Should Africa have fewer babies?

The family planning campaign started long ago. I remember when i was in primary one that I heard of family planning methods. When you have a look at the population census report, the number of children that would be born to a woman if she were to live to the end of her childbearing years will be a woman who lives outside the city. Because such a person will not have any problem going to the farm to gather some snails now that we are in the rainy season and get some dough to prepare a meal for the family. What such a person always want to satisfy is providing food for the household or domestic home. I think when you take the population of those in the urban centres, people really give birth to smaller numbers because the cost of living is high.

If it is true Africa's population will more than triple by the end of the century to three and a half billion as the UN report says and if it looks unlikely that nothing would change the behavioral pattern of the African, there is only one solution then. The world should not worry, Malthus theory on population would solve the perceived problem that Africa would face.

I have two answers i.e yes or no.
Why Yes because being a poor place Africa can not handle large population and looking at its situation where most of the countries depend on donors.Therefore its hard for Africa to have many babies.
Why No is because God said clearly to Adam and Eve go and multiply,so for believers it won't go well.
Thanks.

Definetly people in Africa should have fewer babies. This whole outlook about having a big family is completely outdated. Maybe 300 years ago yes but not now in the modern world. I cannot understand how Africans who have no jobs or money decide ro keep producing children. If a family is wealthy and children can be supported ok, but really a poor family with 3 or 4 mouths to feed will cope much better than a family of 10. It's silly really. How can people not make sense of this? I don't think the continent would be able encourage people to have less kids. How? Forget government grants for small families. These governments care nothing for their people. They'd certainly not give them 'free money'.

Thank you HYS team, I think I might just love you for bringing up this topic. Allows me to vent my spleen. Should Africa have fewer babies? Yes! With the exception of a handful, there are just way too many people in most countries at present, never mind the future; I could weep. Sorry, just not enough resources to sustain ginormous population explosions (read uncontrolled growth). Harsh but the figures above are frightening. I guess that answers your question about how I would feel about sharing my neighborhood will so many people. Time to step up on family planning. Its just not about lack of access to contraceptives but also a change in attitudes regarding family planning. Large families generally have been the norm and most African societies pressure for the same. It wouldn't bother me so much if folks had large families and were able to take care of them but that is not usually the case......

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

In order to ensure that majority of the population has access to scarce resources such as clean pipe bourne water, arable land, renewable energy, decent education etc Africa must slow down its birth rate just as people in Europe and parts of Asia have done. The current leadership/elite in Africa is not leading by example on this issue. Africans, especially in sub-saharan nations need to wise up to rise up!

I don't want to sound doom mongering but.....
The earth has too many people and thats a fact. The people of the richer nations have (to a certain extent) realised the threat of population increase on the world as a whole and on themselves in particular and (somewhat) started to limit their own population by contraception etc. Africa and other places (South America...) can (in theory) absorb and feed much extra population provided they "develop" in the European/North American manner. If they do so then I suspect the world as we know it is even more likely to reach a cataclysmic collapse sometime in next 100 years or so.
All said -its easy for people like me (relatively rich, over fed Westerner) to preach to the poorer world on the insanity of the path they are taking when all they basically want is a better life.

Inspite of the UN population explosion projection for Africa, the continent has all the natural and human resources to provide a better standard of living for all her citizens. After all, most of the raw materials used in the West comes from Africa. There is a massive brain-drain of Africans in the diaspora. What African countries need most, is good governance and better management of their resources. Having said these things, better family planning would only sustain good living standard. Although, one child policy like China will not fly in Africa.
In Nigeria, for example, the educated and younger families are already limiting the number of children to 2-3. You don't have to be a social scientist to know that each child will get a bigger slice when share the same size of pie with two instead of five children.

yes, i think so, and many Africans are now doing that.we should be able to give birth to the number of children we can raised. unfortunately this is not the case in africa. interestingly, many of the children came by error - due to poor family planing

First of all it it very difficult to write anything about this subject without someone being offended. This is clearly evident by the number of posts that BBC have placed under "moderation" In this regard I would respectfully request that BBC allow some flexability in making peoples views known.
In answering this question we look to look at how nature works. In nature we find that those species with a high mortality rate produce far more offspring than those with a more or less secured future. We could look at the offspring of frogs vesus birds for example or monkeys vesus cheetahs.
Before coloniasation Africa was a deadly place to live in with a host of difficulties to cope with ranging from famine, faction fighting, disease, malaria and general lawlessness. The chances that an African would see adulthood was therefore very slim. In order to compensate for this the Africans got into the habit of breeding prolifically to ensure the survival of their species.
However, with the introduction of westeners into Africa and their associated civilisation such as hospitals, medicines, law and order, food security African mortality fell sharply and is still falling to this day. The unfortnate aspect of this is that the overbreeding mentality still persists which leads the world to a massive over population problem in Africa. Your article is misleading in stating that the reason for African overpopulation is a lack of contraceptives. The truth of the matter is that Africans don't want and refuse to use contraceptives. In African tradition a large family is a sign of virility - also in primitive times children were a form of retirement scheme because they would be expected to look after their parents in their old age. Daughters, for example, were much favoured because they could be sold for cattle.
So, it is clearly evident that until we break these old African taboos the population will continue to explode unchecked. The undesirable aspect of this is the ever increasing number of African refugees flooding Europe as has been and still is to this present day.
Unfortunately we may have to look at a huge paradigm shift here. Is the option to breed a privilige or a a right? I personally fear that the answer to that is immaterial because I think it is far too late.

