Aging, Youth Bulges, and Population

To capitalize on the promise of its burgeoning tech industry, Indonesia needs a greater focusing on developing the human talent that powers innovation and allows pioneering companies to grow.

As the results of the 2020 U.S. national census become known, the American media is digesting the finding that the country's population is no longer growing. The May 23 Sunday New York Times lead article "above the fold" highlighted how new a stagnant or declining birthrate and immigration is for the United States. The United States is joining Europe and East Asia, where a demographic decline and collapse of birth rates has long been underway—paradoxically often accompanied by a dysfunctional response to immigration. Demographic stagnation or decline is a worldwide phenomenon, except for Africa, where the population is exploding in size. Nowhere is the African demographic boom more obvious than in Nigeria, where the current population of 219 million, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) World Factbook most recent estimate, is projected to increase to around 400 million by 2050, at which point it will likely displace the United States as the third largest country in the world by population. By the end of the century, some credibly project that Nigeria’s population will be greater than China's—where the birth-rate fall has been especially dramatic—leaving it second to only India in populational globally. How is Africa to feed its enormous population increase? Nigeria in 1960 was a food-exporting country. But the economy has grown more slowly than the population, and Nigeria now imports food. Slow economic growth in tandem with high population growth will be a push factor for African migration, leaving aside other factors, such as insecurity and climate change. In North America, Europe, and East Asia, low demographic growth—if any—and an aging population will be a pull factor for African migration. Migration, with its push-pull factors, can be destabilizing, as Americans have seen when facing migration from Central America or Europe has from the war zones of the Middle East and the cross-Mediterranean flow of African economic and political refugees. Successful management of migration flows will require a granular knowledge and understanding of the push-pull factors at play in Africa. One size does not fit all: those factors will be different in Nigeria, where the “push” is especially strong and, say, South Africa, where its developed economy is an important “pull” factor for the rest of the continent. Migration is yet another reason why Washington needs enhanced engagement with Africa that draws on expertise rather than an amateur absentmindedness in policy making.

Nkasi Wodu, a New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute, is a lawyer, peacebuilding practitioner, and development expert based in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. In early March, over three hundred schoolgirls abducted by armed groups from a secondary school in Zamfara State in northern Nigeria were released by their abductors. Unfortunately, the global outrage this incident stoked has not deterred the armed groups operating in the north. Just last week, another set of students was kidnapped from a college in Kaduna State—the third mass kidnapping of students in Nigeria in 2021. An ugly video released by the kidnappers in Kaduna showed the students being brutalized by their abductors. Nigeria clearly needs to do more to protect its children. The country’s future depends on it. The recent abductions are part of a worrying trend that underscores students’ lack of safety in Nigeria. According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), over 13 million Nigerian children are not enrolled in school, more than anywhere else in the world. About 8 million of those children are located in Nigeria’s northern states, where violent conflicts spanning more than a decade have exacerbated the situation. Boko Haram, an Islamist insurgent group, is known for targeting schoolchildren and using them as leverage to negotiate with the Nigerian government for the release of prisoners. In 2014, the insurgent group attacked Chibok, a community in the northern state of Borno, abducting more than 250 schoolgirls. The Chibok incident sparked global outrage, but previous attacks occurred with little international attention. Earlier the same year, over fifty schoolboys from Buni Yadi, a town in Yobe State, were killed by suspected Boko Haram militants. Since February 2014, northern Nigeria has experienced at least seven high-profile attacks on secondary schools. More than one thousand schoolchildren have been victims of mass abductions by armed groups. While some of these students have been released, a significant number remain in captivity. Even beyond the most noteworthy kidnapping episodes, Boko Haram has continued to attack schools, abducting students and using them as suicide bombers or marrying off girls as brides to their soldiers. What is driving the recent spate of abductions? Several factors contribute: a proliferation of small arms and overstretched security forces make it difficult for the government to maintain control, while peace deals and huge ransom payments create perverse incentives that encourage more kidnappings. Blanket amnesties have recently gained even more traction through the support of Sheik Gumi, a leading Islamic cleric in northern Nigeria who appointed himself as a negotiator working to secure the release of victims of kidnapping. Attacks on students have many implications—for students themselves, along with their families and the country at large. Insecurity focused on centers of learning fuels parents’ unwillingness to send their children to school, thereby advancing Boko Haram’s goal of preventing Western education. A recent report revealed that over six hundred schools in six states in northern Nigeria have been shut down due to widespread insecurity. The attacks also provide armed groups with leverage to negotiate with the government, either for the release of prisoners or a request for a general amnesty. Compounding the situation, children without education can be especially vulnerable to recruitment by bandits and jihadis. The wave of insecurity in northern Nigeria is therefore creating a generation of children whose education has been permanently dented. The broad shortage of education could also lead to a skills gap in the workforce, reducing youths’ ability to catalyze sorely needed economic development. According to the World Bank, countries impacted by prolonged conflict are most likely to remain poor. This, in turn, leads to more violence. To improve the situation, Nigeria needs to intensify the Safe Schools Initiative established in 2014 in response to the Chibok abductions. Although armed groups have proliferated since its launch, the initiative can be tweaked to meet current realities. Better coordination between state and federal governments would also improve the response to banditry and general insecurity. Part of this strategy should involve the use of early warning and early response systems involving the federal government, state governments, local vigilantes, and community leaders. Without decisive action, abductions and the instability they cause will continue to plague Nigeria, holding back the futures of children and the country they will inherit.

