Starving African children
The rate at which the population growth of Africa is increasing abnormally at a very fast rate and the world’s dependence on the continent’s rich resources may not be issues of concern to African leaders but the fact is Africa is heading towards a terrible unforeseen doom.
In 1990, sub-Saharan Africa represents 16% of births in the world, and given that African birth rates are much higher than elsewhere, the proportion has risen to 27% now and is expected to reach 37% of the world total by 2050.
According to the United Nations, more children will be born in sub-Saharan Africa than in all of Asia, including India and China and the real problem is that too many children weaken economic development and make it more difficult to free Africans from poverty.
Even though African leaders have never been serious about population reduction through healthy family planning, there is a good reason they have to start worrying.
Whenever the African continent experiences a shortage of resources, since other foreign countries heavily depend on our resources, the entire African continent will face the threat of hunger and poverty because of the baby boom.
It is now obvious or clear that the inability of African leaders to control the population explosion turns to become the problem of advanced countries, as they experienced a mass migration of Africans, which is affecting their economy as well.
In stark contrast to most of the world, particularly in Asia, the number of extremely poor Africans is increasing, partly because the highest birth rates are recorded in the poorest areas of the continent.
The World Bank reported that the number of people living in extreme poverty has increased in sub-Saharan Africa between 2013 and 2015, from 405 to 413 million.
Many African countries are already struggling to build enough schools and medical clinics for their existing children, not to mention the number of children born in a day on the continent of Africa.
There are more questions than answers, yet everyone wants to know why African leaders have relaxed the overpopulation explosion on the continent? Are they giving infertility medication to mothers at the hospitals?
The need for these questions is necessary. Everyone knows that once India and China follow the coercive path for smaller families, with sterilization campaigns and applying a policy of one child, however, in Africa, hardly African leaders speak about that.
It is time for African governments to have sound policies to promote the use of contraceptives to save the continent from severe poverty.
A few African countries, such as Ethiopia, Malawi, and Rwanda, have already started doing something to avoid population explosion in their countries.
