Africa’s fertility rates are falling. Can the continent take advantage?

The lesson from Sodom and Gomorrah in Accra

From The Economist

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CAREFULLY stepping round another heap of fetid refuse in Sodom and Gomorrah, it is easy to despair of Africa’s future. Accra’s notorious slum is aptly named. Here, about 30,000 families (no one knows for sure how many) crowd into a warren of hastily thrown-together shacks on the fringes of Ghana’s capital: there is no power, sewerage or running water, diarrhoea and other diseases are rife and deadly fires rapidly take hold. It seems to contain all that is wrong with modern Africa—too many people, deep poverty and the failure of inept or corrupt governments to do anything to help. Yet Sodom and Gomorrah also has a more hopeful story to tell.

Africa is undergoing a “demographic transition”. As our briefing shows (see article), African women are now following their sisters in Asia and the rich world by bearing steadily fewer children. Admittedly, Africa is lagging behind Asia by about 20 years, and the continent’s fertility rates are still high, but the trend is clear. In Mozambique in 1950 a woman had, on average, 6.5 children over her lifetime; now she has five. In Ethiopia the figure has dropped from seven to five; in Côte d’Ivoire it has almost halved from its peak; in Botswana it has more than halved. The only exceptions are war-torn places such as Congo.

HIV/AIDS, killer of mothers and fathers in their prime, is the miserable cause of part of this shift. But more important is the decline in birth rates when people leave the countryside. And the overflowing chaos of Sodom and Gomorrah is part of the fastest urbanisation in history. Africa’s rush to the cities is not just changing the location of Africa’s populations, it is changing their structure, too.

In Latin America and Asia this transition yielded a huge economic gain, called the “demographic dividend”. As birth rates decline, the proportion of children shrinks and the working-age population bulges, as is happening now in Africa. That can kick-start industrialisation. Factories employ low-skilled farmers fresh from the country, which increases productivity and prosperity, which creates demand, and so it goes on. Some studies reckon that demography explains as much as a third of Asia’s economic growth.

It is this opportunity that Africa must prepare for. The “dividend” is not automatic. It has to be earned. A productive, healthy workforce could lift large parts of Africa out of poverty, but an expanding cohort of jobless, idle and frustrated young men will create political and social instability. Just think of the riots and deaths sparked by rampaging hordes of youths in Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Kenya.

Success breeds success

There are plenty of reasons to fear the worst. Poor farming and environmental degradation could lead to hunger, poverty and strife. Instability, corruption and family breakdown could break the cycle of industrialisation and growing productivity.

Hence the need to get African policy right: a green revolution to keep rural hunger and poverty at bay; peace and contraception to keep the demographic transition on track; education and better governance to create a workforce able to exploit the chances on offer; and services to help people in slums like Sodom and Gomorrah join the formal economy.

Such desires are hardly new—indeed each stands on its own merits. What is new is the sense of urgency. The demographic dividend comes around only once. Eventually the bulge of energetic, working-age people becomes a bulge of dependent, elderly ones. The transition will pass in a couple of generations—the blink of a demographic eye. Africa must not fumble its best chance at prosperity.

Source:The Economist

Genocide suspect found in Congo

Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in 1994 A man accused of planning the massacre of Rwandans during the 1994 genocide has been arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo, officials say. A government statement named the suspect as Gregoire Ndahimana, who is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). He was detained by Congolese soldiers in the eastern province of North Kivu. They were taking part in UN-backed operations against ethnic Hutu rebels, many of whom fled to DR Congo in 1994. Some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in 100-day genocide. Bulldozed church "He was discovered by our units operating in North Kivu... He was hiding among the FDLR [Hutu rebels]," Congolese Information Minister Lambert Mende was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. According to his ICTR indictment, Mr Ndahimana is responsible for the deaths of at least 2,000 Tutsis, most of whom were killed when a church in which they had sought refuge was bulldozed. The ICTR, which is based in Arusha, Tanzania, has completed 45 cases. It was initially due to complete its prosecutions by the end of 2008, but the UN Security Council has given the court until the end of 2010 to finish the trials.

Is the International Criminal Court unfair to Africa?

Posted by: Barry Malone

African countries often complain about getting a bad press. They say there’s much more to the continent than war and poverty and starvation. Then there’s the huge coverage given to the International Criminal Court and the fact that all four cases the body is now considering come from Africa.

But what’s strange about the complaints is that the world’s poorest continent is the most heavily represented in the ICC, with 30 member countries. In the March 2009 elections for ICC judges, 12 out of the 19 candidates were Africans nominated by African governments. And Fatou Bensouda, the court’s Deputy Prosecutor, is from Gambia.

Of the four files before the court, the cases on Democractic Republic of Congo, Uganda and the Central African Republic were referred to the court by those very governments. The controversial fourth case, the indictment of Sudanese PresidentOmar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes, was put before the court by the United Nations Security Council.

The ICC has issued an arrest warrant for the leader of the huge oil-exporting country to face charges of war crimes during almost six years of fighting in Sudan’s violent Darfur region — but he has refused to deal with the court.

It was that case, heavily opposed on the continent, that brought the 30 African ICC members together in Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for an unprecedented meeting last week after calls from some countries that the Africans should withdraw en masse.

That didn’t happen and diplomats told me only Libya, Senegal, Djibouti and the Comoros islands had seriously lobbied the meeting for a total withdrawal. Reporters were kept well outside the conference room and security seemed tighter than usual but, even from a distance we could hear some very angry exchanges coming from inside. And the frustration written all over the faces of delegates as the meeting stretched into the night seemed to indicate there were serious disagreements on the issue.

But, in the end, they told us nothing and simply said they would make recommendations to their heads of state. Most African countries want the indictment against Bashir deferred for one year and the African Union says it will compromise peace efforts in Darfur. The 53-member organisation is also calling for a one-year deferral.

“The pursuit of peace can be deadly impacted upon if players, including a head of state, are denied even the fundamental presumption of innocence,” AU Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtane Lamara told delegates before the meeting began.

His boss, AU Commission Chairman Jean Ping, has repeatedly accused the ICC of having an unhealthy fixation on African leaders and says it should look elsewhere, too.

So is the African Union right? Is the ICC unfair to Africa and could the warrant for Bashir compromise peace efforts in Darfur? Or is the fact that every case before the court comes from Africa simply a true reflection of the continent’s problems?