Why should Africa have fewer babies? This should be between couples and not to get advise from outside your home. I feel children are add joy to the family therefore we ought to fulfill God's word to go and multiply in terms of child bearing. Unless where you are failing to look after them, then you ought not to produce many.Mayulu from Lusaka-Zambia. [Personal details removed by Moderator]

What a question. Well no, our people can have as many babies as they wish to have. We like big families, so who the hell are you to tell us how many babies we should be having. I think the west has interfered enough in our affairs. Besides, after robbing us off all our natural resources, enslaving our people and funding wars against us, am sure your aid packages you send each year will come in handy when there are a few too many starving babies around the motherland.
Get real!

2.1 or less children per family should be the norm in any country because anything higher leads to population growth which creates many problems, not in the least for the parents themselves, but ultimately for the whole world. I am told African women don't even want more than 2 or 3 children but their husbands and tribal traditions force them to have more children.

Saying yes or no is like saying we can control the maker and giver of children.

For me, we should allow nature to take is course and we play our role adequately.
African governments should build their country's economies and encourage their people to live good lives. This is going to solve all the population growth problems.

yes. Simply because no one should be born surround by insecurity of such scale as seen in some of these places. Not for some of the ridiculous reason given here such as they " rely on Aid" believe me African poor are only the begging bowl for their leaders, most of them see nothing of it.

Africa is a land of great enthusiasm therefore we dwell in human power for labor and other extracts embedded in this, therefore we need more babies in order to come up with a re known database where we can get cheap and available labor. secondly all investors in the world would love to invest in Africa therefore they need enough human labor that can do real exaction of work and this is reason enough to let Africa have enough babies.

Yes, I believe that Africa (not all) should have fewer children because it is the most undeveloped continent on the planet usually depending on foreign aid for the most basic of needs. I believe that every parent in this world wants to give their child the best start in life and it is unfair to bring children into this world when you are aware that you can’t provide them with even the most basic of needs such as health care, education, food, shelter, security and etc. I'm not being racist but it's the unfortunate reality.

Majority of Africa's population lives in rural communities. And in these communities, poverty, illiteracy, lack of sanitation and basic health care services exist. Also, in these communities rather than in the urban centres, strong cultural customs prevail in that women have no say in certain issues and women often find themselves in polygamous relationships. Cultural customs such as having larger families are equated with wealth. But this notion made sense centuries back when countries' population figures were not threatening the survival of other species and also global warming was unheard of. In these rural communities, women tend to have many children whether they want it or not. The decision rests entirely with the men in the community as they are deemed decision makers. The concept of Family planning has been around for a number of years. But like many other concepts like gender, education, literacy, they target women and leave the men out. In patriarchal societies like the ones in Africa, I think we are fast learning that women are powerless to change anything as long as men are not involved. The involvement of men in these programmes will make a difference in these communities. At least they will begin to look at women as partners and not baby making machines. They will understand the importance of having children that they can adequately look after; be able to educate, feed and attend to their health needs. They will also understand that women are human beings and that they need to be valued as mothers, wives, sisters and daughters. That the health and well being of women is important in maintaining of healthy families and livelihoods. Governments should take responsibility in informing and encouraging people in especially rural communities through knowledge and awareness of the value of having children that they strongly look after. Governments should create deliberate legislation with regard to the number of children a family should have with the purpose of proper socio-economic planning aimed at community and national development.

i see some people are indirectly saying that colonisation was good for Africa and the West have brought civilisation in Africa, this kind of mentality is what the West is all about. in reality though, Africa was good and lovely place before slavery and colonisation, and that is the fact. As an African, we should have more babies we do not need the West to tell us how many kids that we can have, Africa has immense of resource to feed what ever population it have, as well the continent is wide enough to support her babies. The other point is that if it was not IMF's structural adjustmen and World Banks policies Africa would have been a well of place in this era of globalisation. Eugenics, Population Control, family planning campaign, contraceptives and what other name that you can give is a way of keeping African population down so that they will be under Western control forever and one day. So Africa do what you please and stop listening abroad.

Life is a matter of hardworking and good plan. Put God first in whatever you and on praying hard for forgiveness from HIM.

YES. YES. YES.

The economic situations in most African countries is tragic. In worst situations, the population increases but the economic development does not. So how is the population going to benefit from this.
There are few schools, few medical facilities and so forth. And traditions where women are expected to bare several children are not helpful at all. How can you have 5 children yet you are not prepared to offer them basic human necessities? It does not make any sense.
A one child policy like that of China is a bit extreme.
There are resources but they are not fully exploited and if they are then they are not equally distributed.

Hence until African nations can be economically as well as technologically developed then people should not have more children if they can not provide them with a basic standard of living.

There is no doubt that Africans need to have less children. I do believe that each family should be limited to 2 children. How this could / would be enforced is impossible to envision however!

In many cultures, having many children is considered to show one's wealth. And the cultural belief is that the children will look after their parents when they are older. However, in a society where there is so much unemployment and people are unable to look after themselves, this simply doesn't happen any longer.

With less population growth, there would be better oportunities and resources for everyone - less unemployment, more money in the budget for better healthcare, better education, housing, delivery of essential services such as access to water, electricity and sewerage services, etc. Less demand on resources such as food, water, and employment means a better quality of life for everyone.

Once again, African leaders do not provide a good example to the general citizenship - in South Africa, President Jacob Zuma has approx. 18 children!

Most African economies currently do not have sufficient tax base income to provide for the huge population growth in terms of grants and delivery of basic services, education & healthcare. How will they cope with the kind of population explosion that is foreseen? It is simply not possible and means that we can look forward to a future of more overwhelming poverty, crime and hopelessness.

All countries should try to limit population growth not just Africa.
Counties such as the UK should cease paying child allowance for extra babies.
The world does not need them.
There are already far too many of us on this small rock we call Earth.