Africa's rate of growth is the highest in the world --2.36%

UN Report Nov 98

Africa, with 13% of the world's population, is projected to see 34% of the globe's population increase over the next 50 years. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-7/12/99

Africa has 13% of the world's population, and 69% of the world's HIV or AIDS cases. Still, the population of the African continent is expected to rise from 800 million now to 1.8 billion in 2050, because the fertility rate of 38 births per 1,000 people is still much higher than the mortality rate of 14 deaths per 1,000. Also, 43% of the continent's population is under age 15. June 8, 2000 ENN/AP

Africa now produces nearly 30% less food per person than in 1967. Sept 1999 ...Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs

Map of Africa showing it's insufficient agriculturally sustainable soils - USDA, 1996

Kenya, with a population of nearly 29 million, was the first country in black Africa to view unchecked population growth as a serious impediment to growth and economic prosperity. It was the first country to develop a population policy in 1967; Ghana followed in 1969. Today, 25 African countries have such policies, which include sex education, AIDS awareness programs, and promotion and distribution of contraception. Urbanization, rising costs, higher literacy rates, and better infant survival rates have also restrained population growth. The Christian Science Monitor October 12 99

Most African countries are suffering from poverty and low literacy levels - the two most important factors that exacerbate environmental degradation and bio-diversity loss. Over 90% of the people use biological resources for food, shelter, medicine (herbal) and income. African News Service Apr 22 1999

Since 1950 nearly 75% of tropical forests in west Africa are gone and Nigeria, Kenya, Burundi, Cote D'Ivoire and Madagascar -- lost more than 90% of their original forest. IPS news Apr 20 1999

November 13, 2000 Fortune Death of a Continent; Africa Will Never Be the Same. Africa has 11% of the world's population, and almost almost 75% of its AIDS cases. More than 25 million Africans have already contracted the virus that will kill them within a decade. AIDS is killing off the most productive people in Africa: the well educated, the prosperous, the powerful, the parents of young children. Yet Africa is in denial about the disease. The disease is strangely silent, almost underground. You don't see emaciated victims on city sidewalks in Botswana, South Africa, or Zambia. People return to their villages to die but don't tell their families why they are sick. In one utility company corporate boardroom, eight of 12 top executives are HIV positive; more than a dozen ministers in Malawi's national parliament have died. According to the CIA, in Angola and Congo half the soldiers are HIV positive. In Botswana, one of the most prosperous countries in Africa, 35% between 15 and 50 are HIV positive, says a United Nations report. In Muslim areas, HIV rates are low: between 1% and 3% north of the Sahara and around Senegal and Liberia. A study by a farmers union in Zimbabwe reported that maize production dropped 61% after the death of a breadwinner. Cotton and vegetable production fell by half. Families that grow more lucrative but labor-intensive crops to sell to cooperatives or along the roadside often must revert to subsistence farming when the male adults become sick. Assests such as the family cow, the plow, or the bicyle are sold to pay for treatment. Traditional healers get rich. Some suggest that the victim cure his AIDS by having sex with a virgin. 25% of 10-year-old girls in poor sections of the town of Lusaka have had sex, and 60% of 16-year-old girls. More than 25% of Zambia's children are orphans. Often the girls become prostitutes, catching and spreading HIV, and the boys become petty criminals. "Dry sex," a practice that is supposed to enhance sex, and lack of circumcision hastens the spread of AIDS, as well as untreated syphilis, gonorrhea, and other sexually transmitted diseases. Only 6% of people reported using a condom in their last encounter with a spouse or live-in partner. 95% seem to know that unprotected sex leads to AIDS, but they seldom do anything about it. In the last few years 85% of the teachers who died in the Central African Republic were HIV positive. In Zambia, educated women past their teens are three times more likely to contract HIV than uneducated ones. Top country leaders rarely speak out in public about AIDS. Only in Uganda, perhaps the hardest-hit country in the world, has the President, Yoweri Musevini, led the charge. In Uganda, HIV has declined from 15% to 8% over the past 20 years.