Nigeria's Vice President Yemi Osinbajo addressed on February 23 a UN Food Systems Summit organized by the Nigerian government in Abuja, the national capital. He was blunt about the country's food insecurity problem. He noted that Nigeria's population is growing much faster than the economy, limiting its ability to build resilient, sustainable food systems. The conference considered a variety of possible approaches to increasing food production. Their relevance to Nigeria's realities remains to be seen. But Osinbajo addressed an important driver of food insecurity—Nigeria's rapidly growing population. Already an estimated 219 million, the population is projected to reach more than 400 million by mid-century, by which time it would displace the United States as the third largest country in the world. Nigeria is also, at the same time, quickly urbanizing. More than half of the population already lives in cities, most of which lack the necessary infrastructure to accommodate their residents. Nigerians often cite an abundance of good farmland and lament a lack of investment in agriculture. Certainly, agricultural investment has suffered from the diversion of investment capital to the oil industry and also from misguided public policy in the years before and after independence. But the abundance of good agricultural land is overstated: desertification affects as much as 60 percent of Nigeria's land, with drought and climate change exacerbating land deterioration. The Sahara Desert is creeping south while a rising Gulf of Guinea, coupled with a sinking continental shelf, threatens coastal areas. If increasing agricultural production will be a challenge, so, too, is reducing the birthrate. The statistically average Nigerian woman bears more than five children. But the rate varies across ethnic, religious, and local government lines, with a high of 7.3 births per woman in Katsina State and a low of 3.4 births per woman in Lagos State. In addition, among many “Big Men,” fathering large numbers of children is viewed as a dimension of their power. The government has tried to impose a population policy but failed to achieve its aims due to weak political will and hard-to-overcome cultural factors favoring a high birth rate. Nevertheless, Osinbajo's straight talk about an awkward issue is to be commended. In 2022, the ruling party is likely to nominate a southern Christian for the presidency, preserving the alternation of the office between the Muslim north and the Christian south. Osinbajo is a Christian, a Pentecostal preacher. However, he has described himself as "on loan" from the church to the government, and it is unclear that he will actively seek the nomination.

