It should be obvious in this discussion that our goal is definitely not to contribute to the “politically correct” rhetoric bandied about incessantly which calls for some “decrease” in African population because we do not believe that Africa, in the first instance, is overpopulated. We must now examine this issue. The population argument is usually advanced on a number of fronts. First, there is a “theory” that the given landmass which presently defines Africa and its various so-called nation-states cannot sustain the existing populations, but, more critically, the “projected populations” in years to come. We shall examine the degree to which this “theory” is able to stand up to serious scientific scrutiny first by comparing Africa’s landmass vis-à-vis its population and those of some of the countries of the world.
Southern World to Southern World comparisons can also prove useful in exposing the fallacy of either Africa’s “large population” or “potential explosive population”. Iran’s size of 636,292 sq miles is about the same as Sudan and South Sudan combined. Yet its population, unlike the Sudans’ 45 million, is at least one and one-half times as large at 75 million. Pakistan’s landmass of 310,402 sq miles is just about Namibia’s 333,702 but Pakistan’s population is 174 million while Namibia’s is 2 million! Even though Bangladesh’s 55,598 sq mile-landmass makes it roughly one-eighth the size of Angola (481,350 sq miles) as well as that of South Africa’s (471, 442 sq miles), Bangladeshi population at 159 million outstrips Angola’s 13 million and South Africa’s 50 million. If we were to return to our earlier comparisons, Angola and South Africa are about 4-5 times the size of Britain but with one-fifth and four-fifths respectively of the latter’s population.
Finally, we should turn to the question of resource, its availability or lack of it, and therefore its ability or inability to support the African population – another component of Africa’s “over-population” fallacy. Well over 50 per cent of Uganda’s arable land, some of the richest in Africa, remains uncultivated. Were Uganda to expand its current food production significantly, not only would it be completely self-sufficient, but it would be able to feed all the countries contiguous to its territory without difficulty. It must be stressed here that Uganda does not need any GM food technology to acquire this capability. Indeed no African country requires any shred of GM technology to acquire food sufficiency and security. None, whatsoever.
Statistics of transformation
The overall statistics of the African situation is even more revealing as with regards to the continent’s long-term possibilities. Just about a quarter of the potential arable land of Africa is being cultivated presently (FAO and IIED, “What effect will biofuels have on forest land and poor people’s access to it?”, 2008). Even here, an increasingly high proportion of the cultivated area is assigned to so-called cash-crops (cocoa, coffee, tea, groundnut, sisal, floral cultivation, etc.) for exports at a time when there has been a virtual collapse, across the board, of the price of these crops in international commodity markets. In the past 30 years, the average real price of these African products abroad has been about 20 per cent less than their worth during the 1960s-70s period which was soon after the “restoration of independence”. As for the remaining 75 per cent of Africa’s uncultivated land, this represents 60 per cent of the entire world’s potential (John Endres, “Ready, set, sow”, The Journal of Good Governance Africa, Issue 6, November 2012, p. 1). The world is aware of the array of strategic minerals such as coltan (columbite tantalite)**, cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, industrial diamonds, iron ore, manganese, phosphates, titanium, uranium, and of course petroleum oil found in virtually all regions across the continent.
Despite the ravages of history of foreign conquest and occupation and the virulence of locally-brewed tyranny of genocidal regimes and fellow-travellers, Africa remains one of the world’s most wealthy and potentially one of the world’s wealthiest continents. What is not always or simultaneously associated with the wealth profiles of Africa is that it has vast acreage of rich farmlands with capacity to optimally support the food needs of generations of African peoples indefinitely. In addition, the famous fish industry in
Sénégal, Angola, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana for instance, Botswana’s rich cattle farms, west Africa’s yam and plantain belts extending from southern Cameroon to southern
Sénégal, the continent’s rich rice production fields, etc., etc., all highlight the potential Africa has for fully providing for all its food needs. Again, without a shred of GM technology needed or emplaced. Thus, what the current African socioeconomic situation shows is extraordinarily reassuring, provided the acreage devoted to cultivation is expanded and expressly targeted to address Africa’s own
internal consumption needs. Land use directed at agriculture for food output, as
opposed to the calamitous waste of “cash-crop” production for export and/or the more recently
observed “land-grab” – parcelling away of land to foreign governments and organisations – occurring across
the continent (on this, see, particularly, the excellent work of Emeka Akaezuwa’s “Stop Africa Land Grab”
movement – http://www.stopafricalandgrab.com/author/emeka-akaezuwa/).
It is an inexplicable and inexcusable tragedy that any African child, woman, or man could go without food in the light of the staggering endowment of resources in Africa. Africa constitutes a spacious, rich and arable landmass that can support its population, which is still one of the world’s least densely populated and distributed, into the indefinite future. There is only one condition, though, for the realisation of this goal – Africa must utilise these immense resources for the benefit of its
own peoples within newly negotiated, radically decentralised sociopolitical dispensations which must abandon the current murderous “nation-states” or “Berlin-states” as they should be more appropriately categorised (Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe,
Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature, African Renaissance, 2011). We now no longer require any reminders that the primary existence of these states is to destroy or disable as many enterprisingly resourceful and resource-based constituent peoples, nations and publics within the polity that are placed in their genocidal march and sights.
It is abundantly clear that the factors which have contributed to determining the very poor quality of life of Africa’s population presently have to do with the nonuse, partial use, or the gross misuse of the continent’s resources year in, year out. This is thanks to an asphyxiating “Berlin-state” whose strategic resources are used largely to support the Western World and others and an overseer-grouping of local forces which exists solely to police the dire straits of existence that is the lot of the average African. As a result, the broad sectors of African peoples are yet to lead, centrally, the entire process of societal reconstruction and transformation by themselves. Surely, an urgently restructured, culturally supportive political framework that enhances the quality of life of Africans is really the pressing subject of focus for Africa.
*Discussion paper presented at a youth weekend-school, Stratford, London, Saturday 16 June 2012.
**Refined coltan is critical in the manufacture of an array of small electronic equipment including, particularly, laptop computers and mobile phones; 80 per cent of the world’s reserves of this mineral is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which is being currently subjected to a genocidal conflict where 5 million people have been murdered since the 1990s.
