Keywords: Tropical Africa, Malawi, birth rate, demography
The birth rate in most of the countries of Tropical Africa has practically not decreased in the last 15-20 years, "frozen" at an extremely high level (more than 5 children per woman). The UN experts had to revise their forecasts of a decade ago for very many countries in Tropical Africa in the direction of increasing the projected values of their population to such values that indicate very real risks of large-scale social and humanitarian catastrophes in these countries. 1
The forecast is particularly impressive for Malawi, a small country in south-eastern Africa (with an area of about 100 thousand km2-smaller than the Vologda Oblast), whose population, according to the "average" version of the UN forecast, should approach 100 million people by the end of the century. In this light, the question is very relevant: what kind of dynamics is predicted for Malawi and can it be influenced in one way or another?
UN FORECASTS
Currently, there is an updated series of forecasts from the United Nations Population Division, which presents "high", "medium" and " low " forecast scenarios for the population dynamics of Tropical Africa until 2100. The UN focuses on predicting the demographic future of countries through predictive dynamics of a set of demographic indicators. Unfortunately, the analysis of scenarios for the demographic future of Tropical Africa is not given enough attention in the scientific community.
The population increase that the UN" average " forecast scenario suggests should be expected in Malawi up to 2100 relative to the current level is shown in fig. 1. It is important to emphasize that the" average " UN forecast is not an inertial one. It assumes that the birth rate in Malawi will continue to decline and, moreover, that the rate of decline will accelerate compared to what has been observed in recent years.
However, the forecasts developed by the UN Population Division, despite a number of their und ...
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