Blessing or curse?
This means Africa's population boom offers great opportunities for Africa's future economic transformation. This can happen, provided Africa's human capital is harnessed productively, and channelled towards appropriate sectors of the economy, in response to changes in the international economic system. However, at the same time, Africa's population boom poses grave threats to the region's political stability and social cohesion if sufficient economic and employment opportunities remain unavailable for expected newcomers.
For this reason, in the short-term, unchecked population growth in many an African country has important implications for social and economic development. It cannot be justified on the simplistic basis of the need to promote rapid industrialisation through the creation of economies of scale. These remain essentially a function of the “size” of the market; that is, of the effective domestic demand. Gains in “size” are more readily achieved by increasing income per head than by increasing the number of impoverished peasants. For the time-being, this should be sought primarily through regional integration and international trade rather than by population growth.