Africa Is Dying - It Needs Help The HIV epidemic that is raging across Africa is now taking some 6,030 lives each day, and the number is expected to double by 2010. Consequences are a precipitous drop in life expectancy, falling food production, deteriorating health care, and disintegrating educational systems. Effectively dealing with this epidemic and the heavy loss of adults will make the rebuilding of Europe after World War II seem like child's play by comparison. Infection rate is over 10% in 16 African countries, in South Africa, 20%, in Zimbabwe and Swaziland, 25%; and in Botswana 36% of adults are HIV positive. In these countries, one fifth to one third of their adults will be lost by the end of this decade. Life expectancy could drop to only 30 years! In the epidemic's early stages, the virus typically spreads most rapidly among the better educated, more socially mobile segment of society. It takes the agronomists, engineers, and teachers on whom economic development depends. In some hospitals in Burundi and South Africa, AIDS patients occupy 60% of the beds. This epidemic could easily produce 20 million orphans by 2010. In Central African Republic, a shortage of teachers closed 107 primary schools, leaving only 66 open. Food supplies drop precipitously when the first adult develops full-blown AIDS because this worker stops working in the fields, as does the adult caring for the AIDS victim. While there have been decimating plagues in the 14th and 16th centuries, there is no precedent for such a concentrated loss of adults. There have been a few successes: in Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni over the last dozen years has succeeded in reducing the share of adults infected with the virus from 14% to 8%. Senegal has prevented the epidemic from gaining momentum and held the infection rate to 2%. It is urgent that Africa's national political leaders outline the behavioral changes needed to contain the virus--such as young people delaying first intercourse, reducing the number of sexual partners, and using condoms. Then others can help, including the medical establishment within the country, NGOs working in this area, and international health and family planning agencies. The help of teachers and social workers from other countries, and debt relief are essential to the rebuilding of Africa. July 18, 2000 World Watch

Sub-Saharan Africa
May 98 From Population Action International: Africa 's Population Challenge: Accelerating Progress in Reproductive Health By James E. Rosen and Shanti R. Conly. Urbanization, the rising cost of education and other basic needs, and the improved chances of survival for children are all affecting the traditional preference for large families. The decline in birth rates is spreading steadily across the continent. Use of family planning, at only 18 percent for the region as a whole, has increased considerably in some countries. Yet another 22 million married women indicate a desire to avoid another pregnancy, but are not using contraception. Forty percent of all pregnancy-related deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, which has only 10 percent of the world's women. 22,000 African women die each year from unsafe abortion, reflecting a need for contraception.

Water is becoming one of the most critical natural resource issues in Africa. The African continent is one of the two regions in the world facing serious shortages. More than 300 million people in Africa still lack reasonable access to safe water. In sub-Saharan Africa, only about 51% of the population have access to safe water, and only 45% to sanitation. A two-day meeting at UNEP will focus on promotion of equitable access to water; sustainable use of freshwater; meeting urgent water needs to assure household water security, assure water for food production, managing water for African cities. May 16, 2000 UNEP Press Release

Statistical Annex: Demographic and Socioeconomic Indicators for Sub-Saharan Africa

Alan Guttmacher "Traditionally, in some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, premarital sexual relationships are encouraged because young women are expected to prove their fecundity prior to establishing a union. In most Sub-Saharan African countries, 40% or more of 20-24-year-old women have sexual intercourse prior to their first marriage-and before the age of 20."

South Africa's New War Against Aids South Africa will publicize, through newspaper, radio and television advertisements, basic methods to prevent HIV transmission, such as abstinence, monogamy and condom use. Guidelines have been designed to clear up confusion caused by President Thabo Mbeki's controversial remarks questioning whether HIV causes AIDS. Mbeki's government has so far been reluctant to allow use of anti-retroviral drugs, even to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus. October 24, 2000 BBC

In 1998, 70% of the world's 5.8 million new AIDS infections were in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Botswana, 25% of all adults are HIV-positive. In Zimbabwe and Namibia, the rate is 20%; Zambia 19%, Swaziland 18%, and 10% or more in several other African countries. Communications Consortium Media Center Mar 99

AIDS Deaths Expected To Soar In South Africa. According to a report from the South Africa Institute of Race Relations, South Africa's population growth rate is will drop by 71% over the next decade due to the AIDS epidemic. By 2005, six million people there will be HIV positive, more than 18% of the workforce infected, and there will be one million orphans. Malaria and tuberculosis are also on the increase. January 19, 2000 PanAfrican News Agency

