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LAGOS, Nigeria - In a quarter-century, at the rate Nigeria is growing, 300
million people - a population about as big as that of the present-day United
States - will live in a country the size of Arizona and New Mexico. In this
commercial hub, where the area's population has by some estimates nearly
doubled over 15 years to 21 million, living standards for many are falling.
Lifelong residents like Peju Taofika and her three granddaughters inhabit a
room in a typical apartment block known as a "Face Me, Face You" because
whole families squeeze into 7-by-11-foot rooms along a narrow corridor.
Up to 50 people share a kitchen, toilet and sink - though the pipes in the
neighborhood often no longer carry water.
At Alapere Primary School, more than 100 students cram into most
classrooms, two to a desk.
As graduates pour out of high schools and universities, Nigeria's
unemployment rate is nearly 50 percent for people in urban areas ages 15
to 24 - driving crime and discontent.
The growing upper-middle class also feels the squeeze, as commutes from
even nearby suburbs can run two to three hours.
Last October, the United Nations announced the global population had
breached seven billion and would expand rapidly for decades, taxing
natural resources if countries cannot better manage the growth.
Nearly all of the increase is in sub-Saharan Africa, where the population
rise far outstrips economic expansion. Of the roughly 20 countries where
women average more than five children, almost all are in the region.
Elsewhere in the developing world, in Asia and Latin America, fertility
rates have fallen sharply in recent generations and now resemble those in
the United States - just above two children per woman. That transformation
was driven in each country by a mix of educational and employment
opportunities for women, access to contraception, urbanization and an
evolving middle class. Whether similar forces will defuse the population
bomb in sub-Sarahan Africa is unclear.
"The pace of growth in Africa is unlike anything else ever in history and a
critical problem," said Joel E. Cohen, a professor of population at
Rockefeller University in New York City. "What is effective in the context of
these countries may not be what worked in Latin America or Kerala or
Bangladesh."
Across sub-Saharan Africa, alarmed governments have begun to act, often
reversing longstanding policies that encouraged or accepted large families.
Nigeria made contraceptives free last year, and officials are promoting
smaller families as a key to economic salvation, holding up the financial
gains in nations like Thailand as inspiration.
Nigeria, already the world's sixth most populous nation with 167 million
people, is a crucial test case, since its success or failure at bringing down
birthrates will have outsize influence on the world's population. If this
large nation rich with oil cannot control its growth, what hope is there for
the many smaller, poorer countries?
"Population is key," said Peter Ogunjuyigbe, a demographer at Obafemi
Awolowo University in the small central city of Ile-Ife. "If you don't take
care of population, schools can't cope, hospitals can't cope, there's not
enough housing - there's nothing you can do to have economic
development."
The Nigerian government is rapidly building infrastructure but cannot keep
up, and some experts worry that it, and other African nations, will not act
forcefully enough to rein in population growth. For two decades, the
Nigerian government has recommended that families limit themselves to
four children, with little effect.
Although he acknowledged that more countries were trying to control
population, Parfait M. Eloundou-Enyegue, a professor of development
sociology at Cornell University, said, "Many countries only get religion
when faced with food riots or being told they have the highest fertility rate
in the world or start worrying about political unrest."
In Nigeria, experts say, the swelling ranks of unemployed youths with little
hope have fed the growth of the radical Islamist group Boko Haram, which
has bombed or burned more than a dozen churches and schools this year.
Internationally, the African population boom means more illegal
immigration, already at a high, according to Frontex, the European border
agency. There are up to 400,000 undocumented Africans in the United
States.
Nigeria, like many sub-Saharan African countries, has experienced a slight
decline in average fertility rates, to about 5.5 last year from 6.8 in 1975.
But this level of fertility, combined with an extremely young population,
still puts such countries on a steep and disastrous growth curve. Half of
Nigerian women are under 19, just entering their peak childbearing years.
Women Left Behind
Statistics are stunning. Sub-Saharan Africa, which now accounts for 12
percent of the world's population, will account for more than a third by
2100, by many projections.
Because Africa was for centuries agriculturally based and sparsely
populated, it made sense for leaders to promote high fertility rates. Family
planning, introduced in the 1970s by groups like Usaid, was initially
regarded as foreign, and later on, money and attention were diverted from
family planning to Africa's AIDS crisis.
"Women in sub-Saharan Africa were left behind," said Jean-Pierre
Guengant, director of research at the Research Institute for Development, in
Paris. The drastic transition from high to low birthrates that took place in
poor countries in Asia, Latin America and North Africa has yet to happen
here.
That transition often brings substantial economic benefits, said Eduard Bos,
a population specialist at the World Bank. As the last large population
group reaches working age, the number of adults in the labor force is high
relative to more dependent groups - the young and the elderly - for a time.
If managed well, that creates capital that can be used to improve health and
education and to develop new industries.
