Nigeria, African Countries Lead as World Population Hits Eight Billion

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

The world’s population hit an estimated 8 billion people yesterday, according to a United Nations projection, with much of the growth coming from Nigeria and other developing nations in Africa.

In Nigeria, resources are already stretched to the limit, an Associated Press report said, stressing that more than 15 million people in Lagos alone compete for everything, including electricity to light their homes daily.

Over the next three decades, the West African nation’s population, the report said, is expected to soar even more from 216 million this year to 375 million, the UN noted.That will make Nigeria the fourth most populous country in the world after India, China and the United States.

“We are already overstretching what we have — the housing, roads, the hospitals, schools. Everything is overstretched,” said Gyang Dalyop, an urban planning and development consultant in Nigeria, quoted by the report.

The UN’s Day of 8 billion milestone Tuesday is more symbolic than precise, officials are careful to note in a wide-ranging report released over the summer that makes some staggering projections.

The upward trend threatens to leave even more people in developing countries further behind, as governments struggle to provide enough classrooms and jobs for a rapidly growing number of youth, and food insecurity becomes an even more urgent problem.

Nigeria is among eight countries the UN says will account for more than half the world’s population growth between now and 2050 — along with fellow African nations Congo, Ethiopia and Tanzania.

“The population in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to double between 2022 and 2050, putting additional pressure on already strained resources and challenging policies aimed to reduce poverty and inequalities,” the UN report said.

It projected the world’s population will reach around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion in 2100, according to AP.

Other countries rounding out the list with the fastest growing populations are Egypt, Pakistan, the Philippines and India, which is set to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation next year.

In Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, where more than 12 million people live, many families struggle to find affordable housing and pay school fees. While elementary pupils attend for free, older children’s chances depend on their parents’ incomes, it added.

Rapid population growth also means more people vying for scarce water resources and leaves more families facing hunger as climate change increasingly impacts crop production in many parts of the world.

Still, experts say the bigger threat to the environment is consumption, which is highest in developed countries not undergoing big population increases.

According to the UN, the population in sub-Saharan Africa is growing at 2.5 per cent per year — more than three times the global average. Some of that can be attributed to people living longer, but family size remains the driving factor. Women in sub-Saharan Africa on average have 4.6 births, twice the current global average of 2.3.

Families become larger when women start having children early, and four out of 10 girls in Africa marry before they turn 18, according to UN figures. The rate of teen pregnancy on the continent is the highest in the world — about half of the children born last year to mothers under 20 worldwide were in sub-Saharan Africa.

Still, any effort to reduce family size now would come too late to significantly slow the 2050 growth projections, the UN said. About two-thirds of it “will be driven by the momentum of past growth,” it added.

“Such growth would occur even if childbearing in today’s high-fertility countries were to fall immediately to around two births per woman,” the report found.

There are also important cultural reasons for large families. In sub-Saharan Africa, children are seen as a blessing and as a source of support for their elders — the more sons and daughters, the greater comfort in retirement, the AP report noted.

Still, some large families “may not have what it takes to actually feed them,” said Eunice Azimi, an insurance broker in Lagos and mother of three.

“In Nigeria, we believe that it is God that gives children,” she said. “They see it as the more children you have, the more benefits. And you are actually overtaking your peers who cannot have as many children. It looks like a competition in villages,” she added.

Even as populations soar in some countries, the UN said rates are expected to drop by 1 per cent or more in 61 nations.

The US population is now around 333 million, according to US Census Bureau data. The population growth rate in 2021 was just 0.1 per cent, the lowest since the country was founded.