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For a Growing Africa, Hope Mingles with Fear of the Future
Will a baby boom pull the world’s poorest continent into the center of global affairs?
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LOKOJA, Nigeria—This was a small town on the docks where steamships stopped when a traveling young nut merchant named Ahmed Musa settled here in the 1940s. He didn’t even lock his doors at night.

Now Lokoja is the fastest-growing city on Earth. His roof looks out over shanties and suburban estates tangling along the Niger River stretch where, a century ago, a British writer gazed across the water and coined the name Nigeria. Lokoja’s metropolitan population of 473,000 is set to rise 78% in the next 10 years, the United Nations projects, quicker than every other sizable town in the world.

The biggest human increase in modern history is under way in Africa. On every other continent, growth rates are slowing toward a standstill for the first time in centuries, and the day is in sight when the world’s human population levels out.

But not here—not yet.

Some 2.5 billion people will be African by 2050, the U.N. projects. That would be double the current number and 25% of the world’s total. There will be 399 million Nigerians then, more than Americans. When the century closes, if projections hold, four out of 10 people will be African.

 
• Category: Economics • Tags: Africa, Population 
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  1. Rehmat says:

    I believe that if the Western colonialists stop robbing Africa’s natural resources, African can look after their growing population. Don’t forget most African nations were more civilized and self-sufficient economically during the time when Europe was living in its DARK AGE.

    It were African soldiers under the command of Arab General Tariq who conquered Spain in 711 CE, and created the most tolerant, rich and scientifically advance nation which lasted until 1492.

    Nigeria like Libya has been target of international vultures for centuries. Both countries are rich in oil, gas and gold resources. While Libyan had a good life for 40-year under Qaddafi, Nigerians were not that lucky.

    Alhaj Sir Abubakar Tafawa Blewa and Sir Ahmadu Bello were Muslim leaders who lead Nigerians to independence from British empire in the late 1950s. During the Independence movement, most Christian leaders from South sided with the colonial power. Both prime minister Blewa and chief minister Bello were assassinated during a military coup lead by pro-western Christian Generals.

    This is not the first time, Muslim-hating Western Zionist leaders are trying to further destabilize Africa’s largest nation (160 million) for their greed. On May 30, 1967, Christian-majority oil-rich region of Biafra declared its independence from central government, which lasted for 32 months. Israel, France, Portugal, Rhodesia, South Africa, Canada and Vatican provided military and moral assistance to the rebel government. Nigeria is home to Africa’s largest Israeli Jewish community (15,000).

    The ‘Jew York Times’ was in pain to report: “When soldiers see young men in traditional (Muslim) robes, they don’t ask questions. They shoot them on the spot. They catch many others and no one finds their whereabouts.”

    Now that Nigerians voted in a ‘Sharia General’ Mahammadu Buhari, CIA-Mossad have increased their their terrorism behind their “Islamic front” Boko Haram.

    http://rehmat1.com/2015/04/01/nigeria-the-sharia-general-won-presidency/

  2. Cracker says:
    @Rehmat

    Hysterical comment. And things are great in SA!

    • Replies: @Rehmat
  3. unit472 says:
    @Rehmat

    LOL! Did you copy that from a junior college Afro-American Studies syllabus? Did you fail to understand the context? Population growth and commodity exports do not for prosperity make. It was one thing for 4 million Libyans to maintain a modest standard of living pumping 2 million barrels of low cost, high quality oil per day ( before their production collapsed and came under the control of local warlords) and quite another for Nigeria’s population to do the same! Do the math.

    Every drop of oil production in the world amounts to about 90 million barrels per day. At $100/barrel, twice today’s price ,you could not even support 80 million Africans at the same standard of living as Germany. Africa relies on commodity exports because it has nothing else of value to export…well unless Boko Haram revives the slave trade!

  4. Another article from the The Wall Street Journal about demographics:

    America’s Baby Bust

    The nation’s falling fertility rate is the root cause of many of our problems. And it’s only getting worse.

    a population that is disproportionately old and shrinking overall—has enormous economic, political and cultural consequences.

    growing populations lead to increased innovation and conservation.

    Low-fertility societies don’t innovate because their incentives for consumption tilt overwhelmingly toward health care.

    They cannot sustain social-security programs because they don’t have enough workers to pay for the retirees.

    They cannot project power because they lack … military-age manpower to serve in their armed forces.

    If you want to see what happens to a country once it hurls itself off the demographic cliff, look at Japan

    Japan’s economy is likely to slow down.