Primary Schooling in sub-Saharan Africa and Its Implications for Fertility Change. Fertility rates in Africa are projected to decline, in part as a result of mass schooling, but Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced a sharp drop in education as a result of war, the national debt and other economic difficulties, or high levels of population growth, according to a 1999 report from the Population Council entitled The Spread of Primary Schooling in sub-Saharan Africa: Implications for Fertility Change, by Cynthia B. Lloyd, Carol E. Kaufman, and Paul Hewett. Six countries have successfully achieved mass schooling: Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. But rural children often get shortchanged. These same countries have begun a transition from high to lower fertility rates, as measured by rising averages in contraceptive use. In other African countries, huge disparities remain in education levels based on gender, income disparity, and urban versus rural settings. Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Mali, Malawi, Cote d'Ivoire, and Senegal have made little progress in education, some showing primary school completion at less than 35%. The Population Council recommends that information campaigns be mounted through billboards, radio, and television to promote parental involvement and school attendance. February 1, 2000 Global Intersections

Botswana
Population 1.304,000. Growth rate 1.4. Fertility rate 4.0. In Botswana, 25% of all adults are HIV-positive. It's 1980 life expectancy of 61 years has dropped to 47 years. By 2010 it will be 38. Nevertheless, population is expected to double by 2050.
Botswana's AIDS epidemic will cost almost one-third of the country's economic potential in the next 10 years, according to a government report. Botswana currently has one of the world's highest HIV-infection rates, with 20% of its 1.5 million citizens testing positive for the virus. 25% of all economically active adults are expected to lose an income earner to the disease. Government revenue is also expected to drop over the next 10 years, while expenditures will rise, creating a budget deficit of 21%. The epidemic is expected to reduce annual gross domestic product growth by 1.5% and cause a shortage of skilled workers. "Per capita household income for the poorest quarter of households is expected to fall by 13% while every income earner in this category can expect an extra four dependants as a result of HIV/AIDS," the report said. May 16, 2000 Associated Press/Johannesburg Business Day

Cape Verde (West Africa)
Prolonged drought and desertification are huge environmental problems in Cape Verde. Each year for the past 20 years, the country has been getting less rainfall. These droughts cause crops to fail, and in the worst cases, famine. Many people cut down trees and bushes for firewood to cook their meals. With fewer trees, the soil on the bare ground gets washed away by rain or blown away by wind. This process is called "desertification." Since Cape Verdean girls do most of the firewood collecting, they have an important part to play in preventing desertification! New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams/Global Village

Cote D'Ivoire
The population is 15.4 million and growing at 3.3 percent annually. The country has a high urbanisation of 54.4% with the capitol Abidjan hosting 45% of the population. The population density is 48 inhabitants per two square kilometres. The minister for planning, programming and development said that the only way to reduce the rapid population growth in the country would be by educating women and young girls on the importance of family planning, especially in the rural areas where poverty compels parents to give away their teenage daughters into forced marriages for material gains.

Democratic Republic of Congo
A least 14 million out the population of the Democratic Republic of Congo, estimated at between 46-48 million, suffer from extreme nutritional deficiency, according to Michel Kassa of the UN Development. Children were particularly hit by the war-induced phenomenon. He emphasised that the situation in the country was one of the most pathetic and complex in the African region, with massive violations of the population's rights. Since August 1998 when rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda, the war's first victims have been the civilian population, unlike classical warfare. Poor infrastructure problems made it virtually impossible to reach vulnerable groups. 10% of the displaced people in the North-Kivu region were practically cut off from access to medical care or food and were thus dying in the forests from hunger and disease. According to UNDP estimates, the ongoing war had caused a rise in maternal mortality, which now stands at 1,800 per 100,000 births, making it the third or fourth highest death toll in the world. May 16, 2000 PanAfrican News Agency

Eritrea
Population: 4 million. TFR: 6.1, Growth rate 3.0% annually. Cropland per person: .17 hectares.