In its February update, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) included numerous new words of Nigerian origin. Many of the words relate to food preparation, urban transportation, the shortening of conventional English words, and the incorporation of words from indigenous languages. For example, ‘mama put’ refers to female food vendors, ‘okadas’ are passenger-carrying motorcycles, ‘guber’ refers to gubernatorial, and ‘danfo’ is the Yoruba work for urban minibuses. Demography drives the trajectory of history. It also drives language use. Nigeria’s population is currently about 200 million and is expected to reach 450 million by mid-century. Though English is the only official language, there are some 350 indigenous languages that most Nigerians use most of the time. There are guesses that 10 percent of the population speaks English as their first language, or some 20 million Nigerians. This means that, there are more Nigerian speakers of English as a first language than there are in Ireland, New Zealand, or Scotland, and about the same number as in Australia.  Another estimate is that about half of the population knows at least some English. By that estimate, Nigeria would have more people knowing English, with 100 million, than any other country in the world except the United States and India. In the United States, 239 million speak only English at home, and most of the rest of the population of 320 million know at least some English. In India it is estimated that about 10 percent of the population speaks English, which is about 125 million people.  Celebrated Nigerian authors write or have written in English, including Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In 2019, the American Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences disqualified Nigeria's Oscar's submission, "Lionheart," because there was too much English in it. The OED’s release notes quotes Adichie as saying, “My English-speaking is rooted in a Nigerian experience and not in a British or American or Australian one. I have taken ownership of English.” Now that Nigerian words are in the OED, we Americans may soon be using them without knowing their origin. 

Housing for professionals working in the modern economy are challenged in most of the world’s mega-cities. Lagos is no exception, as profiled by the BBC. Its reporter estimates that “middle-to-high-income” housing can cost between $5,000 and $40,000 a year. But the practice of paying a year’s worth of rent upfront sets Lagos apart: the BBC’s reporter was asked for between $11,000 and $22,000 for a two-bedroom apartment with electricity in a good Lagos neighborhood, Victoria Island. For context, according to one estimate, average rent for an apartment in Manhattan is as high as $4,336 per month, or $52,032 per year, and about 97 percent of apartments in the borough rent for more than $2,000 per month. In New York and Lagos, the shortage of housing at all levels in acute. The New York metropolitan area’s population was 20 million in 2016, while that of Lagos state is often estimated to be 22 million. Both cities are built on islands next to the ocean, limiting the amount of land available for development.  But Lagos has particular challenges. Real estate financing and consumer mortgages are usually short-term, often five years or less. Such short term financial arrangements encourage developers to seek short-term profits, which, too often, result in poor construction and shoddy maintenance. The practice of paying rent in advance in Lagos also reflects the difficulty landlords often face in collecting rents.  Nigerians like to see Lagos as their New York. Indeed, the two cities are the cultural, economic, education, luxury, and transportation hubs of their respective countries. They both attract residents from a nation-wide catchment area. Both cities are characterized by gross inequality of wealth, with a small number of rich people and a much larger number of poor, though New York has a proportionally larger middle class. The BBC report cited here reflects the realities faced by a very small middle class in Lagos. In both cities, much cheaper rents are found outside the city center. But the trade-off is long commutes—much longer in Lagos where the transportation infrastructure is still developing. Nevertheless, the most profound difference between the two is that New York is one of the world’s richest cities while Lagos is one of the poorest. That reality intrudes on all aspects of daily life, from housing to education to transportation infrastructure. 

Lately, the news from Uganda has been troubling. Rising crime rates have come to dominate the national narrative, as murders, robberies, and kidnappings have raised alarm among average citizens and elites alike. In the middle of this general insecurity, a number of apparent, targeted assassinations of prominent figures in politics and the security services are fodder for the rumors about motives, plots, and intrigues that swirl around social media. The realities of the violence, commentaries, and theories have all prompted concerns about an unraveling of the country’s relative stability in the midst of a troubled region. On June 20, President Yoweri Museveni, who has led Uganda since 1986, delivered an address to Parliament billed as a strategic plan to bring an end to criminality and violence. His ten proposals were heavy on technological solutions and increased state surveillance, but it remains to be seen how practical and effective they will be. Interestingly, President Museveni chose to deliver a lengthy, historical prologue to his contemporary policy prescriptions. Presenting this juxtaposition, he paternalistically told the assembled members of Parliament that, “you know about everybody else but know nothing about yourselves” as he asserted that his government had delivered peace to Uganda for the first time in five-hundred years. The tone of the address served as a captivating snapshot of the political climate in Uganda. Museveni has maintained his grip on power for thirty-two years by pitting potential successors against each other, ensuring that security services are loyal to him above all else, and reminding the people of his country that he delivered them from a chaotic and brutally violent past. These tactics point to the all-but-explicit message that he alone can prevent a return to bedlam. However, these very methods have played a role in enabling the current crisis, as powerful factions jostle for the sources of patronage that sustain them. These latest waves of crime undercut Museveni’s claim that he is capable of providing the stabilizing force the country requires. With roughly seventy percent of Ugandans under the age of twenty-five, the vast youthful population may not be able to imagine another leader of their country just yet, but they may begin to question whether the septuagenarian in charge is really a bulwark against disorder when disorder continues to rise all around them. 

A “demographic dividend,” economic growth potential brought on by a growing working-age population, together with rapid urbanization will accelerate economic development, or so the “Africa rising” narrative goes. However, given Africa’s lack of basic infrastructure, ranging from roads to hospitals to schools, both propositions are dubious. Stephen Commins of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies recently authored a highly useful report explaining the challenges of population growth and urbanization in Africa. But his report also points to specific instances in which policies have successfully overcome these challenges and advanced economic development and social cohesion in urban areas with ballooning populations. Commins points to how the rapid growth of urban slums is creating a new source of fragility for African governments. The statistics are startling. In South Sudan, more than 90 percent of the urban population lives in slums, and the percentage is almost as high in the Central African Republic. As for urban growth rates in specific cities, Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, will have grown by almost 700 percent between 1995 and 2025, more than any other major African city, though it is worth noting that Abuja did not become Nigeria’s capital until 1991. But even in long-established Lusaka, the population will have grown almost 300 percent. Weak governments unable to resolve conflicts over urban land or provide services have sown the seeds of a growing mistrust of government authority. Commins’s bottom line: “Central to the connections between insecurity and political fragility in cities is the interplay of unplanned growth, low levels of trust in security sector institutions, the youth bulge (with pressures on livelihoods and public spaces) and the emergence of ungoverned spaces (i.e. controlled by non-state actors, including criminal networks).” His report shows how the concept of “ungoverned spaces,” generally applied to rural areas, is also relevant in densely-populated urban areas. Commins supplements the earlier discussion by describing a variety of successful policy initiatives in cities such as Treichville (Abidjan), Johannesburg, Lagos, Yaounde, and Monrovia. The initiatives are not one-size-fits-all fixes—each reflects specific and local needs and concerns—but if a common theme does exist, it is that competent governance can overcome and even harness explosive urban growth.  

Being a woman is hard, but being a woman in China is getting harder. China’s rapidly aging population and gender imbalance have led to looming demographic and societal issues, and women are caught in the crosshairs.

At a population conference in New York, Chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC) Eze Duruiheoma estimated that the current population of Nigeria is 198 million, and that the population living in urban areas has been growing 6.5 percent annually over the past fifty years. He cites that World Population Prospects prediction that by 2050, Nigeria will displace the United States as the third most populous country in the world after China and India. He also noted the 2014 World Urbanization Prospects prediction that by 2050, 77 percent of Nigeria’s population will be urban. The NPC chairman also looked at the number of internally displaced Nigerians. With respect to the Boko Haram insurrection in the northeast, Duruiheoma estimated that the number of internally displaced is 1.76 million, which is lower than other estimates, some of which can be as high as 2.5 million. Nigerians know they are by far the most populous country in Africa, and they are proud of it. Estimates of the size of the country’s population range from the World Bank’s 186 million to 205 million by UN agencies. An accurate census is difficult in Nigeria in part because of infrastructure shortcomings. In the past, too, census results have also fueled ethnic and religious conflicts exploited by political figures. Nevertheless, in 2017 the director general of the NPC raised the possibility of a census in 2018. Given the practical and political difficulties and with the prospect of national elections in 2019, that timeframe seems overly optimistic. In the meantime, it is necessary to fall back on careful estimates.  Duruiheoma pointed out in New York that Nigeria’s urban population growth has not been accompanied by a “commensurate increase in social amenities and infrastructure.” More generally, economic growth has not kept up with population growth. Hence, the enormous slums outside city centers. In effect, Nigeria has no population policy that would limit births, and Nigerians have traditionally valued large families. Yet the country’s rapid population growth, especially in urban areas, poses difficult economic, social, and public health challenges. A huge, rapidly growing population is not necessarily a source of national strength.