Hanover - The world population is expected to reach nearly 7.6 billion at the start of next year, the German Foundation for World Population (DSW) said on Friday.

The institute expects the total number of people on Earth to be 7,591,541,000 on January 1.

Over the past year, the number of people increased by 83 million - or approximately the population of Germany.

The number of people in Africa is expected to be increase particularly quickly in the coming decades.

The continent's population is forecast to double to 2.53 billion, from 1.26 billion, by 2050.