Facts and fiction about population and under development in West Africa

Abstract

The last decade has seen a lot of contributions to a debate about which more and more people are getting interested. This is the debate on the relationship between population growth and economic development in Africa. Most of the research reports read at conferences and published in journals sound Malthusian in the sense that they paint a gloomy picture of population explosion which they say is detrimental to the course of development. The reports start with refuting what they consider existing population myths. Several widely accepted myths regarding population in Africa impede acceptance by governments of the proposition that they must concern themselves with the population factor. The most important of the myths are that Africa does not suffer from overpopulation or pressure on the land or that such conditions prevail in only limited areas, this myth frequently expressed in the positive formulation that the population of Africa resides at an average low density and the ‘empty lands' myth, which holds that there is ample available land to absorb persons now experiencing pressure plus a large increase in population. This paper is now approach which emphasizes what it considers, population explosion vis-a-vis others, and more basic causes of underdevelopment constitutes a new myth.