Humanitarian Crisis Looming in Eritrea Nearly 1 million people have been displaced within the last week of fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea, many already suffering from drought-related hunger and illness. Nearly half of Eritrea's 3.1 million may be in need of an international aid, including a quarter of a million children under the age of 5. Sudan also has several hundred thousand refugees already in Sudan as well, although press reports indicate that as many as 70,000 have crossed the border. Repatriation of Eritrean refugees has been put on hold. As many as 200,000 Eritreans refugees are coming into Sudan. Although the WFP is trying cope with the growing numbers of refugees, shelter and sanitation are inadequate, and refugees are facing the added possibility of starvation. May 21, 2000 UNICEF

Ethiopia
The population is 62 million, making Ethiopia the third largest in population of African countries, following Nigeria and Egypt. The growth rate is 3.9% even though life expectancy is only 42 years. 10% of the Ethiopian women have access to family planning services while it was only 4% 6 years prior, according to the National Population Office of Ethiopia. The national population policy states that the number of children in a family should not exceed 4. Only 20% of the 60 population have access to potable water, and sanitation coverage is even lower. 46% of child mortality is caused by unsafe water supply and lack of sanitation. Infant mortality rate is 111 per 1,000, compared 38 in China, and under-5 mortality rate is 175 per 1,000, compared to 47 in China. The median age of first marriage for women is 18.1, compared to 22.2 for China. Per capita GDP: 171; China: 564. 12% of the male population has ever been enrolled in secondary school, compared to approx. 70% in China.

According to the Ethiopian Society of Gynecologists and Obstetricians, In Ethiopia, where abortion is illegal, "Backstreet" abortions are second only to tuberculosis as the biggest killer of pregnant women, accounting for 22% to 54% of the annual mothers' mortality rate. Illegal Abortion Second Largest Killer of Pregnant Women in Ethiopia. March 13, 2001 Agence France-Presse

More Ethiopians in rural areas have realized the importance of family planning, Zenabu Kebede, chief of Gondar Family Planning Service Clinic said. In the rural areas near Gondar the number of those using family planning, rose from 14,464 in 1999, to 20,533 this year, the result of house-to-house family planning services and reproductive health education being offered in the region. November 12, 2000 Xinhua

Half of the population of Ethiopia consists of children. UNICEF wants to help Ethiopian children get access to drinking water, health care and education services. December 26, 1999 Xinhua

Soil erosion is extensive in Ethiopia. There is evidence that problems with drought could intensify and grow more frequent in coming decades. The rains that fall on Ethiopia come largely out of the west, and must cross a vast stretch of land just south of the Sahara Desert. Rain from the Atlantic falls and gets transpired back into the atmosphere five times (on average) before hitting Ethiopia. But with the massive overgrazing and desertification in the lands to the west of Ethiopia, the plants that serve to transpire moisture back into the atmosphere are vanishing, so the water just sinks into the aquifers, eliminating the rainclouds over Ethiopia.
Bruce E. Sundquist

Ethiopian Population Grows By Nearly Three Percent Abdullahi Hassen, of the Ethiopian Central Statistics Authority said the current growth rate was 2.92%, down from 3.9%. The country's estimated population of 62 million people would rise to 83.5 million by the year 2010 and 129.1 million in 30 years. Such growth will pose a treat to providing adequate health and education services, employment and housing. Environmental degradation would speed up. Fertility rates have dropped from 6.9 children in 1994 to 6.5 children in 2000. Ethiopia is the third most populous country in Africa, after Nigeria and Egypt. August 10, 2000 Agence France Presse

Ghana
Population 19.3 million. The fertility rate is 4.3 children per woman. The traditional nuptials at ages as low as 12 have been made illegal, with the age of marriage now at 18. Female servitude has also been banned, as has female genital mutilation. 30 percent of the government's budget goes into education.

