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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
UNTIL recently the tendency has been to look at African population largely in terms of crude density. From this standpoint tropical Africa was often rated as ‘underpopulated’, and even the recent and prestigious Pearson Commission, although noting the overall effect of population growth on development, stated blandly: ‘In Africa and Latin America…settlement is so sparse that it is impossible to speak of overpopulation.’1 Yet two years before, by synthesising a number of land-use studies and by demonstrating that, in terms of available land suitable for agriculture and pastoralism, there was pressure on rural resources, a prominent geographer had attacked, and one would have thought, had laid to rest, this argument. I do not wish to reiterate his case.2 Instead, using his article as a base, I will attempt here to make very crude prognoses and predictions and then to look at their policy implications, both for the sector discussed by him and for other sectors of social and economic development.
Page 91 note 1 Commission on International Development, Partners in Development (New York, 1969), p. 194.Google ScholarPubMed
Page 91 note 2 Hance, William A., ‘The Race between Population and Resources: a challenge to the prevailing view that Africa need not worry about population pressure’, in Africa Report (New York), 01 1968, pp. 6–12.Google Scholar
Page 91 note 3 Pool, D. I., ‘Perspectives on Tropical African Demography’, in Africa (London), XXXIX, 2, 04 1969, pp. 167–76Google Scholar; and Bourgeois-Pichat, Jean, ‘Problems of Population Size, Growth, and Distribution in Africa’, in Wolstenholme, Gordon and O'Connor, Macye (eds.), Man and Africa (London, 1965).Google Scholar
Page 92 note 1 U.N. E.C.A., ‘Recent Demographic Levels and Trends in Africa’, in Economic Bulletin for Africa (Addis Ababa), v, 01 1965Google Scholar; and Brass, William et al. , The Demography of Tropical Africa (Princeton, 1968).Google Scholar
Page 92 note 2 Romaniuk, Anatole, La Fécondité des populations congolaises (Paris, 1967), ch. xi.Google Scholar
Page 93 note 1 Pool, D. I., ‘Urbanisation and Fertility in Africa’, in African Urban Notes (Lansing, Mich.), forthcoming.Google Scholar
Page 93 note 2 Henin, R. A., ‘The Patterns and Causes of Fertility Differentials in the Sudan’, in Population Studies (London), XXIII, 2, 07 1969.Google Scholar
Page 93 note 3 See Dow, Thomas E. Jr, ‘Fertility and Family Planning in Africa’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), VIII, 3, 10 1970Google Scholar; and Pradervand, Pierre, Family Planning Programmes in Africa (O.E.C.D., Paris, 1970).Google Scholar Data on use of family planning show universally (outside the élite) very low levels of use (< 10%). In surveys running from urban Accra to rural Niger we have found that the majority of men and women favour large families, have no ideas about the question, or leave it entirely in the hands of God.
Page 94 note 1 Pierre Cantrelle, ‘Mortalité au Sénégal’, paper presented at the International Meeting on African Studies, Montreal, 1969; also Latham, M. C., ‘Diet and Infection in Relation to Malnutrition in the United States’, in New York Journal of Medicine, LXX, 4, 1970, pp. 558–61.Google Scholar
Page 94 note 2 Prothero, R. Mansell, Migrants and Malaria (London, 1965), passim.Google ScholarPubMed
Page 95 note 1 Jones, Gavin W., The Economic Effect of Declining Fertility in Less Developed Countries (Population Council, New York, 1969), p. 10.Google Scholar
Page 95 note 2 ‘Nigerian Human Resource Development and Utilization’, in Education and World Affairs (New York), 12 1967, p. 27.Google Scholar
Page 97 note 1 Measles vaccination could very rapidly increase life-expectation at birth from 36 years to 42 years in Upper Volta. The consequences of this change, demographically, economically and socially, have to be considered in all planning. See Courel, André and Pool, D. I., ‘Upper Volta’, in J. C. Caldwell (ed.), Population Growth and Socio-economic Change in West Afriea (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Page 97 note 2 See Partners in Development, p. 61.
Page 97 note 3 Souleymane Diarra, ‘Les Civilisations paysannes face au développement en Afrique occidental’; Montreal, 1969. A translation might be: ‘The fallow areas are diminishing and one witnesses a decline in agricultural productivity. A number of young men at the most active age-groups form already a rural proletariat without land and reduced to unemployment.’
Page 98 note 1 Cf. editorial, ‘The Green Revolution Turns Red’, in The New York Times, 8 01 1970.Google Scholar
Page 98 note 2 Prothero, op. cit.
Page 99 note 1 Demeny, Paul, ‘The Economics of Population Control’; Conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, London, 09 1969.Google Scholar
Page 100 note 1 Ghana Government, Population Planning for National Progress and Prosperity (Accra, 1969).Google Scholar
Page 100 note 2 See Birmingham, Walter et al. , A Study of Contemporary Ghana, (London, 1967), II, pp. 17–200.Google Scholar
Page 102 note 1 Okorafor, Apia, ‘Africa's Population Problems’, in Africa Report, XV, 6, 06 1970, pp. 22–3.Google Scholar
Page 103 note 1 Demeny, op. cit., and Jones, op. cit.
Page 103 note 2 E.g. Robinson, Warren C. and Horlach, David E., ‘Evaluating the Economic Benefits of Fertility Reduction’, in Studies in Family Planning (New York), XXXIX, 03 1969, pp. 4–8Google Scholar; and Simon, Julian, ‘The Value of Avoided Births to Under-Developed Countries’, in Population Studies, XXIII, I, 03 1969, pp. 61–8.Google Scholar
Page 104 note 1 Source: Jones, op. cit. figures 2 and 4.
Page 105 note 1 Hutchinson, Joseph, ‘The Resources of Agriculture’, in Hutchinson, (ed.), Population and Food Supply: essays on human needs and agricultural prospects (Cambridge, 1969), p. 137.Google Scholar
