Globally, the human population is continuing to grow. Currently at over 8.1 billion, the United Nations predicts that, based on all evidence, the world’s population will most likely peak at close to 11 billion by 2100.

On a country-wide basis, however, the story is a little more complex.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United States keeps tabs on all kinds of different information, including population growth rates. The data, published in the CIA’s World Factbook, includes up to date growth rate percentage figures that take into account births, deaths, and migration when it comes to the average change in a population.

According to the CIA’s most recent data, the following are the top 10 countries currently experiencing the fastest growing populations.

1. South Sudan – 4.65 percent

2. Niger – 3.66 percent

3. Angola – 3.33 percent

4. Benin – 3.29 percent

5. Equatorial Guinea – 3.23 percent

6. Uganda – 3.18 percent

7. Democratic Republic of the Congo – 3.11 percent

8. Chad – 3.01 percent

9. Mali – 2.9 percent

10. Zambia – 2.83 percent

The top 10 fastest growing populations is completely dominated by African countries, which reflects a trend seen across the continent. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Africa’s population has increased tenfold since 1900, attributed primarily to increasingly high birth rates and dropping mortality rates.

Click on image below to open interactive map.

Rapid population growth on the African continent may be partly attributed to an improvement in public health infrastructure. But this growth also poses a huge challenge in terms of sustainability and social and economic growth, the extent of which varies on a number of factors, including a country’s political and economic conditions, population density and economic stability.

Tomas Sobotka, a senior researcher at the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital, said: “Overall, high rates of population growth are often challenging because they increase the pressure on available resources – especially water, land availability, food production and energy – and make it more difficult for the governments to improve infrastructure, improve health care, build better cities, build more schools, expand education system and protect available resources.”

Sobotka added: “However, these challenges can be partly overcome by sound policymaking in countries that have competent governments. Eventually, better education, improved access to health and contraception, urbanisation and economic growth will reduce fertility rates, and this will subsequently lead to lower population growth.”

Sobotka also shares the CIA’s view that, over time, climate change will increasingly contribute to both more conflict and more migration between countries, but that these movements are extremely difficult to predict.

The World Factbook provides basic intelligence on the history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, environment, communications, transportation, military, terrorism, and transnational issues for 265 world entities.

Submitted by Friends of Retha


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