Ghana's population is growing at 3.1 per cent, that of the school- age children (6-11) is growing at 3.8 per cent. But, the GER for primary education is growing at an average rate of 0.3 per cent. This indicates that demand outstrips supply and may remain so for a number of years to come. Teenage pregnancy, absence of role models, hostile school environment and low self-esteem also account for the low participation and persistence rates of girls. 40% of Ghanaians live on the national poverty line of $1.00 a day. In 1961, Ghana adopted the target that as much as 71% of primary school-age children to be in school by 1970. Consequently, Ghana's educational system in 1965 was among the most advanced in Africa with as high an enrolment rate as 75% for the 6 to 14-year group. A year later, however, the conditions changed. December 8, 1999 Ghanaian Chronicle

Water Everywhere in Ghana, But Not a Drop to Drink. Benin, Burkina-Faso, the Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal were the most severely affected countries with widespread population displacement, loss of crops and livelihoods and destruction of property. In Ghana the floods last year killed 70 Ghanaians, displaced more than 280,000, and, thirty months later, people are still thirsty. Tons of untreated human and industrial waste washed into sources of drinking water. 200 dams, wells and bore-holes in the upper West Region are polluted with an amalgam of sewage, high colonies of fecal coliform and used engine oil. Bloating carcasses of cows, sheep, goats, dogs and cats float in the contaminated water. Environmentalists attribute the floods to global warming. February 29, 2000 Environment News

Kenya
Population 29 million. Fertility rate 4.1 births per woman. However its total fertility (birth rate) has dropped by 1% in five years, and the number of women using contraception has risen from 33% to 39%.

60% of married women do not use family planning methods though they do not want any more children or want to space births. Recently there have been increased cases of water borne diseases like cholera and typhoid among the majority of Kenyans, who live mostly in slums and depend on rivers for water. Almost 60% of Nairobi's 4 million people have no access to tap water. A third of Kenya's forests have disappeared in the last decade. Kenya is currently undergoing rapid urbanisation and populations are straining the limits of existing urban services. Urbanisation is expected to reach 23% of the population by the 2001, up from 17% in 1989. Many urban dwellers in Kenya do not have access to safe water, or adequate sanitation. Garbage is uncollected and solid waste is handled indiscriminately or inappropriately.
There is hope: the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been assisting Kenya for 20 years. In the last 5 years there has been an increase in family planning and empowerment of women, and it is also important to involve men in the family planning process. Total fertility has dropped 20% in four years. Had Kenya not started to address family planning in 1970, its population could have grown to 120 million by 2025. Now it is projected to be less than 50 million in 2025.

Kenya's population has reached 28.7 million after growing 34% in a decade, but a decline in the fertility rate the average of seven children in 1989 to the five in 1999, has kept the number to below the projected 30 million. The government and other concerned parties encouraged the Kenyan people to have the number of children they can economically support. "The population of this country should be seen in terms of Kenyans as a whole rather than along tribal lines," said Planning Minister Gideon Ndambuki. February 29, 2000 The Associated Press

Malawi
Population is 10,154,000. Total fertility rate is 5.6 births per woman. Annual rate of growth is 1.7%. Nearly 65% of Malawian girls get pregnant before the age of 20. Dorothy Ng'oma of the Banja La Mtsogolo (Modern Family) family planning clinic, said the Malawi government needed to step up its reproductive health education- only 20% of those sexually active practice family planning methods. July 22 Africa News Service

The Minister of Health and Population says the high rate of illiteracy (67% of the country's 9.8 million people), cultural and religious beliefs regarding reproductive health have left devastating problems to the socio-economic development of Malawi. The maternal mortality ration is at 620 per 100,000, and infant mortality is at 134 per 1,000 and child mortality at 234 per 1,000. Lack of knowledge regarding dangerous signs of pregnancy and delivery, inadequacy and distance of hospitals and health centres are other reasons cited. Malawi abolished family planning services in the early 1960s because messages of reproductive health were construed as challenging firmly-held cultural beliefs which say having many children is a step to riches. In 1982, however, authorities were persuaded to consider restarting family planning services but now under the guise of Child Spacing later renamed Maternal Child Health. It was introduced in government hospitals in 1992 when contraceptive prevalence was 1%. The prevalence gradually improved to 7% in 1994. NGOs have made a breakthrough in awareness: some 90% of the targeted group became aware of contraceptive methods. But only 14% use them and 36% are willing to delay pregnancies by 2-3 years but by not using family planning methods. Contraceptive methods are not targeting young people, 15-25 years, estimated to constitute 47% of the country's population, ignorant of reproductive health. November 4, 1999 All Africa News Agency

Malawi
Mozambique has 19.1 million people. The growth rate is 2.1% a year. 26% of children under 5 will die of AIDS from 2000-05. 26% of children under the age of 5 are underweight. Only 50% of primary-school-age children attend class.

