In the year 1798, clergyman, mathematician and the foremost economist of his time (alongside David Ricardo) Thomas Malthus published a book, titled An Essay on the Principle of Population inhe painted a rather gloomy future for mankind. The book was a response to and a critique of the rosy projections of his father whose views was influenced by some of the leading philosophers of his day. Young Malthus felt those rosy projections were not firmly rooted in science and therefore sought to come up with a projection based on solid mathematical reasoning.
In the book, he pointed out that while population grew geometrically, food production only grew arithmetically. Some at this point might need a refresher on geometric and arithmetic progressions. A geometric progression looks like this:
2, 4, 8, 16, 32……
While an arithmetic progression looks like this:
2, 4, 6, 8, 10……..
So Malthus’ contention was that population growth would at some point, outstrip increases in food production, as depicted in the graph above, and that undesirable events like war, famine, and pestilence would inevitably occur to restore the balance. Unsurprisingly, such a sweeping premise has stoked and continues to stoke a barrage of criticism since it was made. Yet that the debate still rages on till this day, is itself proof that Malthus’ premise contained within it considerable force. One particularly valid criticism was the one put forward by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the founders of Marxism. Their contention was that scientific and technological progress is as unlimited and at least as rapid as that of population growth [1], and in this they have emphatically been proven right. I feel obliged to say in Malthus’ defense that when he published his book in 1798, the Industrial Revolution had only been going on for merely 40 years. There probably hadn’t been enough time for it to raise productivity levels to have discredited Malthus theories at the time he published his book. On the other hand, Karl Marx was born 1818, A full 20 years after Malthuspublished his book. As an adult, Marx got to witness first hand, industrialization working its magic, moving full steam ahead. Moreover, demographers and other scientists see Malthus’ theory, as an accurate description of pre-industrial western society [2].
Now the worrisome thing for Africa is that Malthus’ theory is seen as a valid description of contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa as Sub-Saharan economies are largely pre-industrial [3]. Now the improvements in medicine and sanitation since Malthus’ time, and the development of international markets, which make possible the importation of some machinery (which has its own attendant problems) will probably prevent the ghastliest scenarios that Malthus envisioned but Africa is most likely suffering Malthusian effects in subtler ways like higher incidence of child mortality; higher maternal mortality rates. According to WHO a Nigerian woman has a 1 in 22 lifetime risk of dying during pregnancy, childbirth or postpartum/post-abortion; whereas in the most developed countries, the lifetime risk is 1 in 4900 [4]; higher incidences of malnutrition and poverty, Nigeria in 2018 became the poverty capital of the world by having the highest number of poor people, overtaking India [5], The graph below shows that Africa will dominate the poverty rankings by 2030; and finally, a general lower quality of life. Moreover, when you combine projections of Africa’s population for this century with the continent’s penchant for fitful and intermittent economic development, the spectre of a Malthusian catastrophe looms ever larger, but first some African population history.
In 1914 according to the best estimates, Africa’s entire population was 124 million and that includes North Africa. Today it is 1.34 billion. Compared to Africa’s roughly eleven-fold increase in population, Asia’s population increased by “only” between 3 and 4 times – China’s merely tripled and India’s increased by 4.5 times [6]. In 1960, at Nigeria’s independence, Lagos had just 200,000 people. More than half a century later it has grown 100-fold to around 20m making it one of the top ten most populous cities in the world [7]. Of course, a lot of Lagos’ growth is fueled by migration from other parts of Nigeria, still by any measure, those numbers are nothing short of spectacular.
Now for future projections, most forecasts put the world’s population at roughly 11 billion by the end of the century [8]. In the period from now till the end of the century, Africa’s population is expected to grow from 1.34 billion to about 4.3 billion [9]. That is roughly about an additional 3 billion Africans. In the same timeframe, Asia’s population is projected to increase by a billion, while the populations of Europe, North and South America ae projected to remain roughly the same [10]. So all the increase is projected to come from Africa and Asia alone, with Africa producing 75% of the increase, with most of this growth coming from Sub-Saharan Africa. The graph below captures the phenomena well:
Think about what this means in terms of existing resources and infrastructure (health, education, housing, energy, transport etc.). A quadrupling of Africa’s population will indicate a need to quadruple the amount of these resources just to maintain the already inadequate levels of basic services
and amenities. Combined with an annual shortfall of 52–64% in financing for infrastructure needs in Africa (estimated at US$130 billion to 170 billion) [11], we would have the makings of a highly stressful situation possibly of Malthusian proportions.
Some of you might be wondering why the populations of the west will not budge at all. It is because they are the beneficiaries of what is called the demographic transition. I will explain it in my next post.
BEFORE YOU GO: Please share this post with as many people as possible and please check out my book, Why Africa is not rich like America and Europe on Amazon. Thank you
References:
- Wikipedia article on Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism
- Wikipedia article on Demographic Transition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
- Wikipedia article on Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism
- Tooze, Adam Dec 17 2020 ‘Nigeria at a crossroads?’ Chartbook 10 https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-newsletter-10?s=w
- Adebayo, Bukola June 26 2018 ‘Nigeria overtakes India in extreme poverty ranking’ cnn.com https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/26/africa/nigeria-overtakes-india-extreme-poverty-intl/index.html
- Tooze, Adam May 14 2022 ‘Youth Quake. Why African demography should matter to the world’ Chartbook 121 https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-121-youth-quake-why-african
- Tooze, Adam Dec 17 2020 ‘Nigeria at a crossroads?’ Chartbook 10 https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-newsletter-10?s=w
- Rosling, Hans. 2018 Factulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World – And Why Things Are Better Than You Think. UK:Sceptre
- Tooze, Adam Dec 17 2020 ‘Nigeria at a crossroads?’ Chartbook 10 https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-newsletter-10?s=w
- Rosling, Hans. 2018 Factulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World – And Why Things Are Better Than You Think. UK:Sceptre
- Jesse G, Madden P. Figures of the week: Africa’s infrastructure needs are an investment opportunity; Brookings Institution. 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2019/06/27/figures-of-the-weekafricas-infrastructure-needs-are-an-investmentopportunity
