Focus On Planet Earth - AFRICA SOCIAL CAUSES

AFRICA SOCIAL CAUSES

[ Social | Economic | Institutional | Environmental ]

The population of Africa is approaching 700 million (UNFPA, 1994). The current annual average growth rate is about 2.9 per cent and nearly half the population is below 16 years of age, yielding a population doubling time of 20-30 years. At this rate, the regional population will exceed 1 billion by 2005 (World Bank, 1995).

The African Common Position on Environment and Development (UNECA, 1992) states that the regional problem is not so much the high population growth rate but its distribution: a number of countries in Africa are underpopulated, and their resources are underexploited. Nevertheless, rapid population growth may frustrate Government efforts at meeting future demands for services and jobs, and slowing it will not necessarily minimize or eliminate existing levels of poverty, unemployment, and unevenness in income distribution (UNECA, 1993a).

While there is admittedly no evidence to show that reducing the population growth rate would solve poverty problems and regenerate abused environments, failure to do so will certainly worsen the situation. A precautionary principle seems to be emerging, and the consensus is that socio-economic development and population programmes should be planned and implemented simultaneously to ensure that the benefits of each are fully realized (UNECA, 1993a).

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to an estimated 35 million international migrants, including some 4 million refugees. Out-migration from the inland countries of the Sudano-Sahelian belt to the coastal countries in West and Central Africa has been considerable. In West Africa , for example, the coastal countries are thought to have absorbed about 8 million people in the last three decades. These trends are likely to continue and even to expand (World Bank, 1995).

In several countries, migrants are not only pulled towards cities by the prospect of jobs and higher incomes, they are also pushed out of rural areas by such factors as poverty, lack of land, declining returns from agricultural commodities, war, and famine. Migration is also often part of a complex household survival strategy, in which families minimize risk by placing family members in different labour markets. An estimated 40-60 per cent of the annual urban population growth in developing countries is due to rural-urban migration, particularly where rural poverty is rampant (WRI/UNEP/UNDP/WB, 1996; SARDC, personal communication, 1996).

Africa still needs to improve in the areas of education and health. Since the promise of the 1990 Jomtien Conference on Education for All, slow but steady progress is being made in most regions of the world. In Africa , however, the downward trend in educational enrollment of the 1980s has not been reversed (UNDP, 1996). Repetition rates are excessive, retention is poor, and the gender gap is high. The health situation in Africa is cause for some satisfaction, in that life spans have increased significantly, in part from the impacts of concerted health initiatives. Yet it remains a cause of outrage in that preventable deaths, suffering, and loss of human potential are still high (UNDP, 1996).

Conflict arising from political instability has been a primary impediment to development in a number of African countries. The social, economic, and environmental impacts can be immense, as demonstrated in the recent armed conflicts that resulted in massive displacements and loss of human life. The causes for these outbreaks have been largely internal to the countries in question. Although such conflicts may be more amenable to intervention and management before they lead to violence, they also have wider implications: violence spillover, refugee flows, and regional destabilization. For example, the influx of Mozambican refugees into Malawi had a catastrophic effect on land and forest resources (Babu and Hassan, 1995). Some conflicts and social unrest were the result not only of political instability but also of ethnic tensions, food insecurity, poverty, limited access to resources, and land pressures.

United Nations Environment Programme