Nambia
35% of Namibians have HIV-AIDS - New statistics in Namibia show that more than 50% of Namibians living in the Caprivi and Kavango regions are infected with HIV. Nearly 58% of those tested between January and October in the Caprivi region were HIV-positive. Nationwide, 35% of Namibians are infected. December 8, 1999 Nambian

Nigeria
Flash picture of Nigeria - familyplanet.org
With 110 million people, Nigeria has the 10th largest population in the world, a growth rate of over 3%, expected to double in 25 years. Less than 3.5% of married women use contraceptives and the average woman has 6.4 children. Life expectancy is only 54. 45% of the population is under age 15. 11% of children die before the age of five. The city Lagos in the 1940's had about 200,000 people. By 2020 or 2030, it will have a population of 25 million. Despite the enormous earnings from oil and other natural resources, the quality of life has deteriorated over the last 15 years, with Lagos being one of the cities with the fastest population growth in the world. Weak government structure, war and dislocation, leave few options for people in terms family planning. There are strong cultural forces that promote large families. Private services are available to the very wealthy, but the GDP per capita is just $280 a year in Nigeria. Nigeria's land and people have been devastated by the ruthless drilling practices of the Shell Oil Company. After nearly 4 decades of oil extraction, the Niger river delta, a coastal rainforest and mangrove habitat, is the most endangered river delta in the world. Most Nigerians lack running water, electricity, adequate schools and healthcare, but Shell has extracted $30 billion in oil from Nigeria since 1958. ZPG Campus Activist Newsletter November 1999

Nigeria: A Breakdown of Our Primary Health Care System.. In Nigeria, Africa's most-populous country, shanties built of junk, mountains of filth and dilapidated buildings provide the backdrop for throngs of people pushing, shoving, shouting or honking in a frenzy of street corner enterprise that will still leave many in poverty at day's end. Here, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation faces its biggest challenge in its global quest to reduce disease and poverty. Even though Nigeria is one of the world's top oil-producing countries the average Nigerian is worse off now than when the nation gained independence from Britain 41 years ago. There is no immunization system for childhood diseases such as measles, polio, diphtheria or tetanus. Because of the corruption in Nigeria, immunization has dropped from a claimed 90% coverage in 1990 to the current (estimated) 20%. In Lagos, only about 30% of the city's 8 million residents have direct access to potable water. Waterborne diseases are a big problem and include: river blindness (onchocerciasis), the leading cause of blindness in West Africa, and transmitted to humans through biting black flies that live near fast-moving rivers; snail fever (schistosomiasis, caused by a blood fluke transmitted from snails to people when they swim or bathe; and elephantiasis (lymphatic filariasis), an infection that causes massive swelling of the leg or, in men, the scrotum - it is transmitted by mosquito bites. March 22, 2001 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Nigeria Briefing Book National Library for the Environment

Rwanda
Now at 8.1 million, and with 300 inhabitants per one sq. km, Rwanda has one of the highest population densities of Africa. The average fertility rate increased from 6.2 to 6.5 per woman between 1992 and 1999. Living standards have deteriorated. The infant mortality rate is at 130 per 1000. 47% of the total population is illiterate; only 100,000 Rwandans have a paid job, while 90% depend on agriculture for a living. October 11, 1999 Africa News Service

Somalia
Somaliland is home to two million people. 95% of women in Somalia have undergone female genital mutilation. "It's inhuman, condemned by Islam, painful, harmful to health and a human rights violation," said Edna Adan Ismail, a woman's rights activist, former representative of the World Health Organisation in Djibouti, and once married to Somalia's former prime minister Mohamed Ibrahim Egal. In Somaliland, one child in eight dies before its first birthday, one in five before its fifth. Every year, almost 4,000 women die during childbirth. March 7, 2001 Agence France Presse

