United Nations Radio

African women

In Africa a woman will give birth to five children or more in her lifetime. This has led to a high population rate of one billion, which is expected to rise to 2 billion in less than four decades. Professor Oladele Arowolo, a consultant with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, talks to Henry Kaylos about the disastrous consequences if Africa continues on this path.

AROWOLO: Highly top population growth puts pressure on government to provide services, facilities to develop infrastructure and the more the government tries to solve the problem the more the efforts are negated by highly top population growth. It's like an up hill task.

KAYLOS: So, basically the situation on the continent is that the population is growing quite rapidly, but the capacity to accommodate this population is not there yet.

ARAWOLO: Not only is the population growing rapidly, but it is also marked to be the most rapidly growing city population in the world which means in a couple of years from now we will be talking about 60-70 % of Africans living in cities.

KAYLOS: Is that a bad thing?

AROWOLO: Here, you go to a rural area it's poverty and most of the people moving to urban areas in anxious expectation of fast finding something to do, end up being unemployed, or underemployed, and they are in poverty. They live in slums. That is why the slums are increasing in proportion and in dimension in most of the African countries. That aside, there is also the issue of the future of the population. Over 70% of the population of Africa is below 30 years. That says that we have to watch very carefully the future of the youth.

KAYLOS: So basically it is all about harnessing the potential that exists currently.

AROWOLO: Correct. The potential is not just about young people. The other potential is women. Empowerment of women critical to the development of Africa, you need to educate women. You need to give them skills and you need to take them on in the process of decision-making and access to resources so as to ensure that total productivity increases. One area that is critical which I referred to before is the high level of fertility. If women have high fertility levels, it means the frequency of pregnancy is high. It means they have limited time to be part of the productive process, and so the argument about demographic transition is that as the level of fertility declines then women become freer. They gain in health, they are released to be part of the labor force, they become more productive and the overall economy will develop.

PRES: Professor Oladele Arowolo of the UN Economic Commission for Africa.

Producer: Jocelyne Sambira
duration: 2'36"