    Japan’s rate of GDP growth

    Because of its dismal fertility rate, Japan’s … has already shrunk by a million

    Can we keep the U.S. from becoming Japan? We have some advantages that the Japanese lack,

    What do you think that advantage that we have is? What can save us from hurling ourselves over the demographic cliff? That’s right, IMMIGRATION!!! to the rescue.
    Article continues:

    We have some advantages that the Japanese lack, beginning with a welcoming attitude toward immigration

    Which leaves us with outsourcing our fertility. We’ve received a massive influx of immigrants from south of the border since the late 1970s. Immigration has kept America from careening over the demographic cliff.

    If you strip these immigrants—and their relatively high fertility rates—from our population profile, America suddenly looks an awful lot like continental Europe, which has a fertility rate of 1.5., if not quite as demographically terminal as Japan.

    Kudos to the Nigerians. Social-security, growth, GDP, power projection (WAR!).

  5. More from The Wall Street Journal

    The Demographic Cliff

    Americans are not reproducing enough, and the long-term consequences are dire

    the prom is that when two things happen when your fertility rates this low … the first is that your age profile perks and see one of a lot more old people when you have young people … but the problem is they they consume less and fewer good less goods … then then people further down on the age scale … and because of that to them wind up with diminished consumption

    Diminished consumption of goods? Is there a solution to this evil?

    massive immigration the way we experience it … carries all sorts of awesome

  6. szopen says:
    @Rehmat

    There is a difference between “African” and “Sub-saharan African”. African soldiers who conquered Spain were not blacks. They were caucasoid north Africans.

    • Replies: @Rehmat
  7. Rehmat says:
    @Cracker

    YEP. Things are better in South Africa than in the so-called “Jewish State”, wher they’re treated like DOGS!

    Last year, Donald T. Sterling (Donald Tokowitz), the Jewish billionaire owner of NBA Los Angeles Clippers was chased by the Organized Jewry and both Republicans and Democrats for applying Israel and Holocaust to defend his hatred toward Black people.

    Sterling made a political wrong statement by saying: “It’s the world! You go to Israel, the Blacks are just treated like dogs.” When his Black girlfriend, Stiniano, asked Sterling: “Are the Black Jews less than White Jews?” – Sterling responded: “A hundred percent, fifty, a hundred percent.”

    http://rehmat1.com/2014/04/29/sterling-israel-treats-blacks-like-dogs/

    • Replies: @Cracker
  8. Rehmat says:
    @szopen

    What a stupid analogy! South Africa is AFRICA, but North Africa (Amazigh Berber) is NOT AFRICA.

    The great majority of the Jewish communities still living in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia or immigrated to occupied Palestine – are ethnically North African Berbers who converted to Judaism in the 7th century. The expulsion of Jews from Spain (in 1492 CE) and Portugal (in 1497) brought thousands of new fugitive Berber Jews to Morocco.

    On September 5, 2010 – Mahmoud Maarouf wrote a research article in Al-Quds Al-Arabi – detailing how the Zionist entity is betting on Amazigh activists in Morocco to keep Arabs and other Muslims divided for the survival of the Zionist entity.

    http://rehmat1.com/2010/10/01/israels-berber-amazigh-card-to-fight-islam/

  9. Renoman says:

    I say we leave them alone and let them solve their own problems. When they want to emigrate to the West we say “no way”. Any population that just goes full bore into having Children they can’t look after does not deserve any help. As for being immigrant saviors of our pension plans their track record is pretty miserable, more like illiterate welfare junkies in most Cities.

  10. pyrrhus says:
    @Rehmat

    To paraphrase Tom Lehrer, they’ll all starve together when they starve…..

    • Replies: @Rehmat
  11. Cracker says:
    @Rehmat

    ROFL. Things are so bad in Izreal that nobody is trying to get there. But at least in SA, you can always take advantage of that great AIDS cure, so there’s that.

  12. Rehmat says:
    @pyrrhus

    To paraphrase Dr. Bernard Lewis – when Jews were forced to wear yellow patches in Europe, Jews enjoy their Golden Age in Moorish-ruled Spain.

    http://rehmat1.com/2011/10/08/spain-jewish-history-without-muslims/

  13. Anon7 says:

    Just wanted to point out that this forum, aimed at perhaps a wider audience, can find 80+ fresh comments at

    https://www.unz.com/isteve/promise-of-youth-wsj-on-population-explosion-in-africa/

    from Steve Sailer’s section.

  14. roo_ster says:
    @Rehmat

    1. Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa are two very different cultural and genetic and historical critters. Conflating the accomplishments of Augustine of Hippo with pig ignorant bantu tribesmen is akin to crediting Lapplanders with the discovery of two-column accounting.

    2. Sub-Saharan Africa was never able to achieve European Dark Age material or cultural accomplishment before contact with Europeans during the Age of Discovery.

    3. Yes, I think we (the civilized/developed world) ought to wall off Africa and let it sort itself out. African culture has proved impervious to everything from base greed to high-minded missionary work. Next we all need to try what has not been tried: wall off Africa.

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