Tanzania
Tanzania has 31 million people. Fertility rate is 5.5 children per woman. Desertification threatens 60% of its arable land, putting at risk the livelihood of half of its people. Use of wood for fuel by increasing numbers of people have caused a loss of 300,000 to 400,000 hectares of forests a year. Other problems include lack of quality water, environmental pollution, loss of wildlife habitats and biodiversity due to poaching, deterioration of aquatic ecosystems, increasing climatic variability and bio-invasions. Tanzania's population grew from 7.7 million in 1948 to 27.4 million in 1992, when the government implemented a comprehensive family planning strategy aiming to reduce the country's population growth rate to less than 2% per year by 2010. The government program provided free contraceptive services at 2,700 Ministry of Health clinics, but national contraceptive prevalence averages remained low at an average of 10%. This figure increased to 18% by 1996. Population Communications International (PCI) has been the producer of the soap opera, Twende na Wakati, the centerpiece of a national family planning advocacy campaign in Tanzania.

Tanzania Briefing Book National Library for the Environment

Tanzania: 60% Of Youths HIV Positive As Pupils, Teenagers' Blood, Screened. 60 percent of boys and girls aged 15-19 whose blood was screened in Dar Es Salaam were found HIV positive. Decaying morals are blamed. The problem was compounded by the fact that more than 75% of those who engage in sex did not use condoms. Youth make about 50% of all infected population in Africa. Girls are infected five times more than boys. Teenagers as young as 12 years have said that the condoms on the market were too large for them to use. March 14, 2001 Tomric News Agency Poor Access To The Pill Killing Rural Tanzanian Women. Young African couples dream of raising a stable and healthy family. Population Service International, local affiliate, PSI-Tanzania, develops and implements social marketing programmes in HIV/AIDS prevention, family planning promotion and child health. To dispel rumours that family planning pills make a woman infertile, cause deformed babies and cancer or itching of private parts, and to dispel the myth that men have no role in reproduction and fertility control, PSI-Tanzania hands out a consumer brochure countering commonly held beliefs and misconceptions about oral contraceptives, and a detailed description of the pill, and, in addition, under an initiative funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has launched a new family planning product called 'SafePlan,' a low dose oral contraceptive pill. It is proven to be 99% effective when used correctly and, at least 100 million women around the world have over the last 15 years used the pill to plan the size of their families. The cost is about 7 cents (US) per cycle. The pill also helps prevent anaemia, a serious problem affecting between 13 and 43 percent of Tanzanian women, and it reduces the risk of ectopic pregnancy and breast diseases. 42% of married Tanzanian women would like to space the birth of their next child or limit their family size, but only 18% are using a modern form of family planning. High fertility results in poverty and financial insecurity because women and families have more children than they can afford to take care of, high child mortality and morbidity, and high maternal mortality. Pregnancy and childbirth complications lead to 529 death for every 100,000 births. Many of these deaths could be avoided if all women able to stop childbearing when they wanted to. Unfortunately, contraceptives are not as readily accessible in rural areas and this is where most of the deaths occur. November 9, 2000 New York Times

Uganda
The population growth rate is 4%. It's fertility rate is 7.1 children per woman. The finance minister recommended four children per family. Large families and many dependents are often cited by local people as significant obstacles to rising out of poverty.

Zambia
Population 9.8 million. The fertility rate in Zambia in 1998 was 6.4 children per woman. However, later marriages due to more years spent in school, greater use of contraception and the HIV/AIDS pandemic have contributed slightly to a decline in the fertility rate. The AIDS issues have made people more aware of contraception. Zambia's population growth rate has remained at 3.1% for the last 10 years, with an average of 6.1 children per woman, down from 6.5 in 1992. In 1990, 50% of the population was under 15 years. Zambia's growth has reduced from 3.7% last year due to AIDS. The economic growth rate declined from 6.5% in 1996 to 3.5% in 1997 and 2.2% last year. The country has outstripped the country's limited resources. Most of the population has no access to family planning information. 74% of married women do not use contraceptives. "We were told that it was risky to have only two children in case one or both died. To guard against this perceived danger, we have six children. We are struggling to feed them because the economy is bad, even for those with no children," said one mother with 6 children. Panafrican News Agency Feb 2000