Alioune Sall Fundador e Diretor Executivo do African Futures Institute, Pretória
T
he title of our panel starts with the question which reads “8 billion people and so what?” The title goes further and is expanded by asking two other questions: where and why is the population expanding or declining and what might be the implication? And will the future demographic dividend compensate for the problems caused by the increased population growth rates in many countries? We therefore have to deal with three questions and I share my views on why they are important from an African perspective, and what can be done to address them. First of all, whenever this figure of the projected world population - 8 billion people - is put forward, attention is turned to sub-Saharan Africa as it will be the main source of the world population growth. It will not be Europe, for reasons that have been explained explicitly by John, it will not be America, it will not be Latin America, it will not even be Asia. So, Africa will be the main source of growth. Why is this so? A high fertility rate. In 2000, close to 15% of African people were under 24; by 2020, 60% of Africans were under 24; and by 2050, 35% of the youth population worldwide will be African. In other words, the demographic
Founder and Executive Director of the African Futures Institute, Pretoria
transition is still slow, that is the main reason behind this massive population growth in Africa. Secondly, the question is how will Africans handle this massive growth. And here we have different viewpoints: 1) The Malthusian view, which points to the risk of food insecurity, particularly as agricultural productivity remains low. It is also likely to lead to environmental degradation of the production, particularly if the production systems remain as they are, mainly based on extensive systems, and it could spell doom for the survival of African states if not properly handled. 2) The Ester Boserup perspective, which shows that population increase provides an incentive for innovation and intensification of the production, production systems, particularly if food prices increase as they should once the urban bias of economic policy is removed. 3) The Marxist view, which shows that population growth is neither a curse nor an asset because it is not an independent variable issue of social class structures that have to be factored in and so on. 4) The renaissance revivalist proponent, which argues that
A ACELERAÇÃO DAS MUDANÇAS GLOBAIS THE ACCELERATION OF GLOBAL CHANGE
Conferência de Lisboa – 4 _ 2020 Lisbon Conference – 4
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