Africa how many people

Making family planning services available can stimulate use of such services even among disadvantaged , poor, illiterate and rural women. Globally, efforts to support changes in individual reproductive behaviour have emphasised the value of individual choice. But in some instances, attempts have been made to induce changes in fertility behaviour through different incentives — and disincentives.

At the extreme are coercive policies. Examples include the one child policy in China and involuntary sterilisation of mainly poor women in India. But most of the attempts at dis incentivising fertility behaviours are more subtle. They can include financial disincentives and incentives to promote family planning or paying for performance to improve the delivery and uptake of family planning.

In some countries, such as Kenya, Malawi and Zambia, cash transfer programmes have been tried. Other attempts, largely nudges , aim to influence fertility behaviour without forbidding any previously available courses of actions, or making alternatives appreciably more costly in terms of time, money, or social sanctions. Using financial incentives and nudges to effect changes are not without concerns.

Ethics, for example, are a big issue and continue to be debated. The fact that high fertility behaviours are rooted in strongly held religious and cultural beliefs and narratives needs to be taken into account by those in authority.

Another ethical issue is around economics of incentives. Incentives can affect differently the decisions that poor and rich families make. Governments also face ethical dilemmas because of the contradiction between ensuring protection of the rights of individuals to decide on the number of children to have, and protecting the welfare of the larger community and achieving national development goals that may require slower population growth rates.

Contextual information should be sought before implementing incentive-based — and potentially controversial — programmes. Nigeria encompasses an extensive savanna region, without the extreme aridity found in the northern countries, and a large delta and coastal plains.

Two important perennial rivers, the Niger and the Benue, as well as their tributaries, assure sufficient water provision. While civilizations flourished across the region in the 15th through 19th centuries, the high concentration of kingdoms, empires and particularly city states — such as Kano, Katsina, Oyo, Ife, Benin, Nri, Igbo and others— is unique to the territory that became modern Nigeria. Two out of the three ancient trans-Saharan trade routes originating from North Africa and Arabia ended in Nigeria, which brought an influx of people to settle and trade.

As an already very densely populated country today, Nigeria provides a preview of the pressures on the land resources that other parts of West Africa will likely have to face in the future.

A majority of West Africans still live in rural areas, yet the urban population has increased from only 8. The changes in lifestyle and consumption patterns associated with a progressive urbanization of the population affect land use and land cover patterns beyond the obvious increase of built-up area Rindfuss and others, Dietary demands of the urban population translate into land demands in the urban periphery, in particular for the cultivation of high-value, perishable crops, such as fruits and vegetables.

The Population of Africa - chart plots the total population count as of July 1 of each year, from to Population : Overall total population both sexes and all ages in the region as of July 1 of the year indicated, as estimated by the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division.

World Population Prospects: The Revision. For forecasted years, the U. For all other years: latest year annual percentage change equivalent assuming homogeneous change in the preceding five year period, calculated through reverse compounding. Yearly Change : For absolute change in total population increase or decrease in number of people over the last year from July 1, to June 30 For all other years: average annual numerical change over the preceding five year period.

Migrants net : The average annual number of immigrants minus the number of emigrants over the preceding five year period running from July 1 to June 30 of the initial and final years , or subsequent five year period for data.