A decade ago a 700-page book that could be used as a doorstop was waved around by prominent business news anchors. Praise for the book was effusive — the most important work since Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, some said. I was intrigued.
Although Thomas Piketty’s groundbreaking book Capital in the Twenty-First Century could be described as a rather dry read, it grabbed my attention. What lingered in my mind was neither Piketty’s complex econometric calculations nor his primary assertion that wealth concentration tends to increase over time, leading to ever greater global inequality.
Rather, what startled me were demographic projections that Africa’s population is growing at a rate that is, and increasingly will be, dwarfing that of other regions. As I looked further into these numbers, the implication became clear: by the year 2050 Africa will be home to one in four people in the world. One in four.
This was a startling number. Questions immediately began to whirl in my head. What did this portend for Africa and, say, for the future life of a five-year-old African child today? And more generally, what did this mean for the world?
Within only 25 years the world’s population is expected to grow from some 8-billion today to almost 10-billion. This overall growth will be unevenly distributed, creating significant demographic shifts. According to current projections, Asia will be home to nearly half of humanity by 2050, compared to less than 10% in Europe and North America combined.
Africa’s population, currently the fastest growing in the world, is expected to almost double to 2.5-billion people by 2050. India, China and Nigeria will be the world’s most populous countries, with Nigerians projected to number almost 400 million.
A visit to the megacities of Lagos, Shanghai or Mumbai already brings home the reality of these numbers. Every time I travel there, I’m struck by overwhelming oceans of people, whether in the airport arrival lounge, in local markets that stretch as far as the eye can see, or in the incessant traffic of cars and motorised two- and three-wheelers that clog the streets. People are everywhere! The density of human life is palpable.
To put this into perspective, the population of Nigeria, a single African country, will be larger than half of Europe’s. According to some projections considering different growth rates and migration scenarios, Nigeria could even be more populous than the US.
As the population proliferates in Africa, it declines in richer parts of the world such as Europe, the Americas and Asia. Of the top 30 countries by fertility rate globally, an astonishing 29 are African, with only Afghanistan representing the rest of the world, according to the UN Population Fund. No country in Europe, for example, is above the replacement fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman, and no African country — except for Tunisia, Cape Verde and Mauritius — is under it.
The tensions resulting from this demographic shift are becoming self-evident and difficult to escape
Looking further out to 2100, the demographic projections and their ramifications are even more sobering. By then, Asia and Africa would have populations of 4.7-billion and 4-billion respectively, dwarfing the 1.7-billion souls who will make up the rest of humanity. China’s population has already begun to contract and is expected to drop to less than 800-million by 2100 — by which time Nigeria’s population could very well be larger. If they come to fruition, these demographic projections will reshape the world almost beyond recognition in the next decades.
One would have to suffer from desperately poor imagination not to wonder about the economic, social and geopolitical realignments and probable ructions that this tectonic change in the demographic profile of the global population will trigger. I found Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan’s book The Great Demographic Reversal enlightening with respect to the consequences for labour, inequality, ageing, inflation — and therefore the value of everything — that this demographic realignment will bring about.
This tectonic demographic shift among continents mirrors a shift happening within countries too. French historian Fernand Braudel’s observation several decades ago that Paris is a great North African city and New York the biggest Puerto Rican city in the world becomes truer by the year. By 2050, Hispanics, Asians and African Americans will make up more than half of the US’s 438-million people, which will reshape the country’s social, cultural and political landscape. Over half of the more than 186-million people who live in Brazil — the largest population in South America — are of mixed race with some African heritage. Western European countries are undergoing a similar transformation, which, as in the US, feeds the ongoing fierce and divisive debate about immigration. The tensions resulting from this demographic shift are becoming self-evident and difficult to escape.
If that radical demographic realignment alone does not capture your attention, consider that it will occur as humanity navigates a brave new digital world that could usher in an age of super-intelligence, making the future even harder to predict. Black swan events and their outcomes in a more digitally integrated world are difficult to fathom, but their impact will most likely be significant.
After all, it took only a few months for the outbreak of the Covid pandemic to transform our lives and shatter our confidence. The world suddenly had to rustle up $10-trillion (R164-trillion) of stimulus packages — three times the amount that was required during the 2008 global financial crisis. A hitherto unknown virus whose origin remains in contention exposed our human impotence and frailties, robbing families of their loved ones, exposing and exacerbating gaping economic, social and geopolitical inequalities, and cutting millions of dreams short.
The consequences of the war between Russia and Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Gaza are still felt around the world, underscoring once again the unpredictability of global events and outcomes. Political analysts, historians and diplomats familiar with these regions, from George Kennan and Henry Kissinger to John Mearsheimer and Noam Chomsky, would probably argue that these conflicts were not unexpected.
The African experience of pillage, plunder and torment at the hands of outsiders over five centuries has been exacerbated by Africa’s own political and economic failings, particularly in the past 65 years
Former US ambassador to Russia and CIA director Bill Burns, for instance, warned in an embassy cable back in February 2008 that the prospect of Ukraine joining Nato was a “red line” for Russia and carried significant risks, including a military response. In an unexpected twist, US president Donald Trump seems to broadly agree with him. Yet these conflicts have resulted in geopolitical, economic and financial shockwaves around a world that felt largely unprepared for the disruption of grain and hydrocarbon supply chains that threatened food and energy security, as well as the resulting inflation.
Similarly, the major IT outage that paralysed much of the world in July 2024 highlighted how integrated and vulnerable our world has become, with a problem experienced by one single cybersecurity firm grounding flights around the world and paralysing banks, doctors’ offices and broadcasters.
Yet although black swan events such as pandemics, wars and IT outages are likely to become more frequent, they are unlikely to significantly alter projected demographic trends — save, of course, for an event of cosmic proportions. This leaves us with the prospect of Africa being home to a quarter of humanity within one generation as highly probable.
Why should this prospect give us all pause? Because if it maintains its current trajectory, Africa seems ill-prepared to cope with the predicted rapid population growth, which will be felt well beyond Africa’s continental borders. In the absence of a radical transformation, the continent appears poorly placed to muster the economic and geopolitical power required to sustain and speak for 2.5-billion people, which in turn would push ever-growing numbers of migrants to seek a better life elsewhere.
The African experience of pillage, plunder and torment at the hands of outsiders over five centuries has been exacerbated by Africa’s own political and economic failings, particularly in the past 65 years. Most African governments lack a cohesive long-term vision and are woefully ill-prepared or unwilling to lay the groundwork for the continent to sustain more than 2.5-billion people. Planning for the next three years — let alone the next 30 — is already hard enough.
So how can the continent transcend its heavy historical baggage and self-inflicted wounds to unleash the kind of renaissance required to successfully embrace its demographic future? What is Africa, and what could it be?
• Nhleko is a former CEO and chair of mobile network operator MTN chair and co-founder of Phembani Group, an SA-domiciled resource and energy-focused investment holding company. This is an edited version of his introduction to his book The Invisible People: How a Quarter of Humanity Can Thrive in Africa by 2050
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.