Africa's Demography Is Not Its Destiny

By 2050, more than one-quarter of the world’s population will live in Africa -- up from about one-sixth today. Even if these projections are slightly off, that fact should serve as a call to action for a continent whose long-term promise is equaled by wide-ranging perils.

The numbers come from the latest United Nations report on population trends, which projects an overall increase in world population to 9.8 billion in 33 years, from 7.6 billion today. Such projections are not an exact science. Data can be patchy and unreliable -- Afghanistan and Congo, for instance, had their last censuses in 1979 and 1984, respectively. Estimating future fertility rates is especially hard; earlier demographers did not anticipate the success of China, India and Bangladesh in reducing birth rates, skewing global projections for 2000.