And that has happened elsewhere. Per-capita gross domestic product in
Latin America, Asia and North Africa increased between three and six
times as population was brought under control, Dr. Guengant said. During
that same period it has increased only marginally in many African
countries, despite robust general economic growth.
In Nigeria, policymakers are studying how to foster the transition, and its
attendant financial benefits, here. In the ramshackle towns of the Oriade
area near Ile-Ife, where streets are lined with stalls selling prepaid
cellphone cards and food like pounded yam, Dr. Ogunjuyigbe's team goes
door to door studying attitudes toward family size and how it affects health
and wealth. Many young adults, particularly educated women, now want
two to four children. But the preferences of men, particularly older men,
have been slower to change - crucial in a patriarchal culture where
polygamy is widespread.
At his concrete home in the town of Ipetumodu, Abel Olanyi, 35, a laborer,
said he has four children and wants two more. "The number you have
depends on your strength and capacity," he said, his wife sitting silently by
his side.
Large families signal prosperity and importance in African cultures; some
cultures let women attend village meetings only after they have had their
11th child. And a history of high infant mortality, since improved thanks to
interventions like vaccination, makes families reluctant to have fewer
children.
Muriana Taiwo, 45, explained that it was "God's will" for him to have 12
children by his three wives, calling each child a "blessing" because so many
of his own siblings had died.
In a deeply religious country where many Roman Catholics and Muslims
oppose contraception, politicians and doctors broach the topic gingerly, and
change is slow. Posters promote "birth spacing," not "birth control."
Supplies of contraceptives are often erratic.
Cultural Factors
In Asian countries, women's contraceptive use skyrocketed from less than
20 percent to 60 to 80 percent in decades. In Latin America, requiring girls
to finish high school correlated with a sharp drop in birthrates.
But contraceptive use is rising only a fraction of a percent annually - in
many sub-Saharan African nations, it is under 20 percent - and, in surveys,
even well-educated women in the region often want four to six children.
"At this pace it will take 100-plus years to arrive at a point where fertility is
controlled," Dr. Guengant said.
There are also regional differences. The average number of children per
woman in the wealthier south of Nigeria has decreased slightly in the last
five years, but increased to 7.3 in the predominantly Muslim north, where
women often cannot go to a family planning clinic unless accompanied by
a man.
The United Nations estimates that the global population will stabilize at 10
billion in 2100, assuming that declining birthrates will eventually yield a
global average of 2.1 children per woman. At a rate of even 2.6, Dr.
Guengant said, the number becomes 16 billion.
There are signs that the shifting economics and lifestyles of middle-class
Africans may help turn the tide, Dr. Ogunjuyigbe said. As Nigeria
urbanizes, children's help is not needed in fields; the extended families
have broken down. "Children were seen as a kind of insurance for the
future; now they are a liability for life," he said.
Waiting in a women's health clinic, Ayoola Adeeyo, 42, said she wanted
her four children, ages 6 to 17, to attend university, and did not want more
children.
"People used to want 6 or 7 or even 12, but nobody can do that now. It's the
economics," said Ms. Adeeyo, elegant in a flowing green dress and
matching head wrap. "It costs a lot to raise a child."
Dr. Eloundou-Enyegue worries that Africa's modestly declining birthrates
reflect relatively rich, educated people reducing to invest in raising
"quality" children, while poor people continue to have many offspring,
strengthening divisions between haves and have-nots. "When you have a
system with a large degree of corruption and inequality, it's hard not to be
playing the lottery because it increases the chances that one child will
succeed," he said.
In Nigeria's desperately poor neighbor, Niger, women have on average
more than seven children, and men consider their ideal to be more than
12. But with land divided among so many sons, the size of a typical family
plot has fallen by more than a third since 2005, meaning there is little long-
term hope for feeding children, said Amadou Sayo, of the aid group CARE.
Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population
Fund and a former Nigerian health minister, said he is optimistic for a
turnaround if governments better support education for girls and
contraceptive services. "We can see rapid changes, but that's up in the air,
because you have to be aggressive and consistent."
Birthrates have edged down to about four children per woman in Kenya,
Ethiopia and Ghana.
One recent morning in Lagos, hundreds of patients waited at the Ketu
district clinic for treatments like measles vaccines, malaria pills and birth
control.
"Of course when the population grows so quickly, that stresses hospitals,"
said Dr. Morayo Ismail - although migration from rural areas has also
swelled Lagos's population. A mother of one herself, Dr. Ismail said many
poor women still want four or more children.
That evening at the clinic, Bola Agboola, 30, gave birth to her second child.
After nurses swaddled the boy, dispensed with the placenta and declared
Ms. Agboola well, they whooped, praising God.
Then, as Ms. Agboola's husband entered, some started another chant: "Now
start another one. Start another one."