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In 2005 Africa’s overall birth rate was 35.3 births per 1,000 people, the highest among the world’s continents. The countries of North Africa have markedly lower rates than most sub-Saharan countries. South of the Sahara, fertility rates tend to fall in the 5 to 7 range (meaning that, on average, women give birth to 5 to 7 children over the course of their lifetimes). African societies have traditionally seen large families as signs of wealth and prestige, and value the presence of children in everyday life. Children are also an important source of labor, especially on farms, and eventually become the primary providers of assistance to elderly parents. In addition, a greater number of children means more marriages, resulting in wider family support networks, a crucial consideration in a continent where life is often hazardous. For all these reasons, to be childless is typically a cause for concern and often pity. As a result, birth control has not been accepted to the degree it has in other parts of the less developed world, such as Southeast Asia. The major exceptions are found among members of the newly emerging urban middle class, who have adopted nuclear family arrangements modeled on those in Western societies. Parents in nuclear families do not receive the higher level of support offered by extended families, so they find children costly in terms of money and time. These African families have therefore begun practicing birth control. A high fertility rate translates into a young population, which has several important implications. It assures continued population growth, short of disaster occurring, into an indefinite future. Even if the fertility rate declines, the population will continue to grow because of the large number of women who will have reached their childbearing years. Population growth strains a nation’s child services, especially the provision of education and health care, and the problem becomes particularly acute when poverty is as widespread as it is in Africa. Competition for jobs intensifies as more and more people enter the labor market, and higher levels of unemployment can lead to increasing crime rates and wider social unrest.
Africa’s death rate—14.2 deaths per 1,000 people in 2005—is also the highest in the world. Again, the countries of North Africa have significantly lower rates than those of sub-Saharan Africa. Infant and child deaths, from an array of infectious and parasitic diseases, traditionally are the main contributors. Vaccination campaigns have helped lower death rates among children since 1980. However, over the same period, an increasing incidence of infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) has actually resulted in the decline of life expectancy in some countries. For example, Botswana, after achieving a life expectancy of 60 in the early 1990s, saw the figure fall into the 30s in the first decade of the 21st century. The country’s population will soon be in decline due to the loss of large numbers of young adults to AIDS and the children they would have produced. South Africa is in a similar predicament and several other countries may soon be as well, depending on whether or not infection rates can be lowered. Across the continent, life expectancy in 2009 averaged 53.7 years.
Migration is a commonplace African phenomenon. Traditionally, migration was largely associated with the search for new and better farm or grazing lands. Some herders migrated seasonally, moving their livestock to available water and forage sites. During colonial times, labor migration to mines and plantations became common. More recently, increasing numbers of people have been migrating to Africa’s cities, which are perceived as places of opportunity not only to meet basic needs but to fulfill higher economic or social aspirations as well. Cyclical migration is also very common, as people move back and forth between cities and their home areas. Most Africans seek to maintain connections with the places where they were born. More from Encarta Refugees make up another group of migrants. In total, Africa contains about 30 percent of the world’s refugee population, as classified by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. People generally flee turmoil in their home countries and become refugees in adjacent countries. Recent examples include Sudanese in the Darfur region fleeing to Chad, and Rwandans fleeing to Tanzania and the DRC. In some cases, turmoil grows worse in the nation harboring refugees, so the two countries literally exchange refugees. This happened in the late 20th century between Ethiopia and Somalia, and between Liberia and Sierra Leone. Most refugees eventually return to their home countries, although some manage to find new lives in their country of refuge. Intercontinental migration is much less common. While many people in former French colonies have moved to France, for the most part their goal has been to earn enough to send money home periodically before returning themselves. An individual may repeat this process several times during his or her adult years. Several African nations have faced a so-called brain drain, as skilled and professional workers find better employment opportunities elsewhere, especially in Europe and North America. These workers may or may not leave permanently. In the second half of the 20th century, many Europeans left for good. Large numbers of settlers in Algeria returned to France during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), and since 1980 many white South Africans and Zimbabweans have departed. During the 1960s and 1970s political pressures and deteriorating social and economic conditions led many South Asians to flee Uganda.
Only 37 percent of Africans live in urban areas, making Africa the least urbanized continent. At the same time, however, it is also the most rapidly urbanizing continent. Africa’s major cities, often national capitals, are the primary destinations for the vast majority of migrants, and some experience population growth rates of 8 to 10 percent per year. Dozens of African cities now have populations of more than 1 million. The largest cities in Africa include Cairo, Giza, and Alexandria in Egypt; Kinshasa, DRC; Casablanca, Morocco; Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Lagos, Nigeria; and Luanda, Angola. Two of the world’s largest metropolitan areas are located in Africa: The combined Cairo-Giza metropolitan area has about 12 million inhabitants, and Lagos and its surrounding suburbs are home to close to 17 million people. By 2015 the population of the Lagos metropolitan area is expected to be more than 23 million. Great differences in wealth and living standards are characteristic of all large African cities. Job opportunities in cities have not kept pace with population growth. Rates of unemployment in urban areas often exceed 50 percent, and most jobless people are young, male, and undereducated. Many residents earn their incomes from informal occupations such as selling newspapers and magazines, shining shoes, running errands, cleaning, and collecting trash. Begging, prostitution, and theft are also ways of making a living. Urban housing also tends to be in short supply and thus relatively expensive. Workers often reside on the outskirts of cities in what are politely called unscheduled settlements (more commonly known as shantytowns) where rents are cheaper. While usually lively places to live, they are also overcrowded and lack basic services such as sewage systems and clean water supplies. This raises the risk, especially for children, of contracting infectious and parasitic diseases. Cholera is a particularly dangerous threat in urban areas. To reverse the trend of overconcentration of population in urban areas, several countries have established new capital cities. The Nigerian government moved the capital from Lagos to the new city of Abuja in 1991, and Tanzania has tried since the 1970s to relocate its capital from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma, a small city in the center of the country. In neither case has the change worked in terms of population movement: Migrants continue to flood Lagos and Dar es Salaam. As cities grow, so too does their ethnic diversity. Although mixing of ethnic groups occurs more than in the past, different groups tend to segregate themselves in different neighborhoods. This is especially true when groups have a history of political conflict. For example, in Nairobi, Kenya, the Luo and Kikuyu seldom mix; the same holds for the Igbo and Hausa in Nigeria’s largest cities. Immigrants, such as Mozambicans in South Africa, often cluster in particular districts. Many older West African cities feature so-called “stranger quarters” for immigrants.
African people identify themselves, or have been identified by others, as members of certain ethnic groups. While this identification can be based on a number of different criteria, a person’s mother tongue is often the most common determinant.
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