A response
Mr. Peter Mulira – a lawyer by profession – has written an article on Africa’s demography with the above title which appeared in New Vision (Uganda) March 31, 2010.
I would like to offer the following observations.
First, Africa’s fertility is declining albeit slowly thus lessening the scare of a ‘population bomb’ – an expression that entered the demographic discourse in the 1960s.
Second, Africa has the potential to feed many more people than it has right now given its arable land, water supplies (surface and underground) and idle labor force. The problem is that much of the food is wasted through storage, transport and processing constraints and much of the balance is exported to earn foreign currency as required under the Washington Consensus, thus leaving little for domestic consumption – pushing up prices which many households cannot afford. At the same time Africa’s agricultural productivity is very low.
Third, instead of addressing these shortcomings, a new idea has developed: Africans are being urged to sell or lease land to foreign countries and/or companies to produce food to feed people in their home countries – an arrangement if implemented will reduce food supplies in African domestic markets. The case of Madagascar is too well known to be repeated here. The reduction of food availability to African consumers will then be erroneously interpreted as population growing faster than food supplies.
One example will suffice. The development of fisheries in Uganda during the colonial administration was designed to provide an affordable source of protein to low income families. Since the 1990s, fish has become a major foreign exchange earner, reducing supplies in the domestic market and raising prices beyond the means of many consumers who had previously accessed adequate supplies. The shortage of fish is therefore a result of policy choice rather than rapid population growth.
The cases of Madagascar and Uganda demonstrate how policies and not population growth can contribute to domestic food shortages and result in under-nutrition. In these circumstances reducing population growth per se through modern contraception which has not worked as expected so far and remains controversial may not ease the food security dilemma.
Since the 1960s African governments under pressure from donors have implemented birth control programs. Foreign advisors and African experts who thought like them believed that Africans were having too many children because they did not have access to modern contraceptives. They paid little attention, if at all, to the impact of poverty on high fertility and the inability of poor parents to educate their children especially girls. Poor people produce more children than rich ones for various reasons. Therefore to control population growth authorities will need to adopt policies that reduce poverty and enable parents to keep their children at school especially girls.
When girls drop out of school at an early age, they get married and begin to have children in their teens and by the time they reach the end of their reproductive capacity they have had many children.
Third, the easiest and least controversial way to reduce population growth in the long term is to keep girls at school by lowering or eliminating school fees and other expenses, providing sanitary facilities and providing school lunches.
There is sufficient evidence that when school lunches are provided, the attendance and performance especially of girls improves enabling them to go for further education. In recognition of this success story, NEPAD has adopted a school feeding program using locally produced food. But Uganda has not adopted it thereby contributing to a high school drop out of children especially girls. When girls get good education, and good income, they are empowered and can determine their reproductive behavior and avoid the dictates of their spouses for many children. To repeat, the easiest and least controversial method of addressing high fertility rates in Africa is to educate girls. In short, focus should be more on quality than numbers. However, family planning facilities should be provided for those who volunteer to use them provided that side effects are addressed as soon as they are detected.
Regarding Uganda, one further factor needs to be taken into account in addressing the demographic challenge. Uganda has an excess of in-migrants (many of them illegal) over out-migrants contributing to rapid population growth that has brought about a conflict with Ugandans over resources such as land, water supply and services such as education, healthcare and housing. This challenge must be adequately addressed when formulating Uganda’s population policy.
To conclude, appropriate policy formulation such as educating girls and empowering women will produce better and less controversial population results than setting population targets at couple and national levels and imposing birth control programs.