Population: In the family way

Posted on December 10, 2009
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Outreach work: condoms on offer in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The World Bank, which let family planning fall to 2 per cent of its health budgets, is preparing a new strategy for Africa

F ive years ago, Boniface K’Oyugi began to receive troubling news. After 30 years during which family planning programmes had halved the number of births per woman in Kenya to fewer than five, the trend went into reverse.

“When you have a high birthrate people have difficulties with clothing, educating and feeding their children,” says Mr K’Oyugi, who heads his country’s National Co-ordinating Agency for Population and Development. “We are unable to create sufficient jobs when they enter the workforce – and unemployed people living on marginal land can create conflict.”

His concerns reflect a growing worry that some developing countries have failed to follow the broader “demographic transition” to lower fertility levels that has occurred in past decades in the western world and more recently across Latin America and much of Asia. Experts and policymakers are calling increasingly for a renewed and more nuanced approach to family planning, focused on countries in sub-Saharan Africa as well as others such as Yemen and Pakistan that trail the trend.

The issue is coming back on to the international agenda after a long absence. Many policymakers argue that without fresh efforts, economic growth will be severely impeded, sparking political instability and environmental degradation.

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