In “AFD’s Atlas of Africa”, we examine the social and economic developments across the continent. Today we take a closer look at the changes in fertility in Africa, where the number of children per woman has been decreasing for 40 years.
When compared with other continents, Africa’s fertility rates of 4.5 children per woman in 2017 seem high. Indeed, it’s the highest in the world. But that figure is low compared with Africa’s birthrates of previous decades. It stood at an average of 6.6 children per woman in 1980.
And these rates has been falling across the continent. In the Sahel, for example, the region with the highest fertility rates, the number of children per woman has dropped from 7 to 5.7 since 1980. The most spectacular drop has been in North Africa, where the rate was cut in half in 37 years, from 6 children per woman to 3.
There is an ongoing demographic transition in Southern Africa and the countries of the Indian Ocean, where the current fertility rate is 4 children per woman, and the rate is trending downward.