yeah, whether or not that manifests into or translates into policy is a whole other debate. One question I had for you was actually about the two different trends that are happening, right? Africa on one side has a growing population. And then we look at Europe and even the United States to a certain extent, where the conversation about declining populations or aging populations has not only become politicized, but also weaponized by politicians. And so there is this tone. Let's use the recent elections as an example where there's an us versus theme, right? Let's say us as, and I say this in air quotes. Americans, our population is declining as the rest of the world, or at least the global South. They're having younger people. And I'm being very euphemistic because the conversation is a bit tinged with xenophobia. When I step back and think about it, it almost seems like these two trends are on some sort of collision course, where at some point the labor shortages in the west will reach the point where it would make sense to allow for greater migration. Like these two trends could Be complementary. Right?
- [20:51]
B
They could. This could be great.
- [20:53]
A
Yeah, but why? Why? But, yeah, I want to hear your thoughts on that. Like the.
- [20:58]
B
But this is where again, I'm grateful to be a political scientist because I think it gives me and anybody else join the camp a very realistic view on how to use these projections. So what people might like to do, let's say you have an apolitical view, maybe an economic view, where you say, I'll look. Labor surplus on the African continent, sub Saharan Africa in particular. Labor shortage in the US Coming. And so US population is still growing at this point, but it is growing with a well below replacement fertility rate of 1.6. And we stopped all immigration. Now we'd shrink by over 30% by the end of the century. So we see these things happening. So hey, perfect match labor can just move across the borders. Well, of course, any political scientist or newspaper reader would tell you that is just not going to happen to that extent. And so add on to that all the other shrinking countries. And so I've had the opportunity in the past few months to travel more in Asia and there's a lot of questions there. So I'm gonna take it out of the US for just a second to say the US will be debating this forever. I will be dead gone, and this will still be a debate. But we're not the only people doing that. And so when we're at this global level, a couple of things I want people to realize. One is that as I just said, labor doesn't move freely like that. There's borders and policies. The other is imagine, you know, let's say there's 60 shrinking countries in the world right now. That means if they all decided that they'd like to use migration as their strategy to make up for workforce shortages, then now they are all competing over the same one person. Because another mistake I see people make is that they think that the supply of people is endless. So not only are borders fluid and labor will move to where you get the best price, they tend to think that the supply of migrants is endless and it is not. If we use to predict migration surveys that say, would you like to move elsewhere? You will vastly over predict migration. You know, especially there's all kinds of surveys in sub Saharan Africa. Would you like to move? 60% of people, I don't know, will say, yeah, sure, but they won't move. And there'll be many reasons for that. Maybe their own choice, maybe not their own choice, but this global supply of migrants is pretty small. We're looking like 4% of world population that lives outside the country in which they were born. So that means all these places will be competing over the same person. So I do not in any way, shape or form expect that we will have a world in the coming decades where labor will be perfectly mobile and move to exactly where it is needed. Migrants tend to follow patterns. Now, what does that mean? It means that a country like the US Actually will probably fare far better in attracting migrants than a country that's trying to break into this migration market. That, though, does depend on whether or not it is seen as a desirable place to be in the future. We'll keep getting some people. But to your sensitive question about all the different buts that could go in this will the United States be a place that is still actively welcoming of migrants in the coming decades so that we reap maybe a migration dividend in the world?
- [24:11]
A
My last question is, I'm admittedly a feminist and I've been always reading these stories through my lens. And I'm living in Washington, D.C. now, and a good number of my friends are very freely saying, oh, I don't think I want to have kids, right? Like, I don't want to have kids because it's expensive. I'm not interested. And all of those friends that do say that have the economic, or should I say the financial freedom to make autonomous choices about what they want to do with their lives. When I speak to friends in Tanzania, it's rare to hear somebody say they don't want kids. And I mean, to be fair, I'm coming from a middle class background and a lot of my friends were from similar backgrounds. Like, that's one set of conversations. But I just can't help but think that part of the driver for population growth in Africa and less women choosing to have kids in other parts of the world has to do with like autonomy and choice and financial choice. And so in that sense, I just, I imagine and I hope and I feel and I want to believe that part of this demographic dividend, right. If we really do manage to create the workforce of the future and invest in our human capital, that more women will have opportunities to make these choices for themselves, that it's not the most fleshed out thought or anything, but I do feel like there is something to be tied between autonomy and financial independence and cultural sort of acceptance of women that are not interested in giving birth and raising children. And I don't know what you think about that.
