What the President of Tanzania Gets Wrong about Population Growth in Africa

Why reducing neonatal mortality rates and poverty levels should be prioritized over population growth in Africa.

Written by Christopher Olaoluwa Ogunmodede

Jul 30, 2019

Dodoma, Tanzania. 2014 AFROMUSING/FLICKR

A few days ago, President John Magufuli of Tanzania called on women in Tanzania to ‘set your ovaries free’, and bear more children as a way to help boost the economy into a regional powerhouse—a step, critics argue, would instead worsen inequality and poverty, and increase the already high rate of neonatal deaths in the country. According to the World Health Organization, at 38 per cent, the sub-Saharan Africa region has one of the highest rates of neonatal mortality in the world. While progress has been made globally in reducing deaths among children under 5, sub-Saharan Africa has shown the smallest drop in child mortality rates in the 25-year period between 1990 and 2015.

In sub-Saharan Africa, per-capita income is below $2,000 and has barely moved much over the past decade; in many of these countries, it is within the $500-$700 range. In countries where per-capita income is higher (some of which include middle-income, Global South countries in Asia and Latin America) neonatal mortality rates are substantially lower. There is a significant correlation between low levels of income and healthcare outcomes, and high neonatal mortality rates in Africa can be said to be a function of poverty and low levels of public expenditure on healthcare and other social services. This double whammy creates conditions—for example, a lack of clean water, poor sanitation, malnutrition, endemic infections, poor or non-existent primary healthcare services—in which babies who are not robust at birth do not receive the healthcare they need to overcome their vulnerability.

The United Nations’ newest goals, the Sustainable Development Goals launched in 2016, include reducing the neonatal mortality rate in all countries to 12 deaths per 1,000 live births. For perspective, during the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) era, many countries in Africa achieved marked reductions in under-5 and neonatal mortality. Yet the pace of progress toward these goals substantially varied at the national level, demonstrating an essential need for tracking even more local trends in child mortality. As a region, sub-Saharan Africa spends less than 7 per cent of its total GDP on health, far less than the roughly 9 per cent of GDP that the countries of the OECD spend on health.

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About the Author

Christopher Olaoluwa Ogunmodede

is a foreign policy analyst, writer, editor and political risk consultant specializing in comparative authoritarianism, African regional & continental integration and transnationalism in African diasporic communities. He is also a sub-editor with The Republic.

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What the President of Tanzania Gets Wrong about Population Growth in Africa