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Table 4.1 Demogruphic indicators: Estimates and projections for Sub-Saharan Africa by subregion and country, 1990 (continued)

Sources: Population Reference Bureau (1990); UN Economic Commission for Africa (1988)
for colt 15.
a. H too high; S satisfactory; L too low.

Rapid population growth rather than population size per se poses one of the greatest challenges for Sub-Saharan Africa because it has tended not only to press on the management of the resource base, but also to act as a drag on economic development, which must achieve a gross domestic product growth above 3 per cent per annum in order to produce a per capita gain. The limited birth control data available indicate that in Sub-Saharan Africa less use is made of contraception than in any other major global region. Over the period 1988-1993 the percentage of married women of childbearing age using contraception was lowest in Uganda, Nigeria, Senegal, and the Sudan at 5, 5, 11, and 9, respectively, and highest in Mauritius, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Togo, and Kenya at 75, 43, 33, 34, and 27 respectively (World Bank 1994: 212-213). For several African countries no data were available. Rapid population growth, largely attributed to high and sustained fertility, has induced many Sub-Saharan governments to adopt population limitation policies (e.g. family planning) and population-responsive development programmes in order to reduce fertility rates and improve the quality of population. In 27 of the 44 Sub-Saharan countries for which information is available, fertility rates were considered too high, in 13 satisfactory and in only 4 - the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Botswana - too low (Population Reference Bureau 1990).

Rapid population growth tends to produce a youthful population structure, shown by the percentages of children under 15 years of age in column 10. Apart from Gabon and the three Indian Ocean island countries, all the countries listed have 40 per cent or more of their population in this age group. The age group over 65 years is low, being in the range of 2-3 per cent of population in most cases. Nevertheless, with the high proportion of children, most of Sub-Saharan Africa has high dependency ratios by world standards. A consuming rather than producing population can cripple national development and sectoral planning efforts, where overall productivity tends to be very low and where unemployment and underemployment are rife.

Despite the evidence of rapid population increase, there is low life expectancy at birth in Sub-Saharan Africa (column 11). Generally life expectancy is between 40 and 55 years; the few exceptions above this range include Kenya, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, and the islands. Southern Africa has much higher life expectancy than any of the other regions, owing mainly to better health infrastructure, well-trained health personnel, and a favourable ratio of population per physician (Sub-Saharan Africa has the worst ratio of the world's major regions). There are fears that the addition of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) to the catalogue of Africa's diseases will seriously reduce life expectancy and will reshape Africa's demographic profile.

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