January 11, 2016, Guardian By: Joseph J Bish

This article argues that resources normally given to infrastructure and education will have to be spent on people, as the African population explodes.

By the year 2050, African population growth would be able to re-fill an empty London five times a year.

Of the 2.37 billion increase in population expected worldwide by 2050, Africa alone will contribute 54%. According to some statistics, Nigeria will add more people to the world's population by 2050 than any other country.

The dynamics at play are straightforward. Public health is getting better. The 12 million Africans born in 1955 could expect to live only until the age of 37. Encouragingly, the 42 million Africans born this year can expect to live to the age of 60.

Meanwhile, another key demographic variable - the total fertility rate.

In Niger, where GDP per capita is less than $1 per day, the average number of children a woman is likely to have in her life is more than seven. If fertility does not fall at all - and it has not budged in the last 60 years - the country's population projection for 2100 veers towards 960 million people.

What has caught demographers off-guard is that African fertility has not fallen as expected. Precipitous declines in fertility in Asia and Latin America, from five children per woman in the 1970s to around 2.5 today, led many to believe Africa would follow a similar pattern.

Unfortunately, since the early 1990s, family planning programmes in Africa have resulted in slow, sometimes negligible, fertility declines. In a handful of countries, previous declines have stalled altogether and are reversing.

These dynamics create the opposite of a virtuous cycle. Rapid population growth helps overburden educational systems. Infrastructure is also compromised, with congested highways and stratospheric housing costs. The reality is that as the size of any populace expands, governments must keep apace.

Failure to do so results in a drop in per capita living standards.

Education an infrastructure are highly important to any country's development. With a burgeoning population, this is more difficult.

There are some signs of success, such as Family Planning 2020. Recent figures from Kenya and Zambia show substantial strengthening of contraceptive use among married women. In Kenya, 58% of married women now use modern contraception, and in Zambia this measure has risen from 33% to 45% in the last three years.

In both cases, the catalysts for improvements were government commitment and commensurate budget financing. The virtuous circle may not be completely out of reach, but it is attainable.