Africa’s overcrowding is not a fresh phenomenon and will not vanish in the foreseeable future. The scale of the problem will rise, and any African metropolises will become the world's largest cities in a fewer decades. Meanwhile, the European Union seems to consider this dynamic as a peripheral issue, even though its effects will straight affect Europe's security, economy and social stability.
Europe present focuses on its own demographic challenges: low fertility, ageing societies and the alleged Western population crisis. However, the largest population change of the 21st century occurs elsewhere. Africa, whose population has doubled in the past 30 years, is heading for another doubling by the mediate of the century. The effects of this dynamics are already visible – from food safety to migration force – and will have crucial consequences for Europe.
Houses in cemeteries
On the outskirts of Bużumbury, the erstwhile capital of Burundi, fresh homes are built in places where cemeteries were inactive late located. There is frequently a deficiency of resources, time and procedures to decision the remains. There is an urgent request to supply space for life – anywhere.
Burundi is 1 of the most densely populated countries in the planet today, giving way to only a fewer countries specified as Bangladesh, Taiwan or neighboring Rwanda. However, not as much density as the pace of change is crucial. In 1 century, Africa’s population increased tenfold. The large Lakes Region, extending from Kenya to Congo, attracts people thanks to comparatively unchangeable rainfall and milder climate. Burundi is right in his center.
Although the country is inactive considered almost entirely rural, the classical division into the city and the village is little and little describing reality. Most residents proceed to farm land on hills, on steep, susceptible slopes. The land is developed almost entirely: fields are squeezed between houses, along roads and on the outskirts of valleys.
According to the definition of the Africapolis task (supported by the OECD), a site of at least 10,000 inhabitants is considered to be an urban area with a compact building. According to these criteria, 78% of Burundians are already surviving in urban areas. By the mediate of the 21st century, a large part of the country can become one, continuous agglomeration – an extended intermediate region that is neither a village nor a city in the classical sense.
Food safety limits
The most serious consequence of density is the problem of feeding the increasing population. Theoretically, force on the ground can foster innovation. There are examples of agricultural intensification in the northern regions of Burundi: terraces, irrigation, dirt improvement. In any cases this allows respective harvests per year.
However, these are exceptions. planet Food Programme data indicate that the percent of farms affected by food insecurity increased from 28% in 2008 to 41% in 2023. About half the children endure from growth inhibition. The land is no longer set aside, and the crops have remained at a akin level for years.
Although fertilizers are subsidised, their distribution – centralised in 1 operator – can be delayed and insufficient. Even with improved access to means of production, the scale of the problem remains enormous: 78% of farmers own little than 0.25 hectares of land. It's besides tiny to support a multi-children's family. By 2050 Burundi will gotta feed an additional 10 million people.
Society in Reconstruction
Authorities are counting on a fast decline in fertility from about 5 children per female now to 3 in 2040. Regional trends give average basis for optimism: Rwanda went down to 3.7, Kenya to 3.2. There is an expanding interest in contraception in Burundi, especially among younger women.
However, experts stress that the availability of funds alone is not enough. Investment in girls' education and wellness care are key, which increase children's chances of adulthood and reduce force on multi-childhood. Without this, demographic change may be besides slow.
The density besides affects social relations. conventional sources of prestige land, cattle, many offspring lose meaning due to the fact that they become little and little available. household and neighbourly conflicts are growing, and disputes over land are increasingly being brought to courts. regular life is monetized: what has previously been based on exchange and common assistance now increasingly requires cash.
Africa and migration to Europe
According to UN forecasts, Africa present has about 1.5 billion inhabitants. By 2084, they are expected to be 3.5 billion, which means that the vast majority of global population growth in the 21st century will come to 1 continent.
This demographic boom straight translates into migration. More than a 3rd of Africans declare their willingness to leave the continent, and in the 18–24 age group more than half. Europe is 1 of the main directions.
Between 2015 and 2016, around 1.2 million asylum seekers were arriving in the EU all year. After the pandemic, the numbers emergence again. Between 2022 and 2024, this was a full of around 3 million people. The expanding percent of migrants comes from Africa. According to Eurostat, around 1.3 million people were illegally residing in the EU in 2023.
UN forecasts indicate that 736 million people will arrive in North Africa, West Africa and West Asia by 2045. If even a 3rd of them tried to enter the EU, this would mean a possible influx of 12 million migrants per year. 10 times more than during the 2015 crisis. Meanwhile, the European baseline forecasts presume net migration of only 1.2 million people per year.
‘Better than higher’
History shows that fast decline in fertility is possible. South Korea reduced birth rates from 5 to 2 children per female in 20 years thanks to consistent household planning programs supported by Sweden and the US. In Africa, akin but modest effects were achieved by Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Malawi.
Currently, 45 African countries are declaring fertility policies. The problem is not deficiency of will, but deficiency of resources, education and unchangeable support. household planning programmes – comparatively inexpensive compared to the costs of migration crises – stay at the margins of European improvement assistance, dominated by commercial interests and short-term policy objectives.
The European Union, even if it does not want to admit it today, faces 1 of the top political challenges of the 21st century. Without real support for women's education, wellness care and voluntary household planning in Africa, demography will stay a powerful destabilising force, both in the south and in the north of the Mediterranean.
What happens in Burundi is not a local exception. It's a informing signal. The question is not whether Europe will feel the effects of the African demographic boom, but whether it will be able to halt treating this process as abstract statistic and recognise it as 1 of the key political challenges of the 21st century.
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