IS AFRICA OVER POPULATED? PART 1

This is the first of a two-part article.

I refuse to go around feeling guilty about coming from the “overpopulated” developing world. I refuse to believe the guff we are fed to the effect that there are too many of us. Too many for whom? For what?

Sometime in January of this year, the BBC website published an article by Chris Rapley, the Director of the British Antarctic Survey titled Earth is too Crowded for Utopia. The article stated: “if we believe that the size of the human ‘footprint’ is a serious problem…the issue of population management must be addressed.

When I read this, there was a clamour of alarm bells in my head. What is population management? Management à la China? Or management à la create a supervirus and infect them with it?

Now, before you label me a conspiracy theorist, remember this: just because you’re paranoid does not mean that they are not out to get you. In any case, most conspiracy theorists are actually the people who do not believe what the official propagandist media tell them. Conspiracy theorists are thinking people.

Anyway, Rapely went on to say that after the optimum number of inhabitants the world can sustain is determined the next thing would be “a straightforward matter of identifying options, choosing the approach and then planning and navigating the route from source to destination.”

A deceptively anodyne comment, I find.

I was one of those who left a comment on the article on the BCC website. The others I saw there were interesting. Some people said that it was time the consumerism of the West was reined in. Others said irresponsible people in developing countries should stop having more children.

I have thought about this for some time, and have decided to say something about it.  I shall approach the issue in more than one post, because I find that there is a lot to be said. For the time being, I shall deal with population density.

The 2004 World Population Report, which can be found at www.unpopulation.org, was interesting, but less user-friendly for my purposes than I would have liked. So my data comes from the site of the International Atomic Energy Agency. You can go there too: http://www.iaea.org/inis/aws/eedrb/.

We’ll start, if you will, with my own country.

Cameroon’s surface area is 475.44 thousand sq. km. Population density is 34.45 people per sq. km.

The surface area of the Netherlands is 41.45 thousand sq. km. Its population density is 395.11 people per sq. km.

The two countries have about the same total population.

But I can hear you saying that there are other more populous developing countries. So let’s look at four big ones.

Country                  Area (000 km2)                                 Pop. Dens. (km2)
China                        9596.96                                                  136.12
India                          3287.59                                                   328.59
Indonesia                   1919.44                                                   126.06
Nigeria                       923.77                                                    139.40

Let us compare these with four Western countries.

Country                  Area (000 km2)                               Pop. Dens. (km2)
United Kingdom              244.82                                                 246.88
United States                 9631.42                                                 30.71
Germany                         357.02                                                230.89
France                            547.03                                                110.88

But I can still hear you saying that they have more resources.

That is true.

But the points I will develop in the next article are also true.

Comments

[Flagfon]

Africa is under populated. They came up with Family Planning tricks. Donations of contraceptives and "Durex"(Condoms) were distributed. Health Practitioners underwent rigorous family planning seminars to eventually implement their diabolic schemes to under populate the African continent. The next componemt to this African nightmare was the pandemic of HIV/AIDS that is virtually wiping out our populations.(Who knows exactly where this killer disease originates from?
A beg wuna moof me dey. Africa needs more human beings. I will encourage every family to have at least five children either in or out of wedlock. If you cannot procreate, ask your brother or friend to...Helep U.
Comment Ca...

[Ndiks]

What ever the case.The punctum is Black population is dwindling and that is a cause of concern.Hiv and other bio desease are out to deodorise our population and we must replace the dead with new born.Poeple are out to cull Africans so they could go and settle in the Continent.In EU,the population is aging and there arelittle new borns to replace them.Now ther are allocating monies to encourage their people to give birth to new kids with slow results so far.If one can have up to five No problem.But make sure you raise them .HIV is a grim threat to our population but some are yet to feel this point.