Family planning services were first offered free-of-charge in Botswana in the 1970s and have since been integrated into maternal and child health services at local primary health facilities. Botswana’s Family Planning Programīotswana’s reproductive health effort has been exceptional. This essay reports on research that investigates what the demographic future might hold for the Western Sahelian states should they emulate Botswana’s pattern of fertility decline.ĭata Source: UN Population Division, 2019. In fact, Botswana provides an example of a country that, over the past four decades, has succeeded in substantially reducing the frequency of adolescent pregnancy and early marriage, increase birth spacing, and vastly improving its level of girls’ educational attainment-aspects of development that generally drive improvements in child nutrition and survival, improve maternal health, and initiate a shift to a smaller average family size. Notably, demographic patterns like those of the Western Sahel do not extend into southern Africa (Fig. Currently, the UN Population Division’s low and high scenarios for Western Sahel Region, by 2050, project a population between about 210 million and 250 million. Today, amid rapid urbanization, the regional population tops 100 million and is growing by more than 3 million per year. Nearly all were pastoralists or subsistence agriculturalists. Sustained population youthfulness (often called a “youth bulge”) contributes to low levels of educational attainment, joblessness and social immobility, and ultimately to rapid population growth, which tends to drive declines in per-capita availability of freshwater and other critical natural resources: factors that are associated with the risk of persistent violent conflict and represent powerful push factors for migration.Īt independence in the early 1960s, these six arid states totaled about 21 million residents. As security conditions deteriorate across the rural Sahel, governments in Europe and North Africa are taking notice of these countries’ demographic status-and for good reasons. According to current UN Population Division estimates, about 57 percent of this six-country region’s population is 19 years old or younger. The Western Sahel region-a cluster of arid, low-income countries stretching from Senegal, on Africa’s Atlantic coast, inland to Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Chad-is home to the world’s most youthful populations.
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January 2023
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