- [25:52]
B
Yeah, well, I think what you've hit on is that in a Way, that distinction that I tried to draw out earlier, that it is really tough to go from high to lower fertility and then to go from low to really low fertility rates. So when you're thinking about this city you're embedded in and this friend group you're embedded in, in Washington, D.C. you're talking about a well below low to really, really low. And what allows women to make those choices, and then some people want to, of course, take this away, is that you are financially free. You don't need somebody, you don't need to be partnered to open a credit card, get a job, get health insurance, all of those things. And then of course, there's some value shifts there as well. And what's under fire right now and has become so politicized is because in many cases, women who fit that profile are choosing not to have children. They're becoming these questions about taking away those things, which I think is very frightening. We don't want to do that. We want to keep people being however many children you want, whenever you want them, go for it. Want to empower you to do that. When you're talking about in Tanzania, I'm thinking, you know, this is a high fertility country and there will be an economic benefit to increasing women's autonomy, and a side effect of it will be lower fertility. So it's kind of similar, but in many countries around the world, historically, and I mean Historically, like 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, leaders have thought, and I'll give you examples here, South Korea's leaders have thought this, India's leaders have thought this. China's leaders have thought, if we give women opportunities to work outside the home and education and fertility rates go down. They said that is a good thing, the way we are defining it, because it's going to give us the kind of economy and social structures that we want. Sometimes they restricted rights on that, but not always. My question these days is how many African leaders still believe that's a good thing and are willing to say, yes, we want to absolutely get rid of child marriage and we want to do what we can to combat young girls having babies? In 2024, there were almost 5 million babies born to mothers under 18. And so do they still believe that it is a good thing to empower women to get more education, to forestall childbearing, to increase their financial security and therefore reap an overall economic benefit to the. Or are they so afraid of the Washington, D.C. female elite being their future that they would actively work to counter it? And that's a real thing. So it comes back in a circle. And we've seen many statements over the years by African leaders that they said there's not enough people. Actually, we don't want to end up with population aging and depopulation. We see what's coming if this goes down and we don't want to end up there. It's interesting times to bring all of these things together, that's for sure. But, you know, I hope that we will continue to emphasize rights and to see autonomy as important, but I worry that that's slipping in all sorts of contexts.
- [28:59]
A
Yeah. And it almost seems like there's like a global backlash sort of global conservative populism as much as it's like a machismo populism. Like there's so many examples to your point about African leaders that are like birth control. Nah, this. No, that's a Western import. That's a Western import. And it's. I don't really know what comes next. My last question for you, Jen, is, is there anything you wish I'd asked you or is there a point that you always like to conclude with, especially for an audience that is new to, like, political demography?
- [29:37]
B
I really do want people to understand the power of demographic analysis. And looking at the world through this demographic lens, really, people are soldiers, they're workers, they're the foundation of every economy and society. And so it's really important to get that demographic education. But so much of how I see demography discussed in the media reflects a lot of misinformation and bias, whether it's, you know, immigrants are unlimited in the world or, you know, misinformation even about what kind of policies might address fertility rates. Happy to be at PRB where our emphasis is on evidence. Always. So evidence based policies, so nonpartisan, but evidence based policies. And I think at the end of the day, all these things we talked about, things that are somewhat troubling, it's because it gets politicized, brought into the political arena. And the best counter to that is to always bring it back to what do we really know in terms of science and evidence. And so I think as long as we keep bringing it back to that, we at least stand a chance of making sure that the discussion is this very evidence based one. And having these sound policies in place that can help with demographic dividends can give people overall improved well being through population.
- [30:54]
A
Fabulous. Jen, I'm so glad that you are over at PRB and that you have joined my new podcast, We're Neighbors and We're neighbors.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And thank you Jen, thank you so much.
- [31:07]
B
Thank you. Katherine. Great to talk with you.
- [31:09]
A
Thank you. You too. Thanks for tuning in. This podcast is produced by Gina Kim and our music is by Wonder Child. If you have any suggestions for future topics, you can find me on X and Instagram at catherinezuki.
- [31:31]
B
Sam.