The Problem

Recent demographic data in Africa indicates that fertility rates are beginning to fall in some countries while mortality rate continues to decrease in most countries even if its level is still high. In a majority of countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, the fertility level is still high and a family size of 5 to 7 children continues to be the norm while the mortality level has been declining though less sharply since the mid-1950s. As a consequence, the population growth rate of the continent as a whole has gone up to the extent that the total population has roughly tripled between 1950 and 1990.

Therefore, there is a need to harmonize population growth with the capacity of the land area to produce sustainable amounts of food. Experience elsewhere suggests that this can be done. African countries can achieve half the current levels of total fertility rate within a generation, thus, bringing the rate of population growth down to about 2 percent a year.

Goal

The goal of the team is to ensure that best practices in the area of population and sustainable development policies and programmes are endogeneized to progressively popularize, throughout the continent, the recent well-documented downward trends in fertility observed in some African countries.

Strategy

• Building capacity at the national, subregional and regional levels;
• Advocacy, awareness raising, policy advice and direction on the analysis and management of population issues in the context of the nexus of food, population and environment;
• Compilation of best practices and indicators on population issues and production of comparative studies in this area;
• Policy and programs formulation, reformulation, monitoring and evaluation;
• Monitoring UN development instruments;
• Networking and exchange of experiences with partners