The Dark Continent - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 351

evidenced by “imperfect but worthwhile” elections. Almost all have multi-party constitu-
tions, armies and their corresponding military rulers “mostly stay in the barracks.”
And most have stopped shooting at one another, as civil strife has become less frequent
and less deadly. Evidence of increased civic engagement can be found everywhere. And so-
cialist economic models are becoming rarer as economic activity has taken on a much more
visible capitalist look. As importantly, many of the fruits of recent infrastructure building
fueled by both the public and private sector are about to start yielding results.
CAUSE FOR CONCERN
While many share these views and are optimistic about Africa's economic future, there is
one cautionary tale to be told. One disquieting force at work, particularly in sub-Saharan
Africa, is the continuing presence of high birth rates. As with most developing societies,
Africa's demographic history has been one of high birth rates and high death rates. Life
was hard and people died young, and so it was important that fertility keep pace with mor-
tality; otherwise a society could disappear. But the post-World War II intervention by the
developed world of more modern health practices, particularly programs designed to ad-
dress high infant and child mortality, had the effect of lowering death rates without a cor-
responding decrease in birth rates. The result was ballooning growth rates. These, in turn,
have placed impediments to solid and sustained economic growth, as the services deman-
ded of the newly born tax government resources. At present the birth rate is over 5 percent
per year in sub-Saharan Africa and 4.8 percent for the entire continent, far greater than the
current rate of 2.3 percent elsewhere in the world. At this rate Africa's population could
nearly triple by mid-century, meaning that one out of every three births in the world would
take place in Africa.
Added to the problems associated with having a much larger percentage of the pop-
ulation fourteen years of age or younger because of high birth rates is the likelihood that
much of this growth will occur in cities, whose current infrastructures are unable now to
cope with population increases of the recent past. As have been observed in China for some
time, rapid urbanization results not only in a higher number of cities growing rapidly, it
also leads to an emerging group of cities that have taken on mega-city status, with popula-
tion levels unthinkable a hundred years ago. This mega-city phenomenon has given China
an entirely new list of challenges, a fate that is about to confront the emerging mega-cities
of Africa. Lagos, Nigeria, for example, is expected to reach 40 million people within a few
decades, and many other large cities in Africa will join Lagos as mega-cities.
Prospects for declining growth rates in Africa are dim. For that to happen, two chal-
lenges must be met. The first is that incentives for declining births must be present and
second, the capacity for birth control must be available. History has taught us that the best
contraceptive is economic development. All western societies developed lower birth rates
once economic development was set in motion. There were many reasons for this but an
important one was that development brought lower mortality rates, including infant mor-
tality, so couples did not have to have as many children in order to ensure that two or three
would live to adulthood. Death rates in Africa have declined much faster than the birth