The end of WW II has witnessed rapid population growth in the developing world – over-breeding the population in the developed countries – thanks to improved conditions including better nutrition, hygiene and healthcare. However, rapid population growth raised the fear that these Third World countries would soon face food shortages, famines and instability because population was growing faster than food production and development in general. Land shortage would constrain shifting cultivation and contribute to reduced soil fertility which together with inadequate rainfall would reduce food production further.
The Green Revolution in Asian countries which began in the 1960s increased food production faster than population growth ending the fear of famines.
However, the situation in Africa – which did not participate effectively in the Green Revolution and where the high level of poverty was stimulating high fertility rates – called for population control to avoid pestilence, famine and violence.
Publications by Pierre Gourou, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Garrett Hardin, Club of Rome, State of the World, Population Council and the United Nations flooded bookstores and classrooms in Africa – all calling for urgent contraceptive measures to reduce population explosion. Training of African demographers in newly created population institutes in Africa and abroad was stepped up to help the poor have fewer children. This approach was reminiscent of the social Darwinists of the 19th century and eugenicists of the 20th century who reasoned that the poor should be discouraged from having too many children.
Some researchers including the author argued that given Africa’s low population densities, abundant fertile land especially in Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon and Angola etc; plenty of surface and underground water and vast irrigation potential as well as advanced science in high yielding seeds and inorganic fertilizers, there was no need to panic.
What was needed was to treat demographic dynamics as an integral part of the development process including education, employment and empowerment of women, reduction of poverty and child mortality and the provision of old age pension to reduce the demand for many children similar to what happened in the developed countries.
Thus, improved standards of living would encourage couples to reduce family size voluntarily provided adequate facilities were provided within easy reach and at affordable cost.
Other schools of thought – especially of the pessimistic Malthusian type – insisted that all was not well in Sub-Saharan Africa. They argued that here challenges were great because of geography, climate and soils.
Sub-Saharan geography isolated the region from the influence of civilization and her climate was pervasive and constrained economic development. Wide areas suffer from low and erratic rainfall leading to droughts and famines.
At other times many areas suffer from torrential rain, floods and devastation. Heavy rainfall leaches out most of plant nutrients, leaving behind areas of low soil fertility which would deteriorate dramatically under population pressure.
Pierre Gourou observed that civilization can be developed only if it rests on a firm control of the soil, which is very difficult in the tropics. These impediments, it was argued, lead to poverty which in turn contributes to rapid population growth. The solution was population control through contraception.
In Africa, birth control was made a condition for obtaining financial and technical assistance upon the achievement of independence in the 1960s. Governments reluctantly went along with slow and ineffective implementation record. In Kenya – which had fought a devastating liberation war – the first African country to implement family planning, the whole idea was received with suspicion. It raised the fear of genocide and neo-colonialism. It also renewed internal fears of tribal scheming and political power struggle while the concept of population control itself was regarded as alien to established values on fertility.
Those not keen on birth control in Kenya and elsewhere have argued that African economies are doing poorly not because of population growth or lack of resources, but because they have failed to implement economic development policies largely because of poor democratic governance.
The recent revelation that Africa after all has plenty of unused fertile land that should be leased – as in Madagascar – or sold to foreign companies to produce food to feed the hungry people of the world has been received with cries